All-Terrain Vehicle Safety Knowledge and Behaviors Among 4-H’ers

Youth in rural areas are exposed to all-terrain vehicles, but little is known about their knowledge of all-terrain vehicle safety and their likelihood to apply such knowledge. The purpose of this needs assessment was to determine what rural 4-H youth in Georgia knew about all-terrain vehicle safety and operating procedures. A total of 287 rural 4-H youth in fourth through sixth grade completed a previously validated all-terrain vehicle safety knowledge and behavior test administered during a regularly scheduled afterschool club meeting. Only 13.6% ( n = 39) of respondents passed the safety test, while 13.9% ( n = 15)of those who had taken an all-terrain vehicle safety course ( n = 108) passed. Of youth who passed the test, 36% had at least three years of riding experience. Participation in an all-terrain vehicle safety course could save a child’s life. Still, this study revealed that retention of safety information from these courses is limited, and riding experience does not necessarily imply adequate safety knowledge. Youth development professionals should consider partnering with local all-terrain vehicle dealerships to provide hands-on safety training experiences on properly equipped machines where youth can demonstrate their safety knowledge and behaviors and be evaluated by trained adult

Experiential Learning for Extension Professionals: A Cross-Cultural Immersion Program

As the U.S. population becomes more diverse, Extension is called upon to modify its programming to meet the needs of its changing constituency. Georgia Extension created a professional development curriculum to assist Extension professionals in crafting effective programming for the rapidly growing Latino population. The study reported here explores qualitatively how Extension professionals in Georgia experienced their Cross-Cultural Immersion Program (CCIP). Through an interview-based study, three themes emerged from the data. Extension participants experienced: (1) diverse familial relations in Latino populations, (2) obstacles during programming, and (3) greater personal over professional gains through the CCIP

Positive impacts of a STEM-centered university service-learning course

Service-learning courses have become increasingly popular at universities over the past decade. Fostering Our Community’s Understanding of Science, known as Project FOCUS, has been a service-learning course at the University of Georgia for the past 13 years. Undergraduate students collaborate with teachers in the community to teach hands-on science lessons to elementary and middle school students. The course has enrolled over 1000 undergraduates, who have taught science to an estimated 25,000 local students. Students enrolled in this course experience increased interest in community involvement and teaching science. This poster is an informative glance at Project FOCUS as recommendations for K-12 administrators and university professors interested in designing a successful STEM outreach program. Fact sheet about course will be provided to those interested in pursuing the creation of a similar course

Undergraduate Experiential Learning Activity to Improve Communication Skills and Engage Public School Students in Forest Ecological Principles

Since 1988, Virginia Tech has had various programs in which undergraduate students visited public schools and presented natural resources-based information One of the more popular presentations involved teaching public school students how to identify and measure forest vegetation. In 2008, the Ambassadors for Conservation Education (ACE) Program was developed to enlist a larger, more diverse student body to participate in forestry and agriculturally-related undergraduate degree programs. In this program, undergraduates visited two parks and six high schools with forest nearby to collect forest ecological data with high school students. At each park and school we established a series of 0.02-ha permanent plots. Accurate baseline data on tree species, and tree diameter (\u3e10 cm) were collected on all plots by Virginia Tech faculty and staff. These data, along with the exercise objectives and field trip preparation material (e.g., data sheets), were placed on the internet for use by teachers. To prepare for their teaching days, undergraduate students enrolled in a communication class where they were taught principles of effective communication. The class emphasized outdoor environmental teaching with numerous practice sessions where students improved their skills at teaching outdoors in informal settings. Undergraduates then led high school field trips where students and their teachers visited the plots and collected the same information in the pre-established plots. High schoolers learned principle of tree identification and use of diameter tapes and increment borers. Following data collection, students returned to the classroom and submitted their data via the internet. Relatively accurate data can be collected when trained undergraduates assist high school students closely. Utilizing schools with forest plots nearby greatly increased the number of students reached and eliminates the need for special field trip permission and transportation costs

Graduate Students as Evaluation Consultants for Natural Resource Programs: A Service­ Learning Success Story

