2023 Community Engaged Scholar Award to Tim McDermott
Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023
The Community Engaged Scholar Award recognizes faculty members who have demonstrated co-created engaged scholarship that has positively impacted communities. Community Engaged Scholars have made significant contribution to Ohio State's culture of engagement, further establishing, and strengthening the institution's commitment to communities.
Timothy McDermott, Assistant Professor, Extension Educator at The Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences/Extension
Extension is an outreach arm of the university, engaging our community using research-based information to positively impact residents lives. Dr. McDermott impacts through agriculture and its opportunities. He delivers neighborhood and place-based outreach, free of charge, in economically disadvantaged communities of color, primarily to BIPOC, New American, immigrant and refugee client residents and their children through the development of impactful programs, committed partnerships, and new friendships.
He co-led The Buckeye ISA project, a 2022 Ohio State High Impact Program awardee where he taught families with children in the Linden, South Side, near East Side, Hilltop and Franklinton neighborhoods how to grow their own food for personal and family food security. Outputs of this project included 124 new family farmers trained, 85 classes with 2,500 attendees, and $1,533,889.31 dollars leveraged locally in government funding, materials donation, monetary donations, volunteerism time, and grants.
He engages students and teachers in schools through STEM-based Ag in the Classroom programs creating indoor and outdoor agricultural experiential learning laboratories for the purpose of workforce development. McDermott has engaged over 80 schools including Columbus City, Reynoldsburg, Whitehall, The Ohio School for the Deaf and charter schools Columbus Adventist Academy, Midnimo Linden Academy and KIPP. He leveraged $450,000 in funding from USDA NIFA, Scotts-Miracle Gro, and the OSU Office of Diversity and Inclusion to provide materials and knowledge support to mitigate participation barriers by teachers that has engaged over 50,000 Franklin County youth.