At the local community level, especially in rural places, many infrastructure and natural resource production opportunities and challenges arise at the intersections of food, energy, and water systems

Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (Virginia Tech) received a $500,000 Project Grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program (CFDA 10.310), awarded September 1, 2025, with completion targeted for August 31, 2028. The award funds the design and delivery of a 12-month professional learning program titled "Storying the FEW Nexus" serving 60 rural teachers in Virginia. The program addresses the disconnect between classroom instruction and local community contexts by utilizing a Food-Energy-Water (FEW) nexus framework to help teachers integrate content related to agriculture, food systems, and natural resource management. Teachers will learn to connect required curricula to local industry knowledge, community challenges, and career opportunities through collaborative narratives developed with local agriculture and natural resource professionals.

The program employs a hybrid delivery model combining year-round virtual professional development with an intensive 5-day on-campus experience at Virginia Tech. The initiative recruits paired English and agriculture teacher teams from the same rural middle schools and connects them with local industry mentors to develop curricula that ground student learning in regional food, energy, and water system challenges. Through this integrated approach, participating teachers will design and implement locally relevant educational materials that enhance student engagement while simultaneously supporting rural community economic development in agriculture and natural resource sectors.

At the same time, learning opportunities for students in school are often disconnected from their lives and communities outside of school, leading to challenges with motivation and engagement that affect learning. Furthermore, teachers need support in identifying ways to bridge this GAP and connect their required content to local community knowledge, needs, and career opportunities. Simultaneously addressing these areas of concern is important for supporting rural communities and economies that rely on agriculture, food, and natural resource production. In this project, we will design and deliver a 12-month professional learning experience called storying the few nexus for 60 rural teachers in virginia. Storying the few nexus uses the food-energy-water (few) nexus – a framework for understanding the complex relationships between food, energy, and water systems – as the vehicle for supporting education that is grounded in local issues and resources related to agriculture, food, and natural resources. We will use the concept of storying to help teachers think not only about the few nexus in rural places, but also about the ways that these interactions have created narratives for rural families that can be used in the classroom to support learning. The design of the program uses a hybrid approach, capitalizing on the opportunity to support teachers and build community virtually throughout the year along with an intensive 5-day experience on campus at virginia tech. We will recruit english and agriculture teacher teams from the same rural middle schools and connect teacher teams with local agriculture, food, and natural resources professionals for mentoring about local industry challenges and career opportunities. Through the program, teachers will design and deliver locally-focused case studies for their students to engage with. These case studies and supporting educational resources will be available freely online as an open access collection that any teacher can adapt and use in their own classroom. The overarching goal of this project is to enable teachers in rural schools to innovate their curriculum, connect students to their rural place, and collaborate with colleagues in the areas of agriculture, food, and natural resources. To measure our progress towards this goal, we will collect evaluation data from teachers about their experience. We will also analyze student case study work to assess if they developed systems thinking skills; knowledge of local agriculture, food, and natural resources systems issues; and awareness of regional agriculture, food, and natural resources career opportunities. The long-term impact of this project will ultimately be to improve the ability of rural schools to meet the needs of students and play a role in supporting a, ND improving agriculture, food, and natural resources systems in rural communities. Through sharing what we learn by conducting this project in virginia with others in similar roles across the country, our model has the potential to be adapted and replicated in support of rural schools nationally.