Community Garden Scholar

I'm proud to be working with C&S Wholesale Grocers and Antioch University New England on a workshop for local business and nonprofit leaders: "Planting the Seeds for Workplace Gardening." The morning workshop will focus on how employees can enjoy the benefits of workplace gardening and share the bounty of gardens with our communities. It will be facilitated by Garden Educator Madi Walter. Participants will receive a resource packet, chances to network, and learn from the C&S Workplace Organic Gardens model. The workshop is Tuesday, July 24 at 9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. at C&S's corporate offices on Optical Ave in Keene, New Hampshire . For questions: csgardens@antioch.edu. More info: https://lnkd.in/gxr7cmh

Today marks the second and final doctoral weekend of the fall semester. Earlier, my cohort and I exchanged presentations on our essays about the intersections of our professional interests with service learning and community-based scholarship. As a way of sharing with the wider academic/professional community, here are the figures from my presentation, with my working bibliography for the essay.  Figure 1: The intersection of two themes I am working with,  i.e.  the bridging of higher education and food systems and the continuum of praxis (theory and practice, thinking and doing). The figure that follows contains an idea that harnesses these seemingly disparate challenges together and provides a crux for my conceptual framework. Figure 2: Education is cultural work. I like to think about what's possible when the worlds of academia and community food converge around the value and practice of sustainability. This work requires new, more responsive models that trans...

Join me and my colleagues Aaron Witham and Ryan Ihrke today at #AASHE2016 or the premiere of the short film of interviews with sustainability officers in higher education.  Session Title: Sustainability Officers: The Dream, The Sometimes Harsh Reality, The Reasons You Want Us on Your Leadership Team  Tuesday, October 11, 11:30 - Noon Location Room: 308 Trailer:

In doing some background research for a literature review and photovoice research project I am conducting this fall, I came across the 2015 report, " Improving Access to Food Systems Among Communities of Color: A Food Justice Issue Report to the Oregon Food Bank "  - written by Alma M.O. Trinidad, Helen Camden, and Anne Coleman of Portland State University's Center to Advance Racial Equity Research , in cooperation with the Oregon Food Bank . I am interested in this report for many reasons, and it's an excellent example of the kind of work I want to continue doing in my doctoral program and beyond. A few aspects I'll mention here are the authors' engagement and empowerment of community members in the process of research and advocacy, and the sensitivity with which they considered different cultural compositions of Portland neighborhoods. They did a great job of identifying the aims and methods of their research, and presenting their findings in a way that re...

I was honored to be one of twelve Graduate Scholars selected to present and serve at the  12th International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability , hosted at Portland State University (Portland, OR) this weekend. Here are a few photo highlights: Faculty participating in my workshop, "A Scholar's Garden: Inquiry into the Landscape of Food Justice Scholarship and Implications for Sustainability Education." Two main questions we explored, through a collective concept mapping activity, were: How do scholarly disciplines and cultures approach food justice, and what does this mean for sustainability praxis? What could a sustainability pedagogy that embraces food justice look like? It was a pleasure to get to know and support other Graduate Scholars. Nazan Madak (of Anadolu University in Turkey) and I had a chