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College of ACES touches many aspects of everyone’s lives

While the Covid-19 pandemic and its restrictions curtailed our lives and activities for a year, the University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) continued to make an impact and plan for the future. Dr. Kim Kidwell, dean of the College of ACES, provided an update on the college’s initiatives during The Chicago Farmers’ May 3 virtual meeting.

“It is amazing to think of what we accomplished this year,” said Dr. Kidwell. “We strive to make the world a better place, and we help people live their best lives.”

She noted that the ACES’s curriculum is content rich, but also designed to make students “content ready” so they can hit the ground running upon graduation. Indeed, ACES graduates often navigate the learning curve more quickly than students from other institutions because of the abundance of immersion-based learning opportunities they experience during their academic careers, according to Dr. Kidwell.

“Our students have experience with industry, researchers and Extension personnel, which is a key to their learning. Additionally, ACES offers customized learning opportunities and builds a career path for the students that meets their needs and goals. We want them to be savvy about what they learned by applying it to real-life situations,” said Dr. Kidwell.

She said the university is emerging from the pandemic after 15 months, but during that time the community rallied to navigate the situation well. Dr. Kidwell said the university shifted to remote learning in March 2020. Many focused on aiding colleagues in navigating online teaching and supported them with mastering new techniques and teaching tools.

“We are now looking at what worked best in the online space over the last year, and we are implementing what best connects with people in powerful ways as we move forward,” said Dr. Kidwell.

Campus collaboration

During this period, interdisciplinary teams from across the campus came together to help reduce the spread of Covid-19 and develop the saliva test now used broadly to detect positive cases. The Integrated Bioprocessing Research Laboratory in ACES developed badly needed hand sanitizer for hospitals and campus, and Illinois Extension transitioned all of its services to online. Dr. Kidwell said an interdisciplinary team of researchers also developed a rapid ventilator for short-term ventilation needs when the life-saving equipment was in short supply.

“All of this happened in just the first few months of the pandemic,” she said.

Online learning was the safety-oriented focus in fall 2020 with more in-person offerings in spring 2021. Members of the ACES and campus community stayed connected through virtual welcome events, as well as celebrations and student success webinars. 

“We expect more typical in-person interaction with the opening of school in fall 2021 with 75-80 percent of courses campus-wide being offered 100% in-person or in-person with online components,” Dr. Kidwell shared.

She noted these accomplishments and others brought increased visibility to the campus and ACES.

From implicit to explicit

“We had infrastructure in place and ongoing research that allowed us to accomplish great things during a very difficult time. It became more obvious to people what ACES does and why it matters to everyday life,” said Dr. Kidwell. “For example, Illinois Extension was able to connect people with information on food availability in their area through their quickly launched Find Food IL map. This great service provided support to people all over the state.”

ACES also:

• Expanded access to Extension/4-H programming so people could participate online
• Embedded a counselor in the college who focused on students’ mental health
• Kept people safe for a more robust campus life in the fall

With an enrollment at ACES of 2,800 students last year, Dr. Kidwell said the college expects an increase in enrollment to 2,850 for the 2021-22 school year.

“Our enrollment has held, and we are grateful; there is a lot of interest in coming to the college,” she said. “ACES has one of the highest retention rates in the country at 92-93 percent, and our 75 percent rate for four-year graduates is again among the best in the country. Furthermore, our graduates make 22 percent more money than their peers over the duration of their careers. We have world-class researchers, award-winning instructors, and incredible students and staff. I am extremely proud of that.”

Student focused for the future

Dr. Kidwell said ACES strives to give students a 21^st century land grant university education, including a lot of engagement in the essential area of digital agriculture. For example, ACES’ Agricultural and Consumer Economics department has been the home of farmdoc for the past 20 years.

“farmdoc is the best example of digital extension programs in the country. It provides real-time information for growers on a daily basis to support their on-farm decision making,” she said.

Dr. Kidwell discussed Metropolitan Food and Environmental Systems, a new major that just “went live.” It is designed to bring people in urban areas into this area of study who don’t have an agricultural background. It is the first undergraduate program of its kind in the United States and focuses on all the components of the food system. “It covers analysis of every aspect from production through consumption,” said Dr. Kidwell. “Our intent is to break down the silos across disciplines. The major fosters decision-making across sectors, investigates food systems, and food resilience at regional, national and global levels. Food system resilience was an issue during the pandemic.”

