Okay, thanks Paula. Yeah, so I'm actually in our Fisher greenhouse laboratory classroom just to start off and I'll introduce myself. I'm Eric Irvin. I'm the chairperson of the Plant Soil Science Department. So I'm kind of like the high school principal. As a way to put it. My job is about 80% it ministration to run the department and work on curriculum and make sure that our faculty are doing great work. And then I also do teach one or two classes a year and I have my own research program. My specialty is actually turf grass physiology and landscape management. So we're in one of our classrooms where you would be taken plant science classes, sustainable food systems classes, even landscape architecture classes in here. But in terms of plant science, it's our broadest major and applies the principles of biology, chemistry, environmental and soil science to how we use and grow plants for food, fiber fuel, biopharmaceuticals, while protecting the environment and making a profit, or at least hopefully having a rewarding career. Not everybody goes into business for themselves. Often you might be working for a non-profit or a state or federal government agency coming out of plant sites. So in this fissure 10 to laboratory classroom, you'll have, you'll take classes in botany 12, which is the principles of plant growth and development as a basis for everything else you learned. Moving forward, you'll take Introduction to soil science because all plants, unless they're in hydroponics, will be growing in soil. So you need to learn all about that, all about plant physiology, how plants function and adjust to the environment in terms of drought stress, heat stress, cold stress, salt stress, stresses from diseases, from pathogens and so on and so forth. And you would take a plant pathology course in here. You would learn about if you were to, to specialize in landscape management side of horticulture and plant science. You would be taking her herbaceous and woody perennial plants in here. So you would see that we've got microscopes in here and so on and so forth. And we're gonna move now we're going to mix up our presentation between myself and Dr. Mang. And he's going to talk next. I'm going to put my mask on because we're going to be right next to each other with this selfie stick. So I'm sure you'll be able to still keep hearing me. Here we go. We're going to move. Two are what we call our head house, where we do a lot of plant propagation. And also they'll be labs that are taught out here. For example, you can see on the board here that they had a lab probably on Friday about how to measure soil and bone density or how compact the soil is. If the soil gets to compact, the roots can't penetrate in to the soil and adequately pick up water and nutrients and yield and help the plants will suffer. So we've got to learn how to measure both density. And, you know, if your soil is too compact, How do you fix this situation? So it could be whether most of the time it would be through tillage, where you have annual crops like corn and soy beans, things like that. But if you have a hernia landscape, your yard, your lawn, so on and so forth and compaction. Then you have to deal with it by core aeration, adding organic matter to help loosen the soil. So that's just one example of hands-on labs and we have here now I'm going to turn this over to Dr. mang to introduce himself and talk about the sustainable food systems program. Alright, thank you, Erik. Hello everyone. My name is Kim will willing among and I'm an assistant professor of control environment horticulture here at the Department of Planning Soil Sciences. Behind me is my brand new lab, does currently under development and slated to open in January 2021, is a hydroponic indoor farming laboratory. We state of the art LED lighting systems where we can control the light Fowler's wavelength, durations and intensities. So my research is to see how we can control different aspects of light, temperature, CO2 concentration, and humidity, and all these environmental factors on the yield and quality attributes. A hydroponic crops such as leaky greens, like lattice Mikhail, culinary herbs such as Baidu and micro greens. And these are high-value vegetables that can be grown sustainably in controlled environments, such as indoor vertical farms or greenhouses. And I also teach the introduction to hydroponics course this semester. There are a lot of hands-on components that will teach you how to design and build different types of hydroponic systems, no matter the scale. If you want to grow plants like chronically in commercial production, you can do that. Or if you wanted to production at your home, you can do that as well. So it's very flexible. And I think the importance of the sustainable food system major is more pronounced now than ever. Because if you remember, back in March, we had a broken supply chain with food and people were trying to stockpile food. And that's because we don't have enough local food production that can be supplied to people in need. And we're doing this with different types of systems that can supplement traditional yield production. So we can get food to people everywhere. No matter when. So now what I'm going to do is go into the lab and show you what it looks like now and describe what is going to be look like in the future. So