The majority (55%) of the world's population lives in urban environments today, and by 2050 the world's urban population is expected to be the same size as the world's total population in 2002

Food production is no longer the key issue to feeding the world; farmers produce enough food to feed 1.5X the world's population. However, the food and agriculture organization of the united nations (FAO) estimates that 14% of all food produced worldwide is lost between the farm and consumers.food preservation is obviously the key, and food fermentation is a time-tested and essential food preservation tool.unfortunately, in most developed countries (including the US), awareness of even the most basic applications of fermentation is almost nonexistent and home fermentation is considered an antiquated practice. Agricultural education must now, therefore, focus on ways of introducing students to this new science and attract the next generation of scientists who will address our common need to feed ourselves.fermentation science, an applied, stem-based degree, is focused on the science of fermentation. Fermentation is used to produce a broad range of familiar value-added agricultural products including bread, cheese, yogurt, pickles, and pepperoni, but IT is not well known that IT is also used to produce probiotics, certain pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals, and to treat wastewater. In short, humanity depends on fermentation for survival but is not aware of the fact. This research seeks to train stem teachers, particularly at tennessee's regional community colleges, to incorporate fermentation science-related topics into their existing classes, thereby exposing students to the new fermentation science degree program at middle tennessee state university, and the potential jobs available upon completion of IT.this proposal further seeks to utilize problem-based learning (PBL) as the primary tool for integrating fermentation science into existing stem curricula. The pedagogy of PBL has been extensively researched and the evidence is now clear that the use of PBL increases student comprehension of course content through the use of real-world problems or scenarios. By anchoring stem concepts to real-world applications, students gain an appreciation of both the scientific concepts and the application of those concepts to solving real-world problems.