Oral Histories of Farming Along the Middle Rio Grande

Objectives:

This project collects place-based knowledge about farming in this region. The project combines community and teaching goals:

  • Community goal: support resilient local food systems by capturing, documenting, and disseminating place-based farming and climate adaptation knowledges, and to support peer-to-peer learning networks.
  • Teaching goal: provide students opportunities to learn about and be connected within their local community and foodshed, to learn and practice community-engaged research methods, and to apply their academic skills to address problems in the local food system.
Farming history speaker presenting to audience

Project Summary:

This Convergence Curriculum project integrates convergence science research into three classes across diverse units at the University of New Mexico. We pursue iterative phases of study design, data collection, analysis, synthesis, and reporting out to community partners as opportunities for community-engaged, place-based learning. We completed this integration in the 2025-2026 academic year and will repeat it again in 2026-2027.

Class 1: Beginning in Fall 2025, GEOG 589 Qualitative Research Methods class undertook community-engaged research design and data collection.

    1. Built methodological skills for community-engaged research;
    2. Developed the oral history study design in collaboration with community partners;
    3. Collected 11 oral history interviews.
    4. Transcribed and prepared materials for the archive.

Class 2: Spring 2026, SUST 425 Local Food Systems Practicum undertook data analysis and summary reporting for public audiences. The students in this class used interview transcripts to analyze data and generate public-oriented summary materials presented on websites and podcasts.

Class 3: Spring 2026, UHON 301 Agroecology, data analysis and integration with scientific literatures. The students in this class used the transcripts to identify agroecology practices and evaluate these practices using the broader scientific literature.

Primary Contacts

    Team Members

    • Jessica Rowland (UNM)
    • Tomek Falkowski (UNM)

    Students

    • Jacqueline Kelley-Cogdell (UNM)

    Community Partners