right here on this side, I have some shelving units where our have wanted culture hydroponic systems. And the plants will be grown vertically on stack layers, endpoints layer. There will be LED lights like this one. So this LED lamp can be adjusted in terms of its spectral intensity and duration. So it can fine tune how plants grow and how it tastes our consumers. We can solve various aspects of theology to achieve the desired attributes. So we want now Krauss and on this side, our have weekend growth chambers. We can control temperature, light, humidity, and CO2 to further optimize find growth in policy. And everything will be grown in the indoor environments. And another goal of my research is to see how we can use our natural resources responsibly and efficiently. So we can do it in the most sustainable manner. And now I'm going to hand it back to Eric and walk through the greenhouse with you. Well, first we're going to walk through rote form of facility, which is another area of controlled environment where we will be doing many faculty, we will be doing research trials, often in conjunction with undergraduate students to get jobs in their lab, either for pay or for credit. So we have kind of noisy, but we have a lot. Yet gorilla cavers like this very control the aperture and the like and their relative humidity. Is there actually a trial icon? And anything with an undergraduate researcher with turf grass and a beneficial bacteria that takes up residence in the root zone, all of the routes and helps protect them. We think he's our hypothesis from Ruth diseases and helps them take up water and nutrients more efficiently. So that's one thing that you might get off with. Our next block, the growth chamber. You'll see. The point set is that are being Road or order comfort, love sails around Christmas and willing going to say a little bit about their light requirement. Yeah, so it's very important, while all of these 0s then, and it is a 40 plan, which means that your Lowery's, when they land on during a critical duration. Though we have to hit the land to deal with the plants to flower in the writes five by four business segments immersed by them. And I will talk a little bit more about what students do in our sustainable food systems better. There are a lot of obscurity. So getting involved not only in science, but also the business, community engagement and social justice. As fast as we have log versus. Hunger, all these different disciplines to expose you to various aspects of food production from start to finish. So you'll learn about not only science, but also the business aspects. You want to start your own business to grow. Polygraphs. Or a quarter of the communities is self-sufficient and grow their own building community gardens, for example. Though there are a lot of different hat. Hey, did you sue sustainable food systems major. And nowadays in big cities, we have the Pope Urban Farming loop, top three houses or indoor vertical barns. And that's the new big fan as well. Okay, now we're making the transition. We're out in our greenhouses are short daily. Greenhouse that houses a lot of our collection for the botany wanted to blast is this ***** over here. Our layouts, burns and things that were actually growing in the dinosaur age. To learn about evolution over time. Many of these layers, you could see these benches behind us are for our herbaceous perennials class. For all of their plants ID, quizzes. The fun to learn about hundreds of plants that we use in the landscape. Okay, sorry, that was a little bit loud. We're gonna keep walk in. And I'm going to mute myself for just a little bit while we walked outside and out to the u-d BG University Delaware botanic garden. Okay, now here we are and our landscape color trials. So every year we'll plant these annuals to evaluate how hardy they are in Delaware as climate once their plant and they get routed, we turn the water off and only the, the best survive. So this is actually a project for one of our landscape architecture students who had an internship with the university delaware Botanical Garden. And he helped plant and take all the data on this color trial this year. Behind me you can see part of the farm operation, a big tractor back there mowing the pasture. And maybe you can see the the dairy cows back there. That's where your ice cream comes from. Okay. We gotta move on real quick here and just show you a little bit more of the botanic gardens mass theory. That's one thing you'll see is our lipid doctorate trail or butterfly trail, where we grow all sorts of plants with signs on them for you to walk around and learn about which butterflies and moths they attract. So that's a little bit of a combination of our department with entomology or the study of insects are moving over here. Two are perennial herbaceous plant garden. Another place where you'll learn how to identify plants. One thing you may see is this gazebo near the entrance. And that was part of a class project to landscape construction class. And they actually built this structure. So our students are getting that type of hands-on construction experience also. Finally, we'll move over to basically the nursery production facility of the botanic garden. And just show you some of that where the botanic garden staff and the students that they hire to help them, along