Dr. Kidwell emphasized experiential learning is a cornerstone of the new major, as well as all ACES majors. The program’s graduates will drive innovation, as well as much-needed infrastructure and policy changes in food and agriculture.

A component of the major is supported through the Discovery Partners Institute in Chicago. A food systems institute this summer offers students food and agriculture immersion experiences through an internship with Griffith Foods, a food product development company in Alsip, Illinois. “The program is designed to help students build a bridge between what is happening in the classroom and the real world. Griffith Foods is our first partner in the initiative,” Dr. Kidwell said.

Up next at ACES

Back in Champaign-Urbana, Dr. Kidwell listed the many advantages of ACES corridor: great labs that provide ready access to high-tech and field research facilities, such as the 120 companies located in the University of Illinois Research Park. “This is where academia meets industry, and our students are able to work with these companies during their academic careers. It is our hope that campus discoveries transition to commercial reality through partnerships with companies in the Research Park,” she said.

Plans are under way to develop the next asset in the ACES corridor, the enhancement of the university’s arboretum. A master plan focuses on developing pathways and creating demonstration/teaching gardens, outdoor classrooms/gathering spaces, and hospitality facilities for events. The arboretum also will become the physical home of the University of Illinois Extension, which is now located in six different places on the campus, and for 4-H.

“Ideally, this would be a gathering place for people from across the state and nationally to come together to solve problems,” said Dr. Kidwell.

Research pushes forward

Dr. Kidwell related that research did not slow down during the pandemic. The new Center for Digital Agriculture, a collaboration between ACES and Grainger Engineering, bolsters the portfolio. The center involves interdisciplinary teams dedicated to feeding and supporting a growing global population. “It is a partnership with industry to solve real-world problems,” she said.

The center is based on four research themes that leverage the expertise of Grainger, ACES, and Illinois Extension. The themes include: automation; data analytics; crops and animals; and people in agriculture.

“It has been an absolute success and embraces two new majors that include computer science/crop science and computer science/animal science,” Dr. Kidwell explained.

Also in development is the AIFARMS Institute, which was funded by a $20 million grant from NIFA and NSF. The acronym stands for Artificial Intelligence for Future Agriculture Resilience, Management and Sustainability and brings together the University of Illinois, Tuskegee University, University of Chicago, Michigan State University, the USDA, Argonne, and the Danforth Plant Science Center. It is a four-acre farm site that features robots that can do such things as travel within a field to collect plant growth data or to identify weeds for site-directed spraying.

“The farm is a test bed to improve farm productivity, sustainability and profitability, as well as serving as an accelerator of opportunities in high-tech agriculture. A lot of research will come to life on this autonomous farm with so many talented people and institutions involved,” Dr. Kidwell said.

Can’t-miss projects

In place since 2012 is RIPE (Realized Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency), which received more than $83 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It is an international research project that is engineering crops to be more productive by improving the efficiency of photosynthesis. The aim of the project is to boost staple crops and produce more food.

Carbon also gets a big nod at ACES where they are developing commercial tools to measure farmland carbon credit. A $7.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy is funding the research. Under the leadership of Dr. Kaiyu Guan of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, this project integrates field work, satellite and airborne data and analyzes it with deep learning and super-computing to provide real-time estimates of carbon credit in individual fields across the United States. The goal is to incentivize farmers to adopt sustainable practices through carbon credits.

ACES also is involved in the Illinois Regenerative Agriculture (RA) Initiative, which was funded by Fresh Taste, a collaborative of Chicago-region foundations working to improve equity of access to good food. ACES and the Institute for Sustainability Energy and Environment (ISEE) on the Urbana-Champaign campus are partnering on this project to improve RA capacity at the university.

“There is a lot of farmer integration in this initiative that allows us to ground test sustainable practices in real-life scenarios,” said Dr. Kidwell. “This is another example of an effort in ACES that emphasizes the power of working with outside partners to find solutions to big problems facing agriculture.”

Written by the Chicago Farmers Editor Denise Faris