About

The overarching goal of the National Center for Agricultural Literacy is to change how the world thinks about agricultural systems related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), their quality of life, and our environment. The National Center for Agricultural Literacy (NCAL) is a collaborative effort supported by the USDA - National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the National Agriculture in the Classroom Organization, and Utah State University.

Scope of Work

1. Develop or modify existing K-12 curricular resources and focus on secondary STEM within the context of agriculture for inclusion in the National Agricultural Literacy Curriculum Matrix.
2. Develop evaluation instrumentation that can be used to assess the success of agricultural literacy curricula and programming to meet identified outcomes. (See the AITC Program Evaluation Wiki, the curated Zotero database of influential research, and the Research & Instruments for Measuring Agricultural Literacy.)
3. Provide professional development for strengthening collaboration between agricultural literacy programs, stakeholders, and the public.

Team

The NCAL Team Leader is Dr. Michelle Burrows, Professor at Utah State University. Current members of the NCAL team include researchers from the USDA Agricultural Experiment Station Multistate Agricultural Literacy Research Committee, a team housed at Utah State University: research associate (Amelia Miller), two education specialists (Andrea Gardner and Lynn Wallin) focusing on instructional resource development, eLearning, and professional development, a web developer/graphic designer (Yasuko Grow), and a Resource Coordinator/eStore Manager (Alisha Hill). Additionally, USU graduate students are working on agricultural literacy related research.