Community Engagement and Public Service Activities

Dr. Christopher Galik is a member of the organizing committee for the biennial Forestry and Agriculture Greenhouse Gas Modeling Forum. Co-sponsored by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the event brings together interdisciplinary scientists, policy-makers, and academics to update greenhouse gas modeling best practices. Over the course of several days, attendees participate in lectures, workshops, rountable discussions, and ongoing dialogue that foster opportunities to develop collaborative solutions to some of the largest challenges in contemporary modeling of forests, agriculture, energy, and policy.

Image by Flickr is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0.

The Science and Technology Enriching Lifelong Leadership in Tomorrow's Endeavors (SATELLITE) program is a STEM outreach and leadership development program led by students from NC State. The program introduces students from rural North Carolina high schools to science and technology related educational and career paths through a five-day overnight camp on NC State’s campus each May.  Participating students experience a wide array of demonstrations, lectures, and hands-on laboratory experiments with the assistance of professors and current NC State students. In addition, these students learn about various opportunities both in and out of the classroom that inspire them to maintain a broad, multidisciplinary outlook while developing into well-rounded, wholly educated individuals. The cost for the camp is funded through grants and scholarships making the out-of-pocket cost for students minimal.

Fork to Farmer is a state-level initiative that celebrates small farmers through the production of short films. These films highlight the work of the small farmers and provide a marketing tool which helps increase farm sales and tourism. Fork to Farmer collaborates with local tourism offices, local food providers and restaurants, and NC Extension partners to produce the videos. Many celebrated chefs are also involved to promote farm experiences and local products. Fork to Farmer offers training programs for small farmers and builds marketing coalitions to elevate their sales.

The Fork to Farmer initiative in Nash County highlights the work of local farmers who provide hands-on experiences for visitors. The initiative also promotes restaurants, such as Koi Pond Brewing Company, that source ingredients locally. The Fork to Farmer website provides information on where to buy farm products at local farmers and artisans markets.

Fruit and Vegetable Image, August 14 2019, Copyright NC State/Marc Hall

The North Carolina Defense Manufacturing Community Support Program (NC DMCSP) is a best-in-class innovation ecosystem for the research, development, and production of smart textiles and wearable devices that support warfighter health and performance. Project activities are designed to significantly expand the collective capacity and capabilities of the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) in North Carolina. 

NC DMCSP brings 20 leading organizations and their respective partners into a unified consortium that strengthens textile manufacturing systems to benefit NC and the nation through innovation, synergistic research and development, military installation/testing, and workforce education for transitioning and active duty military personnel. Cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, microelectronics, biotechnology, and additive manufacturing play an important role in this ecosystem. The initial region of focus for the NC DMCSP program includes Catawba, Cleveland, Gaston, Iredell, Montgomery, and Rowan counties.

NC State University Industry Expansion Solutions (IES) serves as the project lead for the NC DMCSP ecosystem.

Through this ongoing partnership between Engineering Place and the Marbles Kids Museum, NC State’s Engineering Ambassadors introduce young learners to engineering problem-solving. Gadgets and Gizmos offer hands-on, open-ended activities that encourage kids from pre-K through 3rd grade to develop their Engineering Habits of Mind thinking. These young learners and NC State Engineering Ambassadors, work together to solve fun activities, along with building cultures of inclusion that will contribute to a strong pool of future engineers. 

In March 2022, the workshop “Celebrating Women Engineers” focused on the many contributions women have made to engineering, science and society. Ambassadors introduced students to women who have made engineering advancements that enhanced life and well-being for us all.

Fermentology is about the culture, history, and science of fermented foods. The chapters in this open digital collection include the NC State Department of Applied Ecology’s public mini-seminars along with essays and transcripts of the talks that thread in media, interactive elements, and links to other resources. The goal is to extend and enrich the lectures, inviting interested members of the public to engage with the ideas presented.

This project was a collaboration between the NC State Department of Applied Ecology’s Public Science Lab and the NC State University Libraries.

Image by Pixabay is licensed under CC Copyright Only Dedication. 

