“IP CALS: A born librarian with a drive to end food insecurity”
March 9, 2017
Sarah Evanega -- associate director of international program
Jaron Porciello - associate director for research engagement in international programs
IP (International Programs) CALS breakdown:
Not an academic department, but a program
“the fourth dimension of CALS”
Teaching
Research
Extension
International
Main push is to addresses food insecurity
Find better ways to do agriculture, especially in the face of global climate change
Over 50 years old
HUGE worldwide work and collaboration. They’re all over the map.
Three main programs
Academic programs
Facilitates a major in CALS, lots of growth of students in this major
They have an interactive map on their website where we can hear individual stories of students.
2 master of professional studies in their unit
One in international development, the other in global development. Lots of redundancy between the two, they’re currently evaluating how to streamline the two MPS programs.
Can combine MPS with peace corps
Leadership development
Humphrey Fellows program -- brings fellows who have interest in international agriculture and similar
Norman Borlaug International Al Science and Technology Fellowship Program
Transnational Learning led by Stephan Einerson. He goes out to the world and connects people to the internet.
West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (WACCI)
Goal is to embed information literacy and scientific ? in west africa, many CUL librarians sent to teach this
Sponsored programs
Always changing
Some examples:
Durable rust resistance in wheat (2008-2016) - to engage scientists all over the world all focused on solving problem on wheat rust, a disease that emerged in E Africa in 1998. In 2016, researchers were able to deliver rust resistant lines of wheat to farmers in Africa.
Women in Triticum - to recruit and retain women working in wheat. In the beginning, very few women. Four years in they had 30% women in the meeting.
Next Generation Cassava Breeding project - aims to increase the rate of genetic improvement in cassava breeding for africa.
GREAT - Gender-responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transformation. In its first year, goal is to help researchers analyze sex disaggregated data. Looking at the end-users (farmers, typically women) to help them develop new ways to analyze their research. Over next 5 years.
Agricultural Innovation Partnership (AIP) - In Malawi and India, to improve curriculum around agricultural curriculum. Enhancing library services in the program, developing plan to enhance libraries.
System of Rice Intensification - education, awareness, and training in this program to train people to plant rice to improve yield.
Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project II - working with different crops in different countries to help address food insecurity challenges. Project has closed, but morphed into an Eggplant Improvement Partnership (Bangladesh and Philippines). Eggplant that reduces need for insecticides.
Alliance for Science. New initiative (launched 2014). Communication initiative to promote access to scientific innovation as a means of enhancing food security, improving environmental sustainability, and raising the quality of life globally. Host 25-30 fellows from around the world, come in August and stay till November.
AWARE initiative (Advancing Women in Agriculture through Research and Education)
Graduate student travel grant up to $2,500 to support grad research that fits within the AWARE scope
Frosty Hill award -- for faculty and students to do research at CGIAR center
Communications for IP CALS led by Linda McCandless
Leads to donations from funders who see communications from IP CALS.
Liaison, Embedded, Outside the Library…
Jaron started working with IP CALS out of a conversation with Sarah Evangea. Sarah needed an “information architect” to work closely with her international community researchers. To Jaron, this represented a new way of working with our research community.
Even in international programs, being physically embedded makes a difference
Our core values as librarians are vital to international work: access, information literacy, meeting users where they are - no matter who they are
Emergent and adaptive solutions are key to food security.
Fun projects that Jaron wanted to point out:
MOOC: The Science and Politics of the GMO
MOOC is about information literacy and source trustworthiness
Help individuals become better researcher and somebody who asks the right questions.
7000 participants from 153 countries the first time they ran it (currently running it the second time)
LOTS of work to create the MOOC.
GMO literature assessment study
Citizen science
Started with 144,000 papers, narrowed to 12,000 papers. People are reading abstracts (twice) to compare citizen interpretation to what scientific researchers concluded in GMO realm.
GREAT VIVO
Community instance of VIVO
About 6 weeks in to this project