- Year 2024
- NSF Noyce Award # 1950129
- First Name Benjamin
- Last Name Davis
- Institution University of Arizona
- Role/Position Master Teaching Fellow
- Proposal Type Workshop
- Workshop Category Track 3: Master Teaching Fellowships
- Workshop Disciplines Audience STEM Education (general)
- Target Audience Noyce Master Teachers, Noyce Teaching Fellows, Undergraduate and/or Graduate Noyce Scholars
- Topics Lessons learned from developing/implementing a Track 1 project / Track 2 project / Track 3 project / or Track 4 Research project, STEM content and/or convergent skills development
- Additional Presenter(s)
Mark Ortega and Tim Malan
Goals
Participants will engage in experiential learning activities with agrivoltaics kits.Participants will explore the process of curriculum development while using agrivoltaic kits in the classroom.Participants will listen to teacher and student stories of their experiences with agrivoltaics.
Evidence
Pre and post student assessment illustrate how agrivoltaics kits increase engagement and appreciation of STEM across diverse groups of learners.
Proposal
In this workshop three Borderlands Master Teacher Fellows will highlight their work designing and disseminating agrivoltaics classroom kits for STEM teachers of Southern Arizona to incorporate field-based curriculum. Student and teacher testimonies will be featured as well as agrivoltaics experiential learning that has been developed. Students’ experiential learning with agrivoltaics kits provides a rich opportunity for teaching across the curriculum and for tapping into diverse funds of knowledge. Agrivoltaics (agriculture + photovoltaics) is an approach to simultaneously tackling food, energy, water, and environmental justice challenges. In the semi-arid environment of southern Arizona, co-located food and photovoltaic energy systems can produce a unit of food with less water, protect food plants from the extremes of hot and cold throughout the year, improve the efficiency of solar panel electricity production, and provide shade for staff (and for educators and students!) working on the landscape. An agrivoltaics system is scalable as a teaching tool and can be tailored to place-based curriculum and aligned with other developed frameworks such as the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals that provide additional access points to STEM concepts for diverse students. Other disciplines are readily integrated – as are the perspectives and lived experiences found across the spectrum of educators and students that Noyce Fellows engage with in Sin Fronteras monthly sessions.
