Teach Grand Challenges: The Urban Heat Island Effect

Grand challenge in this episode: The Urban Heat Island Effect

About the Challenge

The purpose of this project is to leverage a preexisting online professional development resource and its large following of SBA educators to create a more effective model of professional development where teachers engage in immersive experiences in agriculture, capture those experiences via the formats already used by Owl Pellets, and share them with their peers to develop an ever-growing community of practice around grand agricultural challenges founds within teachers’ local communities and FANH careers. One of the primary goals of this project is to re-engage SBA educators in the challenges, technology, and work of their local agricultural community – making grand challenges local.

Visit the Teach Grand Challenges website.

About the Guest

Ashlee Gardner was born and raised in the great state of Texas, where she currently resides in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. She earned a Master of Science in Biology from the University of Texas at Arlington and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas at Tyler. 

She is a former high school agriculture science teacher with Dallas ISD, where her school focused on urban agriculture and environmental sustainability. She is now a healthy living research specialist with the Institute of Advancing Health through Agriculture at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research Center in Dallas.  

Her research interests include project-based learning and informal STEM learning. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling and trying new foods!