Revisiting Graduate Student Training to Address Agricultural and Environmental Societal Challenges

Abstract

Core Ideas Society is faced with daunting environmental and agricultural challenges. There is a pressing need for multidisciplinary teams of collaborative scientists. Novel graduate educational models may be needed to train students to address grand challenges. An example of illustrating the model through microbiome science of plants and soil is presented. Society and the higher education system are faced with daunting challenges associated with supplying food, energy, and water to a growing population while maintaining environmental quality and preserving natural resources. Too often, the higher education system does not facilitate collaborative immersion required to foster concerted multidisciplinary efforts needed to address societal grand challenges. In this commentary, we present an innovative model of cohort education, which equips graduate students with core skills and enables collaborative dissertation research among students. In addition, we provide an example of a program aimed at understanding the plant–soil microbiome, a critical research area that may yield significant advances in plant health and productivity.

Bringing soil chemistry to environmental health science to tackle soil contaminants

“…A key emphasis moving forward must be on the education of students to be future leaders at institutions and universities, emerged in team science and trained to attack real work problems. Soil chemists must look for interdisciplinary models (Duckworth et al, 2017) that allow them to train students with multidisciplinary perspective while maintaining their unique disciplinary identity. This may include also include encouraging attendance at conferences from allied disciplines (e.g., American Chemical Society or Society of Toxicology and Environmental Chemistry) or conferences that bring scientists together with stakeholders and members of affected communities so that students may internalize the real-world impact of their work (e.g., National PFAS Conference).…”

Insights into the soil microbiome and prospects for its manipulation for improved pasture resilience

“…If desired plant traits (e.g., drought tolerance) can be provided or enhanced by using a microbial partner, early collaboration would likely lead to greater success and save limited research resources. Broader multidisciplinary research is needed to fully understand the potential effect of new pasture cultivars/microbiome associations within the wider ecosystem (e.g., Duckworth et al 2017;Ochoa-Hueso 2017). Equally, as with any technological changes, questions around the unintended impacts will also need to be answered; for example, "what are the potential effects on other beneficial microbes in soil and plant?…”

Growing hearts and minds: Linking landscapes and lifescapes in a soils field course

“…We live in an era seemingly “on fire” with increasing polarization through instantaneous streams of tailored information and myriad global environmental, social, and political crises. Innovative higher educational strategies are needed to prepare the next generation of professionals to deal with multi‐dimensional complexity, long‐term systems impacts, and an accelerating flow of data from competing sources (Basche et al., 2014; Duckworth, Andrews, Cubeta, Grunden, & Ojiambo, 2017; Francis et al., 2011). This is particularly pertinent for the discipline of soil science because soils are an integral component of land management and conservation efforts (Bouma & McBratney, 2013) and lie at the center of the global grand challenges of climate change, human health, water quality, and food security.…”