with volunteers, grow many Perennial woody plants and her fascist perennials for your landscape. So for example, here we have a mole nursery house full of plants for our fall plant sale to help raise money for our botanic garden. And to allow you as the consumer in our community to buy rare plants that you can't find it. Other landscape nursery operations will say you can see even more out here. Getting out, went Your eyes getting Hardy to make it through the winter. So with that, we're going to walk for quite awhile over to our UD fresh to you, sony production areas and all that's going to show you some videos while we do that. Land science in a really wonderful major because it's not just plant science. There are so many different facets to it, lots of hands-on experiences, but in different ways, we're unique because we have these greenhouse facilities right outside of our classroom doors. They have a 350 acre research farm all around us, right here. You don't have to take a bus to like 20 minutes away to get to the farm. It's, our teaching facilities are right here. That whole combination really gives our students an advantage in terms of taking what? Learning in the classroom and immediately applying it outside or in the greenhouses. You can be out in the field on the farm here at UT, you can be in a lab. There are so many different lab opportunities. Having a lot of professors in that field who are just really passionate about plants, I get to sort of see myself in them and it helps us really connect. And when I'm learning from them, it makes me even more interested in what I'm warning. We have more professors and students and they are so willing to work with you and you get to know your professors and they like genuinely care about you. But I have never met a single professor here that doesn't care about your success. And this is a career where you can workout side. It's a combination. Working with plants and soil, but also all sorts of new technology for producing crops as efficiently as possible. Started sustainable food systems to give them an overview of the whole food system, from food production to packaging and transport, to community and individual hunger issues. I chose be sustainable food systems nature because of my interest in sustainability. And I really like essentially coming up with new ways to essentially solve problems that had been established in society. You really take an interest solving the hunger issue. And I have a strong passion for when I graduate with this major. I think there's a lot of different directions that one could take. I myself want to be involved in the production directly. But I think it's often possible to be involved in marketing, distribution, and getting the product to the consumer. Sustainable food systems as kind of like a golden intersection between all of my interests and values and worries and away. And everyday every one of us eat. I think it's a really important field of study to address and solve this problem. I think students should major in sustainable food system because of the passion that's around it, the opportunity it can bring you, and just the broadness of the field because you can really fall anywhere on the spectrum when it comes to food production, or you could deal with food science. Everything entails interdiscipline major. That's a really exciting time to be interested in this and the IUD because there's a lot of fresh energy involved in it because it's a new major. And we saw a really great faculty. So it's that thing, it'd be a great program. We really want to give them the basis, plant and soil production, agricultural economics, and then allow them to find their own direction. Over here. Or i tunnels, which are another form of greenhouse, but much more affordable and less ability to control the environment than our regular greenhouses. But they still allow us to extend the season and grow leafy greens and other type of crops almost all the way through the winter and early spring. And so in this high tunnel you see the dean teaches at freshmen class called sustainable and organic farming. And in this class he has the students all grow leafy greens. And that's what you see here. We've got kale and, uh, growing. They are all responsible for planting them properly and watering and fertilizing. And maybe you can see some student groups are having more success than others getting a good crop up. But this is another example of the facilities we have for real-life learning here at Udi will run over real quick. To one more. And show you where the student SAB, I believe some canning tomatoes getting ready to be picked and sold. To help us be economically sustainable in this program. And then there is some storage, some squash and gourds and other things. Okay, here, here's some of the cherry tomatoes we have in here. Not canning tomatoes, I got that wrong. But here they're storing their winter squashes while they wait to move these to market. We do sell to a few local restaurants and hopefully Udi Dining Services soon. So with that, we're going to transition away. I'll just show you one more picture of this is a three acre organic USDA certified organic vegetable production farm. And so there are outdoor fields here in production. And you can see those here. Can actually even see the Dairy Milk truck picking up the