There are more high-paying jobs available in ethanol and biodiesel plants than applicants to fill them.
"How can young people know about all these science and technology jobs if they have never been in an ethanol plant and don't know what happens in there?" said Jane Hunt, director of education at the organization Education Projects. "The answer is to get the teachers into the plant and connect the industry directly to the classroom and what students are learning. They can experience for themselves the kind of high-tech, high-talent jobs available in these plants and bring that back to students."
That's exactly what Tharaldson Ethanol in Casselton, North Dakota, has done for the last two years during the Exploring Biotech and Biofuels workshops for high school science teachers. Minnesota Corn helps support the workshops as part of our mission to increase awareness about biofuels. Nourish the Future, a comprehensive national education effort, leads them.
In addition to Minnesota Corn, the North Dakota Corn Utilization Council, North Dakota Ag in the Classroom and the North Dakota Soybean Council also support the biotech and biofuels workshop.
Education Projects, the National Corn Growers Association and the United Soybean Board launched Nourish the Future in 2019. The initiative hopes to have every biology teacher in the country consider teaching science standards through the lens of agriculture.
Education Projects designed the biotech and biofuels teacher workshops, the most recent of which was held in June at North Dakota State University. Teachers learned about modern agriculture, the impact of biofuels and biotech on agriculture and more.
"We help teachers see themselves teaching units like 'making ethanol' or 'making biodiesel.' We give them the materials and the tools they need," Hunt said.
One of this year's participants was Sara Forness, STEM coordinator for Central Cass School District #17 in Casselton.
"A chemistry teacher at our school attended," Forness said. "She is pretty excited about doing the biofuels lesson in her class."
In a more advanced lesson, the teachers used corn starch and yeast in a bag to make ethanol. They then analyzed the gas it produced with breathalyzers to measure the alcohol content.
The teachers found these lessons to be fun and usable. In post-workshop surveys, all said they will teach at least two agriculture-based science lessons. Many plan to include more.
Forness found the curriculum well designed. Lessons can be scaled up or down to make them a perfect fit for the grade level of the classroom. In addition, media links to the lessons provide a variety of viewpoints.
"The ethanol-in-a-bag lesson would work for an upper-level class like AP chemistry," Forness said. "There are a lot of steps ... but, in the end, it is still a testable design. It's not just 'follow the cookbook and this is what you are going to get.' It compares methods to see which protocol gets the best results. Then, when you test the results, the student is asked, 'why did you get what you got, and could you have improved it?'"
This approach is the foundation of the engineering design process that STEM education emphasizes, Forness said. "The engineering design process means always striving to be more efficient, environmentally friendly and sustainable. I liked that there was an emphasis on that in every lesson that we did."
Every teacher attending the workshop reaches about 100 students per year, Hunt said. She added that their external evaluations show teachers will use the materials for an average of 7.5 years, meaning that these materials will reach over 20,000 students.
To learn more about how check-off dollars are connecting teachers and students to agriculture, go to Nourish the Future's website, nourishthefuture.org. Learn more about Minnesota Corn's support of agriculture education at mncorn.org/outreach.
Categories: Minnesota, Energy, North Dakota, Energy