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Week #9 Blog Prompt
Week #9 we explored cross-cultural competencies. How has this skill been useful in your internship and working with communities? How can we grow cross-cultural competencies to work effectively across cultures? Also, we would love to hear how your week is going!
Kaity Deaner
As I’m heading into my last week of the internship, I’ve reflected on several communities I interacted with through Extension. Cross-cultural competencies are essential to any career, especially one that works with the local community. In this internship, I found that it’s instrumental when working with populations I might not be familiar with. I’m able to connect with the community regardless of our backgrounds. In terms of growing cross-cultural competencies, I believe education and empathy are some of the most important factors to work effectively across cultures. Being able to learn about different perspectives and cultures can aid in the development of cross-cultural competencies. This week, I spent most of my time on the fairgrounds, helping April with all of the parts of the Cecil County Fair. On Monday, we hosted the Children’s Day at the fair. We have tables with different crafts for kids to do. Beverly and I managed the Family and Consumer Sciences table, where we...
Andrea Campos
🖤Andrea’s Adventures🖤 Start Date: July 27-31st I can’t believe this is my final week of the internship - this summer truly flew by, but I appreciate all the fun and educational tasks that I completed. I am so thankful to Mark, Kelly and Nathan- they are such cool people and I am so thankful to have been able to work with them. I learned so much from them and have so many valuable memories of all the crop scouting, office work and outreach education we did this summer! I really enjoyed going to community events and learning about what programs and projects are being done. In Montgomery county, I learned from my mentor Kelly about the close encounters program that they have in the fall. And I mentioned to her if they had any of the programs in other languages- and she said unfortunately not- so we started talking about how to translate some of the work into Spanish first- and hopefully more in the future. Here we were sifting through the soil cores from a Turf lawn. W...
Cambria Snyder
Wow, what another great week jam packed with opportunities and learning experiences! On Tuesday I was fortunate enough to spend the day working at WMREC. For the first half of my day I assisted Jeff Semler and Amanda Grev on taking fecal samples from their cattle and sheep herds. The samples were to test the feces for egg count to see how many parasites the animal had obtained on either annual or perennial pasture grasses. The aim of this research was to see which group of livestock were more resistant to parasites due to their diet. I was also able to work with some great additional UMD extension agents while working these animals. The second half of the day was by far the best! I was honored to work with Joe Fiola on his research. I was privileged to work with Joe on harvesting, weighing and evaluating peento peaches or more commonly known to consumers as donut peaches. This was my first experience with working with this variety and I was impressed. The peaches were very fleshy, ...
Ciera Gardner
Selfie of me during a break from mulching blackberries for 5 hours taken on 7/17 Learning about cross-cultural competencies has been useful even before I learned about it during this week's connection. I can use the knowledge I gained about cross-cultural competencies to reflect on the time I planned the Junior Ag Day event for the kids in the community in June, as well as the Somerset County Fair that occurred this past weekend. For both events, I served "dirt cups," which consisted of pudding, Oreos, gummy worms, M&Ms, and sprinkles representing the layers of the soil. The gummy worms contained gelatin, which is a pork product that certain religions restrict the consumption of. To make the dirt cups accessible for everyone, my mentor and I decided that I would ask the students if they wanted gummy worms, allowing them to follow their dietary restrictions. We can grow cross-cultural competencies to work effectively across cultures by holding workshops and seminars th...
Mikaela Seltzer
I have used what I learned about cross-cultural competencies throughout my internship to learn more about other cultures and work on my communication skills. I have not worked with any communities during my internship however, it has helped me think of ways to help broaden my understanding of other cultures and learn more about other cultures. A way to grow cross-cultural competencies is by hosting cultural events, encouraging respectful open conversation, and active listening. Ciera saw a brown colored praying mantis as we were cleaning the collards This week I harvested squash with my mentor Emily, we also did insect counts and sprayed. I also cleaned up the collards with a fellow intern. I worked on inputting the insect count data into the data sheet. I worked on some administrative things, such as my activity sheet and timecard. I worked on my final presentation throughout the week and a few other projects. I have truly enjoyed my internship. I have learned a lot about the things t...
Sam Denherder
The future of agriculture correlates very closely to the future of the world. Agriculture is what feeds the world, and the world needs to be fed to continue to run. I believe in the future, Agriculture will continue to grow, evolve, and expand. We started to notice our farmlands were degrading, and quickly came up with solutions like crop rotation, no till methods, and growing green to solve these issues. With the new sustainability and ecofriendly agriculture practices that are gaining popularity, I feel farming will become much more efficient and everlasting. I definitely know locally, these practices are very popular, and it is crucial the rest of the world has this same mindset. My major in college is Environmental Science, and Agriculture is very close to my heart. I see myself working very closely in both of these fields in the future, as I am trying to do right now. I want to help contribute to the ecofriendly practices farmers can implement while also being sufficient. Working ...
Nicholas Olson
These are four out of 12 high tunnels that the Strength 2 Love 2 Farm have. You can see the row homes around the area, so it is a nice community resource to have. This past week I got to visit a community garden and a home garden. Also, I got my first exposure to our Baltimore City 4H program. The community garden that we visited was the Strength 2 Love 2 Farm which is a really big and well-structured farm. Recently, they have had troubles with pests and a lack of help. The home garden that we went to was only the second one that I have seen. The guy that we interviewed is growing flowers for bouquets but has plans to get chickens and high tunnels with vegetables in it. He used to have high tunnels and chickens, but a dispute with the neighbors was something that got in the way of that. I never really thought about that as an obstacle for some people. We also had a 4H expo at our office where kids were invited for a presentation on th...