2024

The residency tour was really interesting because even though I go to University of Maryland, I saw programs I had never even heard of before. The microbiology lab that we did, testing for E.coli in a stream was one of my favorite activities. I have always enjoyed biology and lab work coming from an environmental perspective, and I got to learn a new technique. I had only heard about E.coli from the outbreaks that were talked about on the news so I had always assumed it was very harmful. But I learned that most varieties cause little to no harm, it just signifies a presence of fecal matter. That said it was also unfortunate to see just how much E.coli was living in the water we were watching kids splash around in only minutes beforehand.  (Setting up agar plates with sediment from the stream we were testing.) Another part that I loved was when we went to the bug zoo. I had heard about that being on campus but this was the first time I ever got to see it. I have always been a bug lo...

  The Campus Residency and Research Tour was so much fun! I learned a lot about leadership and saw the UMD Campus. I also had the chance to meet with all the other interns and get to know them better. The first leadership workshop we did was Mousetraps with Myles Alexander. It was really fun and insightful because it showed me how in some situations the method of communication needs to change and the way you communicate. Another activity we did was writing down ten values that we felt were most important in a leader and then we had to crumble them up and throw them into the trash until we had three left. This activity was a little eye-opening because it kind of showed me what kind of values I have as a leader and what I want in a leader. This photo is from one of the leadership trainings. It is called Mousetraps.   Something that really inspired me was the second leadership training that we did with Antonio Silas. He told us about The different leadership styles and how...

Using the information gained and ideas shared in our weekly connection, tell us where in your internship you have had to use critical thinking to manage your internship, complete a task, develop a project or carry out research? How did you go about solving a problem or developing a strategy to complete this task, research or series of tasks? In what ways were you successful? What would you do differently in the future? Why?

Introducing the Aquaponic Greenhouse at UMD with Dr. Izursa I have used critical thinking in multiple instances working for University of Maryland Extension. Recently, one of the lab interns started a research project measuring nitrogen levels with different amounts of fish in aquaponic systems. In order for the experiment to take place, every aspect of system has to be washed and sanitized. This is a long task and takes a lot of teamwork and coordination. To efficiently be completed, tasks were divided among everyone that would be working in the lab that day. They were distributed based on experience, time allotted to work, etc., which made the process move a lot faster. Jewel, the lab intern, is able to start her experiment  sooner because of our critical thinking skills. One thing I would do differently is to ask more people to come to the lab to help with washing and sanitation. Another instance where I had to use critical thinking was during my literature review. I had to dete...

 Deep Creek apprentice garden. Here I am aiding Cindy, an apprentice, on the planning and planting of her plot.  Deep Creek apprentice garden. These garden plots are designed to teach and aid people in the growing of vegetable gardens. Each participant is assigned a plot and the extension office provides plants and various seeds.  This is a great educational opportunity for our community to learn and "grow" together! Throughout my time at extension the majority of my time has been devoted to service and serving our community and surrounding communities. There have been some occasions where there have been multiple opportunities to be of service so I really had to be precise in my time management. Sticking to a set schedule has helped me stay on task to get tasks done. It has also helped me plan an adequate amount of time for future similar tasks. Finding my pace has helped me set aside the right amount of time for certain activities. I have been able to use...

Me standing outside of the cut flower field at the AAUFRC with two buckets of flowers I had just harvested. Right after the picture, I took the flowers back to the office and made arrangements for whoever wanted to take flowers home. On the first day of my fourth week, a lot of big things were happening at the Urban Farming Research Clinic. On the farm we are growing four varieties of blackberries, and this week many berries were ripe and ready to pick. So, my mentor and I headed out to the farm to assist one of our Master Gardeners in picking the blackberries. Together with the Master Gardener, my mentor and I helped pick the remaining ripe blackberries on the bushes. After weighing the blackberries that we had picked, our first day we had collected a total of 19.2 pounds of berries! My mentor said that more berries will be ready to pick throughout the coming weeks.  A detail that I haven’t mentioned before in my blogs about the urban farm is that there is a hop yard. The yard is ...

Covington Point Middle Branch Park. These are the two main locations that we have conducted our interviews at so far. We started in the late afternoon and finished once the sun fully set, and yet people were still showing up to fish. In the fourth week of the Workforce and Development internship I began interviewing fishers in Baltimore as part of the Alternative Urban Food Provisioning Networks (AUFPN) project. The fisher interviews are a big part of our project, so it is important that we reach our quota of 50 interviews for this summer. Critical thinking is important when conducting interviews because you want it to feel natural for the participants. Considering it was our first few attempts at interviewing people it took me a bit of adjusting to the process. A lot of people go fishing to find solitude and don’t necessarily want to get interviewed, but their experiences are invaluable to us. Thus, a good elevator pitch was essential in convincing people to help us. Then, once you ...

