Hey y'all! It's been a minute right!
I've been busy trying to get some health things in order and navigating transitions at work.
Last week, while looking for another article and skimming articles in the new issue of the Journal of Agricultural Education, I saw my name…my article is out!
My article Student Experiences of a Social Justice-based Agricultural and Life Science Education Course at an 1862 Land-Grant University is out now. Let me know if you do not have access and would like a copy! In this paper, I talk about the course I developed and taught at the end of my time at Purdue. During my doctoral studies, I took a course with Dr. Stephanie Masta where we explored how qualitative researchers use critical approaches (approaches that question/examine power structures in social systems) to inform their methodologies to challenge “traditional” norms of research. We discussed critical race approaches, feminist approaches, queer studies, and more. After I took Dr. Masta’s course, I knew we needed something similar, but for agriculture (agriculture broadly, because agriculture is part of our everyday lives whether you realize it or not). In the courses I took in the department, we talked about Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, slavery, and a very brief history of 1890 Land-grants (Historically Black Colleges/Universities (HBCUs)). I wanted to celebrate Black and Brown agrarian contributions. I wanted to feel a connection to what I was learning. So, I wrote a list of topics I would want to discuss and then asked my peers about topics they would want to learn about. I took the idea to my advisor, and he agreed that we should offer the course. From there, I developed the syllabus and a course flyer.
We had six students enrolled in the course and two students opted to sit-in on class meetings. My paper focuses on the six enrolled students. There were four Black students, one white student, and one mixed-race student who presents as white. My advisor is a Black man. As Black scholars in higher agricultural education, my advisor and I are aware of many of the barriers that Black students experience in the classroom. We are both HBCU graduates (shoutout to NCAT and FAMU), and we both earned our PhDs at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). Attending HBCUs means we understand what it’s like to feel a sense of belonging in the classroom and to learn from folks that look like us. Our PWI experiences also means we know what it’s like to be the only or one of few in a classroom.
Because we can’t have nice things, COVID hit the semester the course was offered, so we had to pivot to online instruction. We were so disappointed. We moved to a synchronous online format, extended assignment deadlines, and spent a lot of time during our first online session talking about our mental health and how we were handling the transition.
There are a lot of interesting findings from the paper, but most important to me are the findings about race and representation. When I asked students why they took the course, responses included:
I plan on working with marginalized communities (in Extension) and learning about non-white perspectives is important.
There have been no other courses focused on URMs in agricultural spaces throughout my graduate education. It provided a missing perspective.
I wanted to get away from the traditional ag class.
When I see a Black professor offering a class, I’m going to take it. This was my only chance to take an ag class that showed different perspectives beyond the white man’s eyes.
Black students told me they wanted to take more classes focused on agriculture offered by Black and Brown instructors. Additionally, it is important for all students to see Black and Brown faculty in the classroom to provide representation that contributes to positive messaging/images of folks of color. One student mentioned that class was the best part of their week and noted that it is hard to be on campus and in class when most of your classmates are white. We also held class in the Black Cultural Center, where I worked for a few years and participated in a couple of the ensembles. The white students admitted they had never been inside the Black Cultural Center and appreciated the opportunity to explore the building and the wealth of culture inside.
Now that I am gone, I doubt that anyone from the department will attempt to teach a class like mine, nor do I think but a couple of them should or could (effectively). But for students at Purdue looking for a similar class, Dr. Linda Propoky, Horticulture & Landscape Architecture department head and professor, is teaching a course called Structural Racism in US Agriculture. She and her colleague Dr. Hallett plan to offer two more complementary courses on culture & agriculture and colonialism & food justice.
Back to my class lol. I appreciate and am forever thankful to my students for their time and efforts, especially with the fallout from COVID.
✌🏾
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