Honors College Student is Harvesting Knowledge

To get out of the house and do something for the community during the pandemic, Sophia Mucci joined her local Plant a Row for the Hungry garden. The Fort Mill, S.C., high school sophomore wanted to work outdoors and help get produce to food shelters.

“It was the first time I had ever seen a tomato on a vine,” says Mucci. “Everyone helped me learn the joys of farming.” 

The Honors College student now wants others to experience the joys of farming, but climate change has put agriculture at a crossroads. Her first year at the College, she began a geospatial research project to determine the impacts of climate change on South Carolina agriculture and help agriculture and government make better choices for the future.

The first step is getting accurate geographic information systems data to assess the current situation and then layering that data to analyze factors such as changes in precipitation, heat stress, flooding and drought. Mucci – along with faculty mentors Norman Levine and Lancie Affonso ’96 – is currently working with state authorities to get that data. She is also learning how to use crop modeling tools to determine how changes impact crops.

At the same time, to enhance the crop modeling results, Mucci is conducting an independent study with Levine to find the intersection between GIS and the programming language Python.

“By showing how different crops are affected by different aspects of climate change, we can be proactive and ultimately help with food security issues,” says Mucci, a sophomore environmental geosciences major and French and geoinformatics minor.

Levine, geology professor and director of the Santee Cooper GIS Laboratory and the Lowcountry Hazards Center, is not surprised by Mucci’s drive and passion.

“Sophia was one of the most proactive high school students I’ve ever met,” he says. “She reached out 10 weeks before school so she could get her computer specced out. That level of preparedness gets our attention.”

It was the CofC professors who got her attention when applying to colleges.

“Every single CofC professor responded to me; none of the professors from bigger schools did,” says Mucci. “I immediately started research because I had already established relationships with the professors.”

“Sophia is a rock star,” says Affonso, Honors College faculty fellow, director of the Entrepreneurship Living-Learning Community and senior instructor of computer science and of management and marketing. “With our Storytelling with Data project, she has taken the lead as one of the mentors to integrate interdisciplinary honors into storytelling to create a sense of belonging.”

This summer, Mucci plans to study geology along the Colorado River. In the fall, she will go to France and then spend her spring semester in Washington, D.C., working on her GIS project all the while.

“Like me, Sophia is ignited and excited by all aspects of science,” says Levine. “We are kindred spirits.” 

Indeed, they both want to make a difference in the world. 

“Professor Levine’s goal with all his projects is to protect people,” says Mucci. “I want to do the same and do something positive for our community.”