SSSA K-12 Outreach Committee: Sharing ideas that work!

December 12, 2025

Figure 1. At the “Saturday With a Scientist” event in Salt Lake City, UT, SSSA K-12 Committee member Wale Adewunmi talks with visitors about the “Soil Your Undies” activity. Photo by Liz Gillispie.

The SSSA K-12 Committee was quite active in 2025. Learn about all of the activities over the last year and what to expect in 2026.

The SSSA K-12 Committee is launching a semi-regular CSA News column reflecting on our outreach actions and providing ideas and inspiration for others to share their passion for soils, crops, and agronomy with general and K-12 audiences. Each column will highlight a project or an idea that has been successfully implemented while including the challenges and opportunities we came across while doing so.

The SSSA K-12 Committee was quite active in 2025! Our teacher grant program awarded $500 grants to 10 teachers to purchase supplies to teach soil science topics. We attended the National Science Teaching Association’s annual conference on science education where we tabled and hosted a workshop. At our table, we chatted with more than 350 visitors, and our workshop drew 40 participants.

We hosted a “Saturday with a Scientist” event (Figure 1) in Salt Lake City, UT where we had hundreds of visitors of all ages interact with fun activities related to soils. We hosted two multi-hour workshops for teachers: (1) a full-day workshop in St. Paul, MN (Figure 2) and (2) a half-day workshop at the CANVAS meeting in Salt Lake City.

Figure 2. K-12 teacher in-service day at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Photo by Susan Chapman.

We updated our soils4teachers.org website to include a webpage on the much-sought out topic of soil horizons and a page on liquefaction/quicksand and added new activities. You may have noticed that we were sold out of our Soil! Get the Inside Scoop book, which posed an opportunity to update it. The new edition of the book is now available! Over the course of the year, we will share details on the above-mentioned activities (and more) and offer suggestions for replication.

All of the above projects could not have been completed without the enthusiasm and talents of those who serve on the K-12 Committee. Consider joining us by contacting Susan Chapman, Director of Special Projects.

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