HBCU-Berkeley Environmental Scholars visit KARE

Spelman College and Tuskegee University students visited Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center as part of their HBCU-Berkeley Environmental Scholars for Change experience.

While tasting avocados and blackberries at Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Parlier, undergraduate students from historically Black colleges and universities got a taste of California agriculture. Participants in the HBCU-Berkeley Environmental Scholars for Change program took a field trip to the San Joaquin Valley on June 13–14. This is the second year that the program has visited the valley.

Six Spelman College and Tuskegee University students and five Berkeley graduate students, postdocs and research staff visited three locations: Scott Family Farms in Fresno, KARE and Allensworth State Historic Park/Allensworth Progressive Association.

Georgia-based Spelman students Sophia Davis, Jada Joshua, Zahriah Sellers and Eslen Trumble and Alabama-based Tuskegee students Emmanuel Fakunle and Evan Fewell are visiting California this summer to participate in the HBCU-Berkeley Environmental Scholars for Change Program.

“As a social science major, it was really fascinating to get a look at the research process of the people working in the applied natural sciences,” Davis said. “For example, I enjoyed learning about pests on farms, the different environmental challenges farmers deal with, and how people working within Cooperative Extension are devoting time to improve lives and labor of Central Valley farmers."

At Scott Family Farms, Will Scott, legendary elder farmer and president of the African American Farmers of California, taught the visitors how to stake tomato plants to support easy harvest.

Will Scott, farmer and president of the African American Farmers of California, shows the students how to stake tomato plants.

“I really enjoyed my time at Kearney Ag Center and the experience of trying new fruits and learning about bug trapping and its importance to farmers,” said Sellers. “My experience there emphasized the importance of farmers' rights and their critical work reinforced the need to highlight and validate their efforts.”

At KARE, staff research associate Ryan Puckett led a tour of the facilities and introduced students to UC Cooperative Extension. Nathalie Baena-Bejarano and Reva Scheibner of the Houston Wilson Lab explained their research on tree nut pests, and had the students dissect navel orangeworm moths, or NOW.

Zahriah Sellers dissects a navel orangeworm moth in the Wilson lab at KARE.

“For our NOW dissections, we had the students looking for internal dye in the moths,” Scheibner said. “We rear some NOW on a red diet as a mark-recapture technique. So, we had the students dissect Moth A non-internal dyed and Moth B internally dyed and compare the two. The students were really into it and even asking for more moths to dissect and compare; it was very inspiring to see their excitement.”

UC Cooperative Extension specialist Mary Lu Arpaia described avocado breeding and sensory evaluation in Kearney's postharvest facility.

“It was inspiring to see so many scientists all working on agriculture, but doing unique and very interdisciplinary projects,” said Fakunle.

Jada Joshua tastes an avocado.

On the second day of the tour, the group visited Allensworth, a town founded by Black people in 1908. Allensworth was envisioned as the “Tuskegee of the West” to support Black agricultural and economic sovereignty. Members of the Allensworth Progressive Association introduced the town's long history of resilience in the face of ongoing racism by state policymakers and neighboring white farmers. The visitors toured the historic park and APA's demonstration regenerative agriculture community garden, and over lunch learned about the APA's many food, water and economic justice projects.

UC Berkeley Grizzly Fellow Shamik Chandrachood of the Allensworth Progressive Association explains composting experiments in the community demonstration garden.

Rosalie Z. Fanshel and Benji Reade Malagueño, program staff and Ph.D. candidates in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley, hosted the tour. Kristin Dobbin, assistant professor of Cooperative Extension and close collaborator with the APA, joined the group for the second day.

Since 2021, the HBCU-Berkeley Environmental Scholars for Change Program has brought students together with UC Berkeley faculty and their lab members who do research in a wide range of intersecting environmental fields, such as agri-food systems, biodiversity, climate and water, all with a throughline of justice. Spelman and Tuskegee faculty work with applicants and the Berkeley program co-directors, ESPM associate professor Tim Bowles and Fanshel, to match student interests with faculty research projects at Berkeley.

Over the two-month program, visiting scholars conduct research in one or more of these areas with ESPM graduate students, postdocs and research staff. For students interested in pursuing graduate studies, it also introduces them to the UC Berkeley community.

In addition to the research experience, the program develops a community of belonging through mentorship activities that foster relationships with Black faculty, staff and graduate students at Berkeley and connects participants with vibrant Black environmental and cultural spaces in the Bay Area and beyond.

The scholars also partake in interdisciplinary environmental science skill-building and graduate school preparedness workshops, and field trips, such as the recent one to the Central Valley, to garner exposure to a range of postgraduate environmental science career tracks in academia and community organizations.

These are the 2024 projects:

• Davis is working on drinking water access and environmental justice with Dobbin
• Fakunle is working on animal behavior ecology and diversity with Damian Elias, ESPM professor
• Fewell is working on grassland soil ecology and climate change with Laureano Gherardi, ESPM assistant professor
• Joshua is working on environmental impacts of farm-to-school programs with Bowles
• Sellers is working on water access and climate change with Meg Mills-Novoa, assistant professor in ESPM and the Energy & Resources Group and director of the Climate Futures Lab
• Trumble is working on dryland forest co-stewardship and adaptive management with Miranda Redmond, ESPM assistant professor

The first three years of the program were funded by Berkeley Food Institute, UC Berkeley Office of Graduate Diversity and Spelman College, supplemented by the UC Berkeley Lewis & Kala Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Fund (initiated by UC ANR's very own Vernard Lewis), the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation, crowdfunding, individual faculty labs, the UC Berkeley BigC fund, and other small entities. Bowles and Fanshel recently received a $414,210 UC-HBCU Initiative grant to fund the next three years of the program.

Read more