Assistant Professor University of Georgia Athens, Georgia
School gardens provide unique opportunities to captivate future entomologists with the drama, intrigue, and thrilling complexity of even the most common insect food webs, while integrating lessons in basic biology that are crucial for meeting state STEM education standards. Through a new “Bug2School” initiative, we will curate collaborative research experiences for undergraduates in school gardens, and infuse garden-based education programs with human resources and technical expertise to connect STEM curriculum with real-world issues. By performing similar experiments, discussing background research, articulating hypotheses, processing logistical challenges, analyzing data, and synthesizing results together as a cohort, undergraduate researchers engaging in Bug2School programs will develop strong skills in experimental design and execution, while strengthening confidence to apply these skills as they develop projects of their own in the future. In summer 2022, and a small pilot group of undergraduate research interns executed identical small-scale experiments in raised garden beds across 14 school garden sites in Georgia and the Carolinas.