The Center for Environmental Farming Systems' (CEFS) Farm to Early Care and Education (ECE) Collaborative is a professional development hub that works to connect early childcare systems with local food resources. An instructional series of presentations, the Virtual Learning Burst Series, is one of the many ways that they provide resources for early childcare centers. The Virtual Learning Burst Series aims to promote skill sharing across communities, increase access to healthy and local food, and create a culture of health and wellness. These workshops are offered free-of-charge to all Collaborative members and also to early child care educators and directors across six North Carolina counties.

In August, the Farm to ECE Collaborative is hosting virtual educational workshops on cooking for early childcare professionals and other community partners. Michelle Estrada from the Wayne County Cooperative Extension Office covers topics including awareness of food and cooking cultural differences, the benefits of using foods and cooking activities in early childcare settings, and how cooking and food activites can help children learn STEM skills.

Image courtesy of the Farm to ECE Collaborative, NC State University, 2022.

Advanced workshops in Design Thinking, Design Office Hours, and Focused Discovery Activities introducing participants to design thinking through varied design experiences. The topics selected with the LAS leadership to support the labs needs while examples are put forward by LAS researchers and staff to create engaging, relevant and active learning. Through these experiences during which participants are exposed to varied approaches to problem identification and problem-solving from a design perspective, LAS projects are moved forward – leveraging the design team’s expertise.

Wicked Problems, Wolfpack Solutions is a multidisciplinary experience created for all incoming first-year and transfer students and their families. Each year, this course focuses on a current "wicked problem," defined as a highly complex problem that can only be addressed through collaborative, multidisciplinary efforts. The free course explores possible solutions through the perspectives of NC State scholars representing many different areas of study and reflects NC State's commitment to the inclusion of individuals and ideas from a broad diversity of backgrounds and experiences. The videos and podcasts from this course are openly accessible to educators, prospective students and their families, alumni, and the general public as an educational resource and showcase of NC State work.

In 2022, the focus of Wicked Problems, Wolfpack Solutions is the Future of Food. In this course, presenters consider food production, equitable food distribution, ethical food decision making, and how food will be produced in the future. This course covers many topics including the history of food, its cultural contexts, sustainability, and more. Students learn directly from NC State faculty who contribute to diverse solutions around the world and can earn two general education course credits for free by participating.

Image courtesy of NC State University, 2022.

Crowd the Tap is a public science program with the aim of ensuring safe drinking water in the United States through education and by empowering people to discover the quality of their tap water from the comfort of their homes. Participants follow directions on the Crowd the Tap website to discover the types of pipes delivering water to their taps and to add their homes to the national inventory of water pipe materials. This inventory helps to build a model which will prioritize areas for tap water testing and infrastructure replacement.

Mentored Open Research Experiences (MORE) is an online research experience for undergraduate students of any citizenship status from any college or university in any country. MORE provides opportunities for students who are systemically and negatively impacted by bias selection and who are often ineligible to apply for federally funded research programs. Students work with faculty mentors and graduate student mentors from NC State University to carry out research with a focus on equity and open science.  Participants receive stipend support, gain training in valuable data science skills, work to address important biological problems, and become part of a community of scholars spanning multiple institutions and nationalities. 

In Spring 2022, participants engaged in online workshops and asynchronous activities to learn basic bioinformatics and data science skills that they will then use to carry out research projects with mentors from NC State. All research results from the MORE program are published on an open science website that serves as an inclusive knowledge-sharing space.

Image Courtesy of NC State University and MORE, 2022.

Green social prescriptions, more commonly known as park or nature prescriptions, are prescriptions written by healthcare providers recommending nature-related activities to their patients. These activities can be specific, such as a 30-minute walk outdoors twice a week, or vague with a general recommendation to spend more time in nature. To understand the impact of green social prescriptions, researchers are collecting data via surveys and studying the difference that time in nature can have on physical and mental health.

Researchers begin by collecting data on the types of organizations that make green social prescriptions. Then approximately 1,000 individuals chosen at random in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia are surveyed on their understanding of and experience with green social prescriptions. Researchers also partnered with Kids in Parks to understand how spending time in nature improves the health of children and families.

"A female bicycles around Lake Raleigh on the greenway" by Marc Hall, NC State University 2020.

