Professor Uses STEM to Help Solve Food Security in Mississippi

Holben is a member of the National Institutes of Health and USDA-funded FoodMASTER Initiative, a national collaboration of scientists who show teachers and students how to use food as a pathway to STEM learning. That program was recently announced as a White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Year of Open Science Recognition Challenge winner.

Members of each winning team were invited to the White House this month to celebrate their success.

"When you look at food security, there's great need in Mississippi, but nutrition-based STEM education was a solution that the kids came up with – they wanted to learn about food, science, and gardening to improve food security," Holben said. "The nice thing about the work our team does is that communities invite us to come in alongside them to help solve a problem – not for them, with them."

The National Institutes of Health recently awarded a $1.35 million Science Education Partnership Award to Holben, professor of nutrition and hospitality management, a Gillespie Distinguished Scholar and director of the Office of Food and Nutrition Security.

Holben will partner with Angela Rutherford in the university's Center for Excellence in Literacy Instruction and Sarah Mason in the Center for Research Evaluation. Their plan is to use the National Institutes of Health grant to create LEARNScience, a nutrition-based STEM education program that he hopes to make available to all Mississippi libraries.

Holben began working with Bruce community members in 2016 to help coordinate a farmers market. That partnership grew to include creating the SEEDSRead summer reading program at the Jesse Yancy Memorial Library, implementing FoodMASTER food-based education, creating a Chickasaw Nation three sisters garden and partnering with the Mississippi Library Commission.

"The First Nations Native Americans here in Mississippi had 'three sisters' gardens, and it's when all the vegetables work together," he said. "So, the corn grows, the beans grow up the corn, and then the pumpkins or squash grow and shade the roots.

"It's an example of how vegetables collaborate and how the kids could collaborate, too."

Janice Vaughn, the library's branch manager, said participation in the library's summer program has grown by more than 300% since Holben began collaborating on programs there.

"He's been a great inspiration, and he's enriched our program so much," Vaughn said. "The kids just love him. He would get right down on his knees to their level and talk to them and explain everything as simply as he could.

"If a child has good teaching, no matter what the age, if they have somebody who enjoys it and wants to tell you all about it, it makes them eager to learn."

Each of the summer programs – whether that be starting an aquaculture tank, visiting colonial times through growing heirloom vegetables, or harvesting honey from local beekeepers and cooking honey-glazed carrots – uses food as a pathway to learning.

"FoodMASTER has freely available materials, and so what we did was adapt those materials for our community in Mississippi," he said. "A lot of kids think – or they're told – that they're not a math person, or they're not a science person.

"But that's not true. So, what we want to do is capture and increase their interest early."

Along the way, the Ole Miss professor became a member of Bruce's community, collaborating with the Fine Arts Club of Bruce, speaking at the Rotary Club and including the community in each of the programs.

"If we're planting potatoes or seeing how popcorn looks before it's popped, he's there," said Becky Wright, former president of Bruce's Chamber of Commerce who has partnered with Holben on many projects. "It's always been important to him that he doesn't just bring everything in, but that we get community support and get people involved."

During the COVID-19 pandemic when students could not attend program in person, Holben packed backpacks for children that included food they could share with their family and science experiments, Wright said. The Fine Arts Club passed out the backpacks to parents across the city.

"It's been a good collaboration that's brought a lot of good to our county, and he's put a lot back into our community," she said. "And it hasn't just reached here. I have friends in other states who have asked, 'How can we bring this to our community?'

"But there's only one of him. We said, 'He's ours, and you can't have him.'"

Through LEARNScience, Holben hopes to take the work done in Bruce statewide. Similar to FoodMASTER's use of food-based education, LEARNScience will focus on nutrition-based learning.

Holben plans to grow his partnerships with the Mississippi Library Commission to make the materials his team creates for LEARNScience available to all libraries across the state.

"There's nothing more gratifying to me than seeing these students flourish," he said. "The greatest work that I will do will be done by my children and by my students."

This material is based on work supported by the National Institutes of Health grant no. 1R25GM154346-01. Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award no. R25GM154346. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Top: David Holben, UM professor of nutrition and hospitality management, attends a White House gathering for winners of the Office of Science and Technology Policy Year of Open Science Recognition Challenge. Submitted photo