Faculty and students at MSU and their five partner schools are reinventing their approach to issues of material poverty and rural development. The USDA-CSREES Higher Education Challenge Grant Program has awarded to MSU a three-year funds released December 2007), $462,000 grant, entitled “New Paradigm for Discovery-Based Learning: Implementing Bottom-up Development by Listening to Farmers’ Needs and Using Participatory, Holistic Processes.” The P.I. for this grant is Dr. Florence V. Dunkel. Partner schools are Virginia Tech, University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, MN), University of California-Davis, University of California-Riverside, and Chief Dull Knife College (Lame Deer, MT)

In response to the award announced September 2007, a new set of courses was initiated at MSU. Dunkel is the lead instructor in PSPP 480-01 Health, Agriculture, Poverty: Concepts and PSPP 480-02 Health, Agriculture, Poverty: Action Research. Other faculty involved are: Dr. Dean Drenk, adjunct professor of finance, MSU College of Business; Dr. Cliff Montagne, professor of soils, MSU Department of Land Resources, and Environmental Sciences; and Dr. Ada Giusti, professor of French, MSU Modern Languages and Literature. Students enrolled are majoring in Industrial Engineering, French / Business, Plant Sciences, Chemistry, Premed, and Biomedical Sciences. This series is being coordinated with courses on poverty offered and planned to be offered at MSU-Bozeman in Liberal Studies and in the Honors Program.

Students and faculty are practicing the art of listening-to-and-not-leading farmers, putting subsistence farmers in the “driver’s seat” and valuing traditional wisdom. Some students and faculty involved with these new courses will travel to Mali to test skills they are developing. In Mali, students and faculty will use these participatory, holistic skills together with the seven Malian members (six of whom were trained in their respective fields at MSU) of the Mali Agribusiness Network in the villages that are the foci of the Network. PSPP faculty are always welcome in class. Stop in. We meet Thursdays 4-7 in 108 PBB.

The course syllabi are being adapted and used by University of California-Riverside (UC-R) in a joint offering by the Departments of Entomology and Economics. The UC-R course is planned to be offered in their honors program for the 2008-9 academic year. Other partners are planning related curricular changes. This and other aspects of the New Paradigm project, Mali Agribusness Network activities, and related grants are detailed on the Virtual Center for Rural Poverty Teaching / Learning website.