USDA SAS: ISAID
The Idaho Sustainable Agriculture Initiative for Dairy (ISAID) is a USDA-funded Sustainable Agriculture Systems center at the University of Idaho.
ISAID’s goals are to:
(1) support the development of technologies and processes that transform nutrients in dairy manure into commercial fertilizers and value-added bioproducts
(2) advance the adoption of these technologies to improve soils, sustain agricultural productivity, reduce environmental impacts, provide alternative income streams and create new employment opportunities; and
(3) educate the next generation of sustainable agriculture professionals.
Overall, they aim to create a sustainable agriculture system known as a dairy bioeconomy.
ISAID Evaluation Overview
The ISAID Evaluation plan uses an improvement-oriented evaluation strategy to provide both formative and summative evaluation feedback across the center’s research, extension, and education efforts.
Evaluation includes bibliometric analysis of publications looking at citation-based metrics of impact, as well as co-authorship analysis investigating various forms of collaboration and team science.
Evaluation includes surveys with stakeholders and program records review documenting patterns of collaboration, knowledge transfer, and gauge impact on their knowledge, attitudes, and intentions to adopt sustainable dairy technologies and processes.
Evaluation includes student surveys investigating training opportunities, impacts on relevant student knowledge, skills, and abilities, career preparation, and career outcomes for project alumni.