WRI's USDA Hispanic Serving Institution -GRANT Overview

Links to Student's Internship Reports

Project Title: Preparing Underrepresented Students for USDA Natural Resource

Careers with Multi-Disciplinary Internships

(Select this graphic to see full poster)

The Primary Investigator is Dr. James Noblet (Chemistry), Faculty Chair of the Water Resources Institute working in collaboration with a Faculty Research Team consisting of WRI Faculty Council members from the Colleges of Natural Science and Social and Behavioral Sciences including Dr. Tony Metcalf (Conservation Biology), Dr. Joan Fryxell (Geology), Dr. Brett Stanley (Chemistry), Dr. Eric Melchiorre and additional faculty members including Dr. David Turner, (Computer Science), Dr. Sally McGill (Biology), Dr. Kim Williams (Botany) and Dr. Norman Meek (Geography). Susan Lien Longville, Director of the Water Resources Institute is the Project Administrator (slongvil@csusb.edu) and Lisa Pierce is the IT program manager.

Project Summary

·    Educational Need Area: (e) Student Experiential Learning

·    Primary Discipline: Watershed Management combined with Information Technology. Secondary Disciplines include Conservation and Renewable Natural Resources, Related Biological Sciences and Environmental Sciences/Management

·     USDA Strategic Goal: (f) to protect and enhance the Nation’s natural resource base and environment

·     HSI Priority Area: (1) strengthen institutional capacity… in order to respond to identified State, regional and national educational needs in the food and agricultural sciences.

The project objective is to prepare outstanding undergraduate and graduate students from underrepresented groups for careers in the USDA’s scientific and professional workforce that protects the natural resource base and environment. Students participate in paid supervised internships in Watershed Management that address real-world impacts resulting from the explosive growth, changing land use patterns and expanding urbanization in the Santa Ana watershed. The internships are individually designed to augment the each student’s field of study and provide an opportunity for the student to come in contact with the scientific and professional workforce. Students also receive IT and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) training to apply geospatial concepts to their watershed management internship. 

The project is sponsored by a local USDA agency, the Redlands Office of the Natural Resource Conservation Service in collaboration with other stakeholders in the Santa Ana Watershed of Southern California. With a current population of almost 5 million, the Santa Ana Watershed is projected to grow to 7 million by 2025 and almost 10 million by 2050. The growth pattern of this watershed mirrors an EPA analysis that shows 95% of all building permits in 22 metropolitan areas were for development on previously undisturbed lands. As urban sprawl continues to expand into forests, wetlands, agriculture, rangeland, floodplains, riparian zones and other natural areas, scientific knowledge about the impact of urbanization on water resources and other renewable natural resources needs to be readily accessible to the Nation’s natural resource agencies charged with the conservation of the natural resource base.