This 4-year project will cover 4 USDA AFRI Program Priority Areas, which are plant health and production, food nutrition and health, bioenergy/natural resources/environment, and agriculture economics. Also, the project will achieve the AFRI EWD program goal of “Developing Pathways” (i.e. supporting the development of non-formal education activities that cultivate interest and build public confidence in the safe and enhanced use of technology in food and agricultural sciences). The long-term goal of this project is to enrich experiential learning and develop regional workforce to address the challenges for the sustainability of agricultural system (e.g. crop health, grape quality, alternative irrigation water, wildfire, Valley fever, cow manure management, renewable energy demand, water-energy nexus) in the nation’s leading agriculture region, California’s Central Valley.

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California State University-Bakersfield (CSUB) as a Hispanic-serving institution has multiple academic and research programs in both STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and FANH (food, agriculture, natural resources and human sciences) with a dedicated commitment to promoting agricultural sustainable development in the agriculture-concentrated area of Southern California. As the host institution, CSUB will collaborate with nearby minority-serving community colleges, Bakersfield College (BC) and Taft College (TC), to recruit and train STEM and FANH program undergraduate students, women, underrepresented/economically disadvantaged minorities, veterans, and first-generation college students to guarantee diversity and equality (at least 50% of students from BC and TC).

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The SUPERSTAR project has 5 supporting objectives:

1) Enrich students’ knowledge and hands-on skills related to agricultural sustainability via experiential learning in multiple AFRI-program-priority-area-focused research projects at CSUB;

2) Develop sustainability-related service-learning internships at government agencies (USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, USDA-partnered University of California Cooperative Extension, Bureau of Land Management) and Valley business/community partners (e.g. California Bioenergy, Sun World International);

3) Improve sustainability-related education by updating curriculum materials for lectures and teaching laboratories;

4) Disseminate project information via website and community listservs and Present research achievements at symposia and student research conferences;

5) Enhance students’ enthusiasm for earning a STEM/FANH degree and pursuing a graduate study.