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Dr. Rachel Hestrin has been named a 2023-24 Advance Faculty Fellow by UMass ADVANCE, a research and programming organization seeking to promote gender and racial equity for faculty at UMass. Hestrin will represent Stockbridge as she works on this year's theme, “Equitable Faculty Evaluation Practices.” Stockbridge benefits from having several prominent women in science serving in our faculty, as well as an international cohort of top researchers from nine countries.
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Alex Ayarian and Robert Stark are current Horticultural Science majors with an interest in growing food. They teamed with Sustainable Food & Farming major Cameron Sullivan to create Supreme Microgreens, a portable business that grows and sells edible plants just past their seed stage. Microgreens, such as red cabbage, purple top turnip, Romaine lettuce, Red Russian kale, Rambo radish and purple kohlrabi, can contain more than 40 times the vitamins and minerals found in regular vegetables. Look for Supreme Microgreens at the next Friday Farmers Market on Goodell Lawn near the Old Chapel.
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Soil ecology professor Ashley Keiser and her student research team have discovered that the amount of carbon in the soil drives how microbes process nitrogen, which in turn determines soil fertility.
The research, recently published in Biogeochemistry Letters, additionally shows that the relationship between soil carbon and nitrogen holds true across 14 ecosystems, from the tundra to the subtropics.
Soil carbon determines whether mineralized nitrogen is available in the soil as ammonium, or further transformed into either nitrates—easily lost to runoff and a contributor to toxic algal blooms, or nitrous oxide—which is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the atmosphere.
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The most recent jobs report released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) anticipates that employer demand for college graduates with degrees and expertise in food, agriculture, renewable natural resources, and the environment (FARNRE) will exceed the number of available graduates.
Funded by a USDA grant, eight paid, full-time internships will be offered to UMass students each summer through 2026. The internships train students in technology-enhanced agricultural sciences, supporting and promoting sustainable food production systems.
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Nearly 100 guests and presenters rode in tractor-pulled wagons to 12 different research sites on the grounds of the UMass Crop and Animal Research and Education Farm in South Deerfield.
Current research at Stockbridge School of Agriculture focuses on themes such as sustainability, reduction of inputs like water and pesticide, improvement of crop yield and quality, and a deeper understanding of how microbiomes in soil affect growth factors in farming.
The showcased research projects were as varied as the participants, and represent the broad range of innovative topics pursued by researchers in the UMass community.
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This Fall, Stockbridge welcomes 72 new students to its hallowed halls and fertile fields. The Fall 2023 entering class is 38% larger than the Fall 2020 class recruited during the COVID-19 pandemic, and represents a full return to pre-pandemic enrollment levels. The national trend for college enrollments has been tracking downward for several years, posing a recruitment challenge for public and private colleges alike. So how is Stockbridge bucking the trend?
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Dr. Hannah Naughton, a soil biogeochemist, joins us this Fall as our newest professor at the Stockbridge School of Agriculture. Dr. Naughton’s research is focused on how topography and hydrology, coupled with plants, can control whether soils act as a greenhouse gas source, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, or as a greenhouse gas sink, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into forests, oceans, and soils. Her project improves our ability to predict microbial carbon processing, and to better extrapolate how such processing will affect both soil health and our climate.
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The Princeton Review's 2023 rankings for "Best Campus Food" have again placed UMass Amherst in the very top slot. It's the 7th year in a row that the largest collegiate dining program in the country has also been recognized as the best. UMass Dining emphasizes locally sourced foods while delivering healthy, sustainable, delicious, diverse, and authentic culinary experiences to help build community through food. Each year, UMass Dining buys a literal ton of produce from the UMass Student Farm, a sustainable organic vegetable farm enterprise run by students in the Sustainable Food & Farming major at the Stockbridge School of Agriculture.
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Stockbridge Professor Nazim Mamedov has been telling the international scientific community about the pharmacological properties of specific herbal plants native to Syria and Iran. His research, published in two chapters of the new anthology Biodiversity, Conservation and Sustainability in Asia, will refresh and advance the content of his courses on herbal medicine. In a small study using Syrian rue plant, 90% of participants reported improvement of their mild to moderate anxiety and depression symptoms. He also showed that the essential oils in thymus, the plant behind the popular spice thyme, have antibacterial, antimicrobial, and antioxidative properties.
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The Board of Trustees named Stockbridge Director and Professor Baoshan Xing as a Distinguished Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The title is awarded to faculty who provide outstanding research, teaching, and/or public service contributions that are widely recognized nationally, and/or internationally, and who demonstrate an extraordinary level of productivity and impact in his/her field of study that goes well beyond the existing high expectations for full professors on campus, for an extended time. Such faculty are pre-eminent in their field of study, and are often recognized by professional organizations for their outstanding contributions to the field.
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UMass Stockbridge School of Agriculture professor Jaime Piñero and graduate student Mateo Rull Garza officially started a Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources & Related Sciences (MANRRS) chapter at UMass. This national organization provides its members with career support, mentorship, and exclusive job opportunities. All students are welcome to join and minorities are especially encouraged.
UMass is the first and only university in New England to start a chapter, making Pinero and Rull Garza pioneers of MANRRS for New England.
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“I’ve been working in the permaculture garden for four full semesters,” says Jo Fuchs, a rising senior studying sustainable food and farming. “I love being there more than any other place on campus, and it has been the cornerstone of my UMass experience.”
Over half of the garden’s produce, which annually averages approximately 2,000 pounds, goes to UMass dining, and the rest can be found at the UMass Farmers’ Market and the Amherst Survival Center. All this on a half-acre plot of land next to Franklin Dining Commons.