Providing graduate students with authentic, field‐based service‐learning experiences can be challenging. Promoting these experiences can be particularly difficult with graduate students enrolled in Extension‐related degree programs at a distance. Recent studies have found that employers desire new hires with Master’s degrees to have skills in educational program development and evaluation. In an effort to provide evaluation resources to statewide Extension programs, enhance the relevance of program evaluation skills for graduate students, and address the above‐listed challenges, twenty‐four Master’s level graduate students participating in a distance‐technology delivered (synchronous) program evaluation course served as evaluation consultants during the last four weeks of an eleven week long semester. In this presentation, participants will: (1) identify the similarities between program evaluation and photography via an interactive demonstration and video‐clip, (2) acquire step‐by‐step recommendations for planning, implementing, and evaluating a service‐learning component where students serve as information consultants, and (3) become aware of the impact of this consulting project on graduate students and their participating natural resource organization/program through success stories. During the weeks prior to their consulting, students were trained in participatory evaluation principles, including continuous stakeholder involvement while planning an evaluation, gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data, and sharing evaluation findings with stakeholders using practical and “fun” methods. Working in teams of three (based on programming interests and location of residence), students were assigned a local natural resource Extension program or environmental organization to assist. Extension programs included the Georgia Master Gardener, Master Naturalist, and Master Equine Programs. Environmental organizations included a local nature center, a 4‐H center, and the Georgia Sea Turtle Center. These programs and organizations had previously contacted the instructor and were excited to allow trained graduate students to provide evaluation leadership. Students were required to keep a consultant’s accountability journal, provide their clients/stakeholders with self‐developed helpful evaluation handouts (based on organizational needs), create an evaluation plan for their program/organization, and present their recommendations to clients in an evening clientele reception. Preliminary findings from the student consulting project indicated a higher level of competency in program evaluation stemming primarily from the need to teach others and a more positive attitude toward program evaluation as a discipline

Urban High Schoolers as Citizen Scientists: A Collaborative Partnership with University Natural Resource Educators

The EscapE (Environmental stewardship and career awareness program for Education) Program created a partnership between urban high school “citizen scientists,” their teachers, and university professors in the collection, interpretation, and sharing of data at a national wildlife refuge. The goal of the program was to increase student interest in natural resource careers by providing opportunities to work with natural resource professionals to collect and analyze data needed by the refuge. University undergraduate forestry programs are at risk because of dwindling student enrollment numbers and limited student diversity. By allowing high school students to partner with natural resource professionals and university professors, high schoolers would know more about opportunities in the environmental sciences and have a point of contact for questions and advice. Students collected data on soils, tree rings, and vegetative species composition during visits to the refuge and entered this information on an interactive website where the scientists and other students could help interpret the data. To assess interest in science‐related careers and life skill development, students completed an online questionnaire immediately after their data collection experience and then four weeks later. Students also participated in an online chat with university professors following data collection at the refuge. During the online chat, professors helped students reflect on the data collection experience by engaging the students in a discussion about the data they reported on the website and how their findings could help refuge personnel make natural resource management decisions. Preliminary results of the online questionnaire indicated that the experience helped build students’ problem solving, team work, and communication skills. In addition, students indicated knowing more about career opportunities in the sciences and felt more comfortable interacting with natural resource professionals because of the EscapE Program

Coronal Heating as Determined by the Solar Flare Frequency Distribution Obtained by Aggregating Case Studies

Flare frequency distributions represent a key approach to addressing one of the largest problems in solar and stellar physics: determining the mechanism that counter-intuitively heats coronae to temperatures that are orders of magnitude hotter than the corresponding photospheres. It is widely accepted that the magnetic field is responsible for the heating, but there are two competing mechanisms that could explain it: nanoflares or Alfv\'en waves. To date, neither can be directly observed. Nanoflares are, by definition, extremely small, but their aggregate energy release could represent a substantial heating mechanism, presuming they are sufficiently abundant. One way to test this presumption is via the flare frequency distribution, which describes how often flares of various energies occur. If the slope of the power law fitting the flare frequency distribution is above a critical threshold, $\alpha=2$ as established in prior literature, then there should be a sufficient abundance of nanoflares to explain coronal heating. We performed $>$600 case studies of solar flares, made possible by an unprecedented number of data analysts via three semesters of an undergraduate physics laboratory course. This allowed us to include two crucial, but nontrivial, analysis methods: pre-flare baseline subtraction and computation of the flare energy, which requires determining flare start and stop times. We aggregated the results of these analyses into a statistical study to determine that $\alpha = 1.63 \pm 0.03$. This is below the critical threshold, suggesting that Alfv\'en waves are an important driver of coronal heating.Comment: 1,002 authors, 14 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, published by The Astrophysical Journal on 2023-05-09, volume 948, page 7