Lately, the local SE program has been working and thinking holistically about the ways in which our food system marginalizes low income families and individuals. We are also concerned that our beloved College, its curriculum, and its strategic orientation is not effectively connected to the natural world in a manner that is ecologically sustainable and fosters wellness. Last Fall, twelve students and their faculty advisers worked on concrete projects to address ecological and food system issues. Here are the projects:

Maggie Dougherty, Alex Kania and McKenzie Goltz with Karen Potter and the Executive Board of AWC

Students researched and wrote a financial sustainability plan for A Whole Community, an organization that collects produce from local farmers and distributes it to local food pantries, meal serve sites, and schools. The sustainability plan also addressed issues related to inventory management to help figure out how to safely and efficiently distribute close to 91,000 lbs of food of annually to the food insecure. This project continues the work that our student undertook in 2017 to come up with the idea of Harvest Share.

Cambrie Baker, Ousmane Sy, and Remi Katayama

A group of students, faculty, and staff, building on the College’s Strategic Planning documents came up with a rubric to evaluate how existing green spaces could be used to enhance our curriculum, wellness,  and community engagement.

Finally, three students worked to design the initial stages of scaling our College Garden to enhance our curriculum and community that could provide locally grown food to dining services and our community using student labor and a series of Food Systems classes. The advisers for this semester were Greg Shaya, Matt Mariola, and Amyaz Moledina.

Efua Hayford, Gabe Melmed and Gillian Desonier-Lewis