Project Highlights

What happens when you want to get something done but run into a problem or snag? Where do you go? Who do you talk to? Ultimately, how are problems solved?

SBAR Graduate Fellows, Tobi Omotayo and Luis Ramos Coronado, recently showed students in New Mexico how science is used to solve problems. They walked the students through hands-on activities that demonstrate the science concepts behind answering the questions, "What do you do if your bubbles are not big?" or "How can you stop your bubbles from popping too quickly?"

SBAR Teacher, Jaime Camero, teaches 6th grade at Walter Douglas Elementary School in Tucson, Arizona, and she was recently selected as one of ten National STEM Scholars in the United States. (Whoop!) The National STEM Scholar Program works to inspire the creativity and passion of middle school science teachers by choosing ten awardees each year. Teachers are selected from across the country from a wide pool of applicants.

The SBAR Team has been working hard over the summer to create informational sheets and educational resources for our various stakeholders. Growers and producers as well as educators and youth are excited to learn more about these two alternative crops for the arid Southwest. These materials are now available for downloading from our website and for distribution at community events and educational fairs.

The 2021 SBAR Annual Retreat was hosted as a hybrid event in Tucson, Arizona from 11-13 August. SBAR Team members from near and far joined in on the conversations and strategic sessions to identify the final research pieces needed to build a new sustainable bioeconomy for the Southwest with the production of guayule and guar crops. The research conducted over the last 4 years has been transformative!

The combined Jr/Sr FFA members from Roy, New Mexico unpacked their classroom kit filled with the equipment and supplies to support studying plant materials in New Mexico. These educational kits were provided through SBAR to support scientific opportunities in rural communities. The town of Roy, NM certainly qualifies as rural, with a population of 188 people in town, and only 441 people in all of Harding County. 

Paula Mendoza Moreno, an undergraduate student at CSU, has been named as a Gates Cambridge Scholar and will begin her Ph.D. work next fall. Paula has significantly contributed to the SBAR System Performance and Sustainability Team's efforts by creating models that support evaluating the sustainability of biomass-to-fuels pathways for guayule. Investigating the commercialization potential of guayule as a possible renewable rubber source is one step on her journey to working in sustainable development.

A new informative SBAR fact sheet has now been released (Guar as a Rotation Crop Fact Sheet), which highlights the positive aspects of including guar as a rotation crop in semiarid and arid regions. Producers may want to consider including this annual legume in their existing cropping systems because of its beneficial characteristics (nitrogen fixation, improvement of soil structure, low water use, and drought tolerance).

Arizona 4-H is creating curricula for sustainable bioeconomy in partnership with New Mexico State University and Tribal Communities. 
Excerpt from the Agnese Nelms Haury Program Newsletter - 2/16/2021

The latest edition of the SBAR Extension & Outreach Newsletter is now available. The SBAR Extension and Education work has continued through the fall and there are big plans for progress in 2021, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. New research findings for guar are included, along with an overview of the SBAR lessons currently available for download. Check it out! Let us know what else you’d like to learn more about. Reach out to our team with your questions.

Arisbeth Ibarra Nieblas is a third-year doctoral student in Environmental Engineering at the University of Arizona. She is also a third-year SBAR Fellow. Arisbeth presented her lesson “Exploring Bioproducts: Glue for Piñatas” to five groups of students, grades 6-8, at the 2020 American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) K-12 STEM Outreach Competition. She won 2nd Place in the Professional/Combined category for her innovative lesson.