Graduate level students in the School of Social work complete year-long internships, totaling 672 hours of service to communities across North Carolina each year. Field placements allow students to practice social work skills under the guidance and supervision of NC State faculty, field supervisors, and experienced social workers. These experiences encourage students to develop, implement, and evaluate social interventions while preparing students to engage in culturally-responsive and equity-driven practices. The School of Social Work partners with hundreds of nonprofits, school districts, health centers, state agencies, community organizations, and more to provide students with high-quality, applied learning opportunities. 

In the academic year 2021-2022, students in NC State’s Master of Social Work (MSW) worked with the Carolina Treatment Center of Fayetteville. Fayetteville's Comprehensive Treatment Center provides outpatient opioid addiction treatment to adults in the Fayetteville, North Carolina, area. The center serves adults age 18 and older of all genders who are struggling with an addiction to heroin, fentanyl, prescription painkillers, or other opioids. NC State’s social work students co-facilitated group treatment sessions, managed intake and discharge, and managed treatment with supervision. 

In a cross-institutional project, scholars and artists collaborated to use Henry David Thoreau's preserved botanical samples of plants from the 1850s to demonstrate how the plants in the Walden Pond area are responding to climate change. This exhibition animates digitized specimens from the Harvard University Herbaria's collection of Thoreau's flowers in a data visualization that reflects the contemporary status of the same plants as they exist--or not--today in Walden. The exhibition invites visitors to experience an emotional connection to the profound loss of natural diversity caused by human-induced climate change, while also providing a joyful experience celebrating the beauty of plants and flowers.

Artwork by Leah Sobsey for “In Search of Thoreau’s Flowers: An Exploration of Change and Loss” exhibition, Harvard Museum of Natural History,  2022.

Starting in July 2021, Faithful Families Thriving Communities (a program of NC State Extension) held its second annual Virtual Walking Challenge with a focus on reconnection. This four-week free and publicly-available walking challenge encouraged participants to increase how much they walked from week to week, and to try out new ways to connect with themselves, with nature, with their community and with hope.

Participants were surveyed before and after the walking challenge, and the data showed that the walking challenge helped to decrease loneliness while increasing social connections, life satisfaction, and family connections. Participants also reported an improved feeling about their general health. This data will be used to inform other community programs related to health and well-being.

"Students walk by Turrlington Residence Hall during a fall day" by Marc Hall, NC State University, 2021.

Each spring semester, students in George Hess' NR 300 course complete a service-learning project with a community partner.  In the Spring of 2022, students partnered with Raleigh Parks, Recreation, & Cultural Resources on a number of measurements projects. Students worked in teams and in collaboration with Raleigh Parks to define the objective of their projects and the areas to be measured. Students collected and analyzed project data and displayed their results in graphic and tabular form, provided written and oral reports, and presented their findings to the class at the end of the semester.

Spring 2022 projects included:

• Bigleaf Magnolia at Lake Johnson Park: Nick Ginipro, Eben Preston, and Sarah Shteyh conducted a GIS analysis to identify locations in Lake Johnson park where a rare species of magnolia could be presently and grow in the future. View Presentation
• Ecological Scorecard for Management Priorities: Greylon Barwick, SarahGrace Bullock, Katie French, Kyla Marze, Claire Melvin, Rhiannon See, and Lauren Willhite used scorecards to assess the ecological condition of Maybrook Forest and Milburnie Park.  View Presentation
• Emerald Ash Borer Impact Assessment: Emery Lang, Emily Romiti, Eva DeSantis, Hunter Antel, Larry Hood, and Patsy McKee used ArcGis survey data to study the impact of the invasive Emerald Ash Borer on wetlands and forests. View Presentation
• Horseshoe Farm Nature Preserve: A Wetland Study: Lauren Slakter, Justin Jones, LaRon Locklear, Logan Brinkley, Chris Kuley, Henry Ritterpusch, and Drew Lange collected soil sample cores and mapped preliminary elevation measurements to inform wetland restoration decisions. View Presentation
• Invasive Plant Inventory and Distribution Comparison: Lydia Magyar, Alyanna Wilson, Alyssa Grecky, Koen McConnel, Shea Phillips, and Zuhad Gul inventoried invasive plants in Brookhaven Nature Park, Marsh Creek Park, and Laurel Hills Park and provided recommendations on where invasive control measures are most needed. View Presentation
• Longleaf Pine Management at Lake Johnson Park: Sam Blumenfeld, Michelle Mound, and Elizabeth Selves measured two designated burn areas to complete a burn form Raleigh Parks could use to conduct a pine restoration burn. View Presentation
• Wildlife Corridor and Monitoring of Raleigh Greenways: Nick Cattano, Lana Davenport, Kayla Gilligan, Tyson Jones, Jason Loher, Ashley Resendiz-Chavez, Suede Shupe, and Issac Smith used camera traps on the Walnut Creek Trail to provide data on what wildlife inhabit this area. View Presentation

