Don Colliver has been named co-chair of the ASHRAE task force to address climate change through responsible decarbonization strategies for the built environment. With buildings responsible for about 40% of global energy-related CO2 emissions, policies are being developed that focus on the decarbonization of buildings. Many cities (including Louisville), twenty-five states, and 70 countries have set goals requiring new building to be low carbon or net-zero energy in the near-term and other policies are requiring retrofits of existing building stock in the medium to long term to decarbonize. Read the press release here.

Ryan Kalinoski successfully finished the two-month NSF Innovation Corps training course, which is part of the overall funding he received from NSF for this entrepreneurial learning program.

Bababode Kehinde has been elected to the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Student Association as Vice President of Volunteer Development. Read more here.

Tiffany Messer has been elected to the ASABE Nominating Committee. Her term of service begins after the 2022 leadership election closes, and spans two years (2023 and 2024 election cycles).

Biosystems engineering seniors Stuart Nicholas, Sam Gilbert and Katelyn Rice were featured in an equusmagazine.com article for their senior capstone project, which concerns crushing-safety standards for equestrian helmets. Read it here. They also were interviewed by Channel 36 WTVQ.

In February, Sam McNeill gave a virtual presentation on grain storage management during the 7th Annual Hudson Valley Value-Added Grain School, hosted by Cornell Cooperative Extension.

The Central Appalachian Regional ERC was the virtual host to the 2021 ERC Regional Symposium, “The Most Hazardous U.S. Industries-What More Should We Be Doing?" Invited speakers were from four different sectors: Mining, Agriculture, Transportation, and Construction. The symposium was coordinated by the NIOSH Education and Research Centers from the University of Kentucky, University of Illinois-Chicago, University of Cincinnati, and University of Michigan. Students and researchers from all four universities were invited to submit posters. 151 attended.

Funded by a USDA-Agrisafe grant, the Southeast Center for Agricultural Health and Injury Prevention (SCAHIP) trained a total of 17 trainers in Agricultural Community QPR for Farmers and Farm Families between fall 2020 and spring 2021. QPR training teaches lay people and professionals to recognize and respond to mental health crises using the approach of Question, Persuade and Refer. SCAHIP paired QPR Institute training with insight into culturally-specific factors that impact farmers’ mental health-seeking behaviors. Between fall of 2020 and March, these 17 trainers trained nearly 450 community members on mental health intervention within agricultural communities. Two community members reached out to us to share that within a month of their training, they had intervened with an individual in crisis.

Over the last decade, farmers and farm families have experienced increasing pressures resulting in high levels of stress, mental health issues and suicide (https://www.uky.edu/scahip/center-projects/farmer-stress-emotional-health). This effort, led by Joan Mazur and Carolyn Oldham, is one of many initiatives SCAHIP is engaged in across Kentucky and nationally to address farmer mental health. Currently, SCAHIP is expanding its efforts with the support of a state appropriation advanced by Representative Brandon Reed by training an additional 40 agricultural community members in QPR. These individuals will then share this potentially life-saving information within their networks in the form of three training sessions between now and December 2021. SCAHIP is conducting research and evaluation on its efforts with preliminary data recently shared at the 2021 ERC Regional Symposium. For more information, please contact Joan Mazur or Carolyn Oldham.