Me and Luna at Plantation Park Heights, where I had my internship evaluation Hello! My days have been filled with fieldwork for my research project since my last blog post. We have been working in communities, and with a ton of outreach. But with this outreach definitely comes a set of challenges. We cannot control what people say to us, who wants to talk to us, or the type of information we can get. We have struggled a lot with the ideal amount of survey information we want and the realistic amount that people are both willing and have the time to give. One of our big assignments of the week was going out to fishing spots in Baltimore and interviewing as many fishers as we could. The three biggest issues we faced during these interviews were a language barrier, a lack of interest, and the heat. There was a large percentage of people at the site we visited that spoke little to no English, so we weren’t able to conduct the interview without a translator, which we didn’t have at the time...

Machines that we were shown was the combine which harvested the wheat  Mark, Kelly, Andrea and I went to the National wheat foundation tour at Eric spates farm located in Poolesville. While down there we were given a tour of the farm and materials and proper ways to store chemicals within storage areas one of the areas contained an inward dip so any fungicide or chemical spills would not leak out of the storage area causing damage to plants. Some other important steps included ventilation to avoid a buildup of fumes. The farmer also explained that when using any type of fungicide or chemical it's important to think about human and environmental safety. As learning about nitrogen and its importance to plants and how because soybeans are a legume type of plant, they are able to fix their own Nitrogen from the atmosphere through a symbiotic relationship with rhizobium bacteria.    That said wheat and corn does not have this capability so when planting soybeans before a corn ...

This picture is from when I went to a field in Sudlersville to rate how much and how big the Palmer Amaranth were to time out spraying. This shows the biggest Palmer plant in the trial field. Critical thinking during this internship is very important and comes in handy a lot more than I thought it would. The main time I have to use critical thinking is when we are preparing to spray certain fields with pesticides. We have to calculate how much of each chemical we are going to add, into which conta iner, with how much water, and with what other chemicals in order to get the correct GPA sprayed for each pesticide. I have had to use equations from multiple math classes that I thought I would never use again after the class. It feels good to finally use the material I had learned from all of these classes, it makes the time spent feel worth it. To make this process go faster in the future, I took a picture of the equations needed to more easily remember how to solve them. I feel like there...

Counting collards with my Mentor Emily.   Pi cking which collards to pick.     I have had to use critical thinking several times during my internship. I am working on a project for my mentors Shannon and Nicole. One of the projects I am working on is organizing a survey into an article with a few graphs to show the data that was collected. It was my first time using Google Sheets to make a graph, it was interesting to figure out how to make the graph the way it needed to be. I did have to ask a few questions about which data to use and what type of graph I should use to show the data the best. I also learned how to graph in Google Sheets as well. Another instance was when I was helping my mentor Emily count collard greens I had to use critical thinking to decide which ones had medium feeding damage and which ones had light feeding damage. By the time we got through the first couple of baskets, I knew what to do and how to sort them. I still asked her ones that I was ...

                            Image: Kaity holding a sign saying "WASH: After animal contact, before eating, after restroom use." These signs will be put up during the Cecil County Fair.                This week was mainly focused on my research project and preparing for the Cecil County Fair. I spent the earlier part of the week finishing my questionnaire and learning more about the IRB process. In the later part of the week, I spent a good amount of time making supplies for CCF. Image: Kaity holding a stack of coloring book pages. These will be used during the Children's Day at Cecil County Fair. As I go through the loops of developing a research project for this internship, I’ve had to utilize critical thinking in several aspects. One area where this skill was essential was in figuring out the topic for my research project. The challenge was to narrow d...

   Hello from Western Maryland! Recently, in the research project headed by Dr. Grev and Mr. Semler surrounding annual and perennial forages, it was time to move the livestock in their field and allow the summer annuals to grow. We moved the animals to a plot with lush pasture and had to divide this plot into three sections to manage how fast and efficiently the cows were able to move through the field.  This is an image of me setting up temporary fencing at WMREC for the animals to easily rotationally graze! The importance of dividing fields up like this, called rotational grazing, was stressed recently at the Equine Grazing School where the best management practices were repeatedly outlined and described. To keep healthy pastures, the forages need to rest and rejuvenate to the proper length to graze and should not be grazed lower than 4 inches, even more, if the forages are warm-season grasses.  This is a picture of my new grazing stick and my hand for size com...