Undergraduate research within a multistate, transdisciplinary project: Integration with principal investigators and graduate students

The Resilience CAP (RCAP) project is a nation-wide sustainability and forage grant looking at the application of plant diversity, crop perenniality, and economic circularity in agroecosystems. RCAP collaborators from universities across the US are coming together to provide a unique opportunity for a particularly transdisciplinary project, including sociologists, economists, animal scientists, soil scientists, agronomists, entomologists, climate scientists, K-12 and university level education specialists, and more. Among the many objectives of the RCAP project, education and communication with students and youth is a crucial element. The Education Team is responsible for the development and incorporation of instructional content for K-12, undergraduate, and graduate level students. This includes educational courses, activities, and internships that will provide opportunities for students to assess the value of diverse, perennial, circular systems and their relationship to ecosystem services, soil health, resilience, stability, and social/economic prosperity. Here, we focus on the RCAP summer internship program, designed to provide opportunities for students to gain hands-on research experience, create and complete an independent project, and learn about research taking place across multiple disciplines of agroecological contexts. Interns will be based at one university, but will interact with students across the country through a bi-weekly virtual symposium, guided by graduate students, to learn and share about the research occurring across the country and present their finished projects at the conclusion of the summer. The goal of these internships is for students to learn from their peers, graduate students, principal investigators, and hands-on experience on how to become better scientists.