“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