"Walnut Creek Wetland Center", courtesy of George Hess, NC State University, 2019.

As a leading expert on wastewater treatment and environmental engineering, Dr. Joel Ducoste provides open lectures that advance public health and knowledge of more sustainable water and waste management practices. Dr. Ducoste provides specific information about managing fat, oil, and grease deposits that commonly exist in most households. His lectures inform the public on steps that every individual can take to protect wastewater treatment and to prevent sewer overflows, promoting greater science literacy while protecting natural and built environments. 

Throughout the 2021-2022 academic year, Dr. Ducoste partnered with nonprofits and municipalities and gave four lectures. Partner agencies promoted and hosted each event. His partners were: 

• Town of Cary
• City of Raleigh
• Wastewater and Environment Association of Texas (WEAT).

Image by Wikimedia Commons is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

In a monthly book club meeting, members of the Pluriversal Design Group of the Design Research Society meet to discuss literature and how it impacts their work as designers. Specifically, the book club promotes pluriversality, which is a decolonial movement of thought that provides counternarratives to traditional ways of thinking that reinforce colonial structures and ideas.

Each semester, the co-chairs of the Pluriversal Design Special Interest Group, Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel from NC State University and Dr. Renata Marques Leitão from Cornell University, choose a geographic area of focus for the literature. In the past the focus has moved from Latin America, to the Caribbean, to Africa, and to Asia. Before each meeting, Dr. Noel and Dr. Leitão select the book, often based on recommendations of other members of the group.  The co-chairs and other presenters guide the meeting's discussion by focusing on how the concept of pluriversality impacts designers and the way they work.

The Pluriversal Design Group aims to create intersectional dialogues and to bring diverse perspectives together, while also encouraging practitioners from outside of Europe and North America to write about their research and practice. The book club is one activity to encourage designers to read authors from underrepresented groups, such as people from outside of Europe and North America, women and people of color. The book club meetings are freely available to view on YouTube allowing the general public and other designers to participate asynchronously.

Image courtesy of Pluriversal Design SIG Book Club, YouTube, 2022.

The Center for Community and Family Engagement (CFACE) collaborates with, and receives funding from, North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to provide training and program implementation support for child welfare services workers and their partners toward improving services to families and communities around child safety issues. During the month of September 2022, the center hosted one of two annual training events it offers focused on providing information, skills, and practice opportunities to agency workers responsible for providing parenting skills, resources, family counseling services, youth focused programs, etc. to parents and children across the state.  

This training event titled, Connecting Families: Family Support in Practice, covered a six day period near the end of the month. Twenty-five workers were enrolled, representing 18 different agencies and over 11 counties from across the state.  Workers actively participated in training online using the Zoom platform, printed workbooks, homework, and self reflective exercises. 

There will be another offering of this training held in February 2023.

Envisioning Urban Futures was a symposium held Wednesday, October 18, 6-9pm. We can only plan for the future we want if we imagine that future in the first place. We asked scholars from across the disciplines to share their visions for better urban futures while considering such things as beauty, sustainability, livability, and community. Throughout these presentations a focus was placed on the recognition that the human story is embedded in the broader story of the living world, one part of a bigger whole.

The event featured a series of short, TED-style talks, as well as poster presentations by faculty, students, and staff. There was future-focused food and drink, music, and artistic interpretations of envisioned urban futures.

It was jointly organized and sponsored by NC State University’s Office of University Interdisciplinary Programs, NC State University’s Initiative for Community Growth and Development, the NC State University Libraries, and Arts NC State.