milk to make ice cream bar in the picture. So I'm going to turn off my video again. And we're going to make it over to Dr. Eric Barton begun to talk about the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture program. Okay. Very good. Thanks, Eric. Alright, I'm gonna throw it over to Eric and Eric Burdon Hagen, and he's going to review with you landscape architecture. I'll turn off my video and take it away, Eric. Okay. Good afternoon. My name again is Eric Burdon Hagen, Professor of Landscape Architecture. Here at Udi. We deal with and landscape architecture is something of a discovery major when we deal with, and the reason I say that is because people haven't heard of it. But, but every day we experience as we move throughout our communities in spaces where we live and work and play, experience what landscape architects have done, redesign outdoor spaces to create uses that are sustainable and healthy spaces for us. And so what better place for me to start today will go into our studio in just a minute or one of our studios. But what better place to start is, but in the towns and complex, in the courtyard just outside the building, just off of the UD BG, the 15 acres which has also then part of the 350 acres of the of the working farm because this is really an outdoor classroom and you saw Dr. Ervin and Dr. Mung. We're talking about all the spaces that are or active learning spaces. And we try to do exactly the same within landscape architecture. So behind me, we have a whole series of, of plants planting materials that are part of the UD BG or managed by the botanic garden. These are learning spaces where students in their herbaceousness and woody plant materials will go out and, and observe these plants, learned to identify them. And then for instance. We have the the the brick walls and that the paver areas and the walkways behind me, which are fairly indicative of the UT campus. But the campus itself is highly varied in all the bills, elements, the things that are constructed on site, at sites. And we use these spaces as active learning spaces. I had students out here just a couple of weeks ago in my hybrid class in construction, the construction studio, to learn how these walls are put together, how you construct them, how you draw them. So somebody will, will construct them per your design and what changes you can, you can make, and how the use of walls and walks and railings and things of that nature can help direct safe traffic flow. Okay, so I'll tell you a little bit more about the profession of landscape architecture, the major landscape architecture. In just a minute, I'm going to go into what we call studio 155 and I'll meet you back there. But in the meantime, Paul is going to show a two minute video on the major of landscape architecture. Landscape architecture as environmental problem solving. It is the life between the buildings and some time, something I'd like to describe it as landscape architects. We find that we know a little bit about a lot of things which is very unique in the program that we do so many different courses that does feel like they all mashed together somehow. You love to do art, but you also have an interest in the stem. I think landscape architecture is an amazing opportunity to find a middle ground between those two. And you do a little bit of engineering. And then you also get the art aspect where you get to do designs and drawings. There's really no box to contain landscape architecture because it is just such an interdisciplinary crap. And that's one of the reasons what drew me to it so much that I never wanted to be relegated to just a desk and a computer. There's, there's so much you can do with it and so many places you can go. This isn't just a major as a professional degree program. And when you graduate, you are going to be able to go out and get your license or registration so that you can practice landscape architecture, incorporating all these little things and together it really hones in on what you want to do is landscape architecture and helps you feel confident that you're gonna be able to gradually with understanding of what you do in a professional. Well, it's a small program. We know our students really well. We can help. Our students are very individual case-by-case basis, get where they need to be. These professors, they go out of their way to make sure that everybody has an internship opportunity. It's not, you're struggling to find one. We got a lot of students who find this as a discovery major. You may not graduate from high school knowing that you want to be a landscape architect. But then after taking some of our courses, it's like, wow, this is something that really can save the world, but also has to do with being outside and engaging with people. You'll be able to hear me now. I'm going to share my screen. We're going to go over a little overview of landscape architecture as a major here at UT. As was mentioned in the video, it's a professional degree program. Meaning when you come out of the program with a with a degree in landscape architecture or Bachelor of Landscape Architecture, you, you can become a licensed landscape architect. So landscape architecture itself is all about creating places for humans for us to live and play. It's about science, it's about art as while problem-solving. We're also