Author W. Ralph Eubanks wrote, “If you can find where the past and the present intersect within Mississippi, you can indeed understand the world.”1 The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, better known as the Mississippi Delta, has a rich agrarian history and is a space that holds national significance for the modern civil rights movement and as the birthplace of American music. Popularly known as “the most southern place on earth,” as dubbed by historian James C. Cobb, the Mississippi Delta offers an excellent case study for a high-impact, service-learning, credit-earning travel course.2 This article will discuss the rationale, design, and goals of an interdisciplinary and interinstitutional course on the Mississippi Delta.The course idea originated from Nicholas Timmerman's graduate school experience at Mississippi State University (MSU), where historian Jason Morgan Ward designed a similar service- and travel-learning course on the Mississippi Delta in collaboration with the Maroon Volunteer Center. During Timmerman's time at MSU, he was afforded the opportunity to chaperone and teach the course himself (in the spring semesters of 2015 and 2017). In the summer of 2021, Gail Carpenter of Iowa State University (ISU) approached Timmerman about the possibility of collaborating on a grant opportunity in the Study USA program sponsored by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at ISU. The grant's design is to encourage the creation of credit-bearing, domestic travel courses within the United States that “provide undergraduate students the opportunity to learn about diverse culture, food and agriculture systems, natural resources, and life sciences within the U.S.”3 The program advocated that proposals “expose/engage students in cultural diversity of the U.S.,” such as partnering with a minority-serving institution and exploring geographic locations “that are significantly different from what students experience in Ames, Iowa.”4 We believed that a partnership between a predominantly white land-grant institution and an 1890 land-grant HBCU fulfilled one of these requirements, and studying a space such as the Mississippi Delta naturally fulfilled several of the other grants’ requirements.The grant proposal argued that an interdisciplinary and interinstitutional course on the Mississippi Delta would Combine in-class and immersive experiential learning, including hands-on service activities and housing provided by local community groups in the delta.Blend history and agriculture to garner appreciation for factors that shaped the present systems in the Mississippi Delta.Collaborate across two land-grant universities with disparate backgrounds and student bodies—namely, ISU and Langston University, an HBCU.The idea was to create a domestic travel course that was intentionally interdisciplinary and to design a classroom space that engaged in conversations about the sciences and the humanities. ISU and Langston have strong agricultural science programs, so it made sense to design a course that would attract students interested in learning about the intersection between agricultural science and history. We also viewed this course as an opportunity to benefit each discipline mutually. The humanities generally struggle to prove to potential students the field's relevance, and the sciences struggle with teaching students cultural and social connections. Our grant proposal was accepted in the fall of 2021 to design and implement the course for the spring 2022 semester.The course and trip leaned heavily into research on high-impact learning practices as defined by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, which argues that high-impact learning challenges and engages students, increases retention, and contributes to cumulative learning.5 Examples of high-impact learning practices, according to scholar George Kuh, include “first-year seminars,” “learning communities,” “service learning,” “undergraduate research,” and “study abroad.”6 The idea behind developing a partnership between ISU and Langston was to establish interinstitutional learning communities where students collectively reflected on lessons learned in the classroom and the field.7 The domestic travel experience to the Mississippi Delta was the central component of the course and included service-learning opportunities, ensuring “that students' service experiences are linked directly to classroom learning,” as scholars Jayne Brownell and Lynn Swaner advocate.8The course was specifically designed as a credit-earning elective that engaged students with the history and agricultural practices in the delta over time.9 The course objectives measured students' ability to: Demonstrate a working understanding of the historical factors that shaped the Mississippi Delta.Experience the culture, people, and communities of the Mississippi Delta by visiting significant sites through an experiential and service-learning alternative spring break trip.Develop a working knowledge of the historic and contemporary importance of agriculture in the Mississippi Delta.Build critical thinking skills and analytical reading skills through the study of diverse interpretations of historical events, cultural diversity, and ethnic studies.Establish cross-campus and interdisciplinary relationships between ISU and Langston students, faculty, and staff from a variety of departments and disciplines.To measure these course objectives in the physical classroom, we designed lessons and assessments, assigned readings, hosted guest lectures, and encouraged discussions. Content covered course modules titled “Creating a Cotton Kingdom,” “At the Crossroads: The Birth of American Music,” “Aquaculture in the Delta,” and modern “Agriculture Economics.” Guest lecturers included Valarie Grim from Indiana University to discuss the agricultural history of the delta, Emary D. Smith from Alcorn State University to discuss food security in the delta, and Joseph Morris from ISU to discuss aquaculture in the delta, thus intentionally blending history and agricultural sciences.The trip took students to historically significant places such as Money and Sumner, Mississippi, to visit sites related to the murder and trial of Emmett Till. We visited Clarksdale, Ruleville, and Mound Bayou, Mississippi, to see places with historical significance to blues music and to the civil rights work of Fannie Lou Hamer and Medgar Evers, as well as to better understand the role of a historically Black town in the region. We also took students to Stoneville, Mississippi, where Mississippi State University's Delta Research and Extension Center researches catfish, cotton, and other important agricultural products in the region, and to Alcorn State University's Extension/Research Farm and Technology Transfer Center in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. During the trip, students completed approximately ten hours of community service. Some of the service-learning components of the trip included helping with spring planting at Marilyn William's family farm in Tunica, Mississippi, and assisting with the thrift store and food pantry at St. Gabriel Mercy Center in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, and at the St. Francis Community Center in Greenwood, Mississippi. The service-learning components of the course connected students to individuals and organizations in the delta working to address systemic issues in the region, such as food security, poverty, public health, and nutrition. Additionally, the service-learning components of the trip provided students from both institutions opportunities to work together through a positive team-building exercise.The region's rich agricultural and cultural history validates the purpose of this high-impact learning and travel course on the Mississippi Delta because the delta offers a unique microcosm of much of American society. The interdisciplinary and interinstitutional intentionality of the course exhibits the importance of forging partnerships between predominately white and minority-serving institutions because it afforded our students opportunities to have meaningful learning interactions with faculty and fellow students from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. Furthermore, land-grant institutions provide a natural space for developing interdisciplinary courses between the agricultural sciences and agricultural history, thus deliberately bringing together the humanities and the sciences.

Nicholas A. Timmerman

Abigail J. Carpenter

Agricultural History

农业史是该领域的记录期刊。因此，它发表关于农业和农村生活历史各个方面的文章，不受地域或时间限制。编辑对涉及新主题的文章特别感兴趣，展示了大量的初级和二级研究，展示了原始解释，并且对社会成员和其他农业历史读者普遍感兴趣。

Agricultural History is a significant journal in the field of agricultural history, dedicated to documenting and exploring the history of agriculture and rural life. The journal publishes research articles on various aspects of agricultural history, without restrictions on time or geography. The editors are particularly interested in submissions that address new topics, encouraging the presentation of extensive primary and secondary research, offering unique insights, and aiming to engage social members and other readers interested in agricultural history.

《Agricultural History》是农业历史领域的重要期刊，致力于记录和探讨农业及农村生活的历史。该期刊发表关于农业历史各个方面的研究文章，时间和地域没有限制。编辑特别欢迎涉及新主题的稿件，鼓励展示丰富的初级和二级研究，提供独特的见解，旨在吸引社会成员和其他农业历史的读者。

Category	Quartile
哲学	3
哲学, 历史学	3
哲学, 科学史与科学哲学	3

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HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE	3