Enhancing the Environmental Science Curriculum at Alabama A&M University through the Development of a Scenario Based Reusable Learning Object (RLO): Using Adaptation Measures to Mitigate the Effect of Climate Change on Food Security in Belize.

The Environmental Science program at Alabama A&M University (AAMU) has classes in Environmental Health Science, Environmental Toxicology and Environmental Biology all of which have modules on climate change. Class discussions are standard with short profiles on various local and global climate change related occurrences. Through a USDA program with the University of Florida, Texas A&M and the University of Tennessee, eighteen college professors from land-grant institutions were selected to provide training to change how undergraduates think in an attempt to turn students into "global thinkers" and how to be "internationally minded citizens" when learning about climate change, through a new curriculum called the Global Thinking Academy. The professors traveled to Belize to design the international field experience aspect of the Global Thinking Academy and to develop global scenario-based reusable learning objects (RLOs) focused on the impact of Climate Change on Global Hunger and Food Security. The goal was for professors to foster more positive attitudes about integrating global aspects into teaching. The RLO developed by AAMU and discussed here is entitled “Using Adaptation Measures to Mitigate the Effect of Climate Change on Food Security in Belize”. We will provide the students with future scenarios and have them create an adaptation plan with both reactive and anticipatory measures.