addressing solutions to environmental issues and sustainability so related and a lot of ways to the sustainable food systems and plant science. Our students are learning a lot of the ways that, that we can make changes within the landscape that will, that will provide longevity for living spaces and an enjoyment of those spaces as well. Landscape Architecture is perfect for people who are interested in an environment, environmental issues, art and design and engineering. And so you heard in the video, you heard the terms of art and you also her craft and so on. Blending of, of, of creativity with also then the craft of being able to, to, to build or to communicate so others can build our particular designs. We work in the studio. I'm right here in studio 155. This is the studio where I teach construction courses. We teach some of our design courses as well. This is one of three studio spaces that we use to in Townsend Hall. And and here we have really hands-on elements for students to see what it is that they're designing and how do we work with stone or how do we work with good and, and brick and pavers and things like that, create just memorable and very useful, useful spaces. Sorry. K. So we're looking in landscape architecture at not only analysis of what we have in a landscape, but also what are our plans for the future? What are the needs of a community? What are the needs of a client? Then we're looking at design. We're looking at how are these space is going to be created so that they fit the needs of the users. And then finally, over time, how are we going to manage those spaces so that they, so that they are either self-sufficient or they are more sustainable. Over time. We do a lot of problem-solving in landscape architecture. We're taking difficult, challenging problems, environmental impacts. And we're thinking about things like expansion of communities and planning for pedestrian army will be automobile traffic. Looking at what the best use of particular sites are so that we can maximize the spaces and not simply grow for the sake of growing. So what do we do? What do we design? We design places where people live like communities and neighborhoods. That might be a new community or might be housing within an existing community. Places where people work like office parks and campuses. Much work on on things like the UT campus where you've seen Dr. Ervin showed you some of the materials and the structures that were developed by landscape architecture students. So we do work on campuses and places where people are working, as well as places like parks and plazas and resorts, and botanic gardens and arboretum. So those are quite a broad range. Most of landscape are, most landscape architects. We'll practice in the private realm or in private practice. And that means that your working either in a, a solely in a landscape architecture firm or you're working in an interdisciplinary firm that might have civil engineers and urban planners, landscape architects, botanists, ecologists, people like that. Again, to solve these complex problems, do the analysis of what's going on in the environment, what's needed for the users and the people that are going to be in those spaces. And then how can we, how can we solve the issues that are, that are at hand? So some of our courses, or at least the areas in which we have courses within the major itself. You're going to learn quite a bit about plants and ecosystems. We then have site design and engineering. Those are, those are kind of core elements to our our program, and we call those our design studios. There's planning and management of natural cultural systems and then areas like design thinking and sustainability and leadership. Are students take a couple of courses in leadership here at UT, there's a great leadership program, have great entrepreneurial program. And so our students need to take some of those forces. Because when they get out into future careers, they leave to be working for themselves or they've been helping to, to, to build firms that they will need those leadership skills. So when we start out in year one, we've talked with before your program. And we, we have two courses in graph of representation, trying to come to understand how to communicate graphically, because landscape architecture is a very graphic, graphically oriented program. And so we have a course in CAB, which is computer aided drafting, as well as a hand sketching course that, that helps our students to understand those communication skills. When we start to get into the second year. Then we have these Foundation studios and process studios where we talk about what does the process about? How do we, how do we initiate a design for a client or community? And then how do we bring that through all of the stages to ultimately give them the product that they're looking for. The studio foundations that's prior to that. And that looks at what is design and how do we, how do we explore space and form and shape and color and texture to create objects within the, within the landscape. When we, students get to year three, we're starting to get into some really complex systems. We have a resilient studio and then we have, excuse me, a regional studio. And then an urban studio or where in the urban studio students are taking on complex challenges. Say in the city of Wilmington. In terms of a recent project, was looking at highway overpasses and pedestrian uses of those spaces. And how do we create safe crossing of these spaces while still enabling traffic to move throughout the, throughout the city. Regional Studio is going to look at much broader reagents, say an entire coastline or an entire district of a of a state, a couple counties or so. And look at the larger planning issues for our design decisions and how we can, we can chart the future of these. These regions, just by putting together frameworks that allow communities to grow in a very safe and responsible way. And then the year for when you get into an advanced studio. And then when we finally, what you will do is as a landscape architecture students, is you will be in a what's called a capstone, where you take on a project for a semester. You have faculty advisors. And we work with you to take that project from the initial concept through its creation in terms of the design products. Typically these are not constructed, but it's, it's something that that you've worked through the entire design process. We do have an internship typically that's taken in the third year. For your official internship, you can always take internships and we encourage that in prior years. And we also have a Professional Advisory Board with practicing landscape architects that come in at least twice a semester and sit in on critiques and help students and provide some mentoring. And that's a tremendous opportunity to get in touch with, with professionals so that you can, you can hone your skills and have job prospects in the future. We do study abroad. I know that Paul up earlier mentioned that you deal with the very first in offering campus wide study abroad program that typically goes in the winter session to Brazil and studying the landscapes of Brazil and its, it's a tremendous program. Students always are very, very inspired, seeing a very different part of the world, different design styles and doing sketching and field work down in Brazil is, is a life-changing experience. So some of the careers that landscape architecture lead you to, of course, to be a licensed landscape architect. That is, because we're a professional degree program. You can also serve as say, an urban designer, urban and regional planning, environmental consultant, and some of these other careers that you see here or roles that you might play within an interdisciplinary design or planning firm. And all of the coursework that you, that you would take within the program prepares you for each of these different segments of the of the profession because it's a highly very profession, but it's still at its core, is all about creating spaces, analyzing what's going on in the landscape and the user's needs to create sustainable and workable and livable solutions. So it's a growing field in the range of 4% yearly growth. Typical entry-level is a bachelor's degree, and that's part of us being a professional program. So it's it's a very, very viable career to go directly from your bachelor's degree after four years, right into becoming a professional landscape architect. There's an exam, just as with an engineer or an architect, you have an exam after two years. That is how you get the path to licensure. And so I want to leave you with, these are just a couple of images here that you see from some work that our students were doing over the summer and little creek, just outside of Dover, Delaware, annulus saw some waterfront planning and design for sustainable, resilient community design. Because in light of climate change, in light of sea level rise and in light of expanding populations, the community is experiencing some growth. But they want to do that in a very smart way and they want to do it in a way that's going to be beneficial long-term for their community. So you see up in the top left and you see some of the, the working drawings, the initial, early sketches. This is done by hand. It's also done by computer and digitally. You see, am I in the next picture down and she's giving a presentation of some of the work. We see people like DJ down in the bottom left. He's doing some field work, getting students out to see what is going on in the landscape. He's vulnerable. Coastal regions. You see some initial design concepts that are, they're down in the bottom left. And then overall, when I'm on the right hand side, one of the, one of the graphics that was put together to communicate these design ideas to the community of little creek. So with that, I will turn it back over to Paul. I hope I've given you a little bit of an overview of what landscape architecture is at Udi. I'll be happy to answer questions later if you have those.

PLSC Oct 10, 2020 BG Day Academic Session

From Paula Annesi October 21, 2020

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Excerpt from Blue and Golden Saturday, October 10, 2020 from the academic session of the Plant and Soil Science department of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. The majors covered in this excerpt are: Plant Science, Sustainable Food Systems and Landscape Architecture.

Department Name: Department of Plant and Soil Sciences
Date Established: October 21, 2020
Appears In: Department of Plant and Soil Sciences

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