The Center for Environmental Farming Systems Announces Recipients of 2025-2026 NC State Graduate Student Fellowships

Clarisse is receiving a M.S. with the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University. Advised by Dr. Kurt Smith, she contributes to the retention of wild and working lands through the study of heirs’ property. Heirs’ property is a structure of collective family ownership that often has deep historical and cultural significance. There are an estimated six million acres of heirs’ property in the U.S. South, and NC contains the second largest amount at 300,000-500,000 acres. The vast majority of this land is undeveloped, containing wild and working lands. Increasing rates of farmland loss from development pressure poses a direct threat to families with heirs’ property.

Clarisse utilizes interviews and workshops to engage with heirs’ property owners and understand their experiences with land management and loss. Some heirs’ properties are managed for agriculture, agritourism, forestry, conservation, or other avenues of income generation, despite legal barriers that limit owners’ access to loans and cost-share programs. Learning from families about their experiences enhances land retention strategy and the production of food, fuel, and fiber.

Clarisse is a University of Michigan alum and has always felt most at home when near water or the woods. Her background in food systems with North Carolina State Extension and Cornell Cooperative Extension guide her goals around technical and educational programming with landowners.

Adam Breister is a Microbiology PhD student and an NC State University Genetics & Genomics Scholar advised by Dr. Mallory Choudoir. Adam received his B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2019. He is interested in using computational methods along with environmental nutrient data to understand microbial ecology globally. He is particularly interested in understanding microbial functionality and the impacts of microbiome function on the environment, with a current focus on farming systems. His current research is in collaboration with Dr. Alex Woodley at NC State looking at the legacy effects of different organic amendments on agricultural soil microbial community structure and function. He is also looking at the effects of flooding events on agricultural soil microbial communities through the use of microcosm samples with soils collected from the CEFS Field Research, Education, and Outreach Facility at Cherry Research Farm.

Soil ecosystems are one of the largest sinks of carbon in the world, and microbes play a major role in the cycling of nutrients including carbon. Soil organic matter, which is commonly used as a soil health indicator, is partially made up of microbial cells, and it is manipulated and transformed through microbial metabolic processes. Microbes in soils, especially in agricultural soils, make up an important part of the ecosystem in terms of productivity and should be considered important members of the entire agricultural ecosystem. Extreme weather events like those resulting in flooding can have major impacts on soil microorganisms, which can in turn impact higher level ecological processes in agroecosystems. Adam’s research aims to provide insight into how external stimuli impact microbial communities in agricultural soils with the hope of including microorganisms in the framework of agricultural sustainability.

He is excited to be a part of the CEFS fellowship program and hopes that this opportunity will allow him to increase his knowledge of agricultural system sustainability and soil chemistry in an effort to better integrate his research on microbial communities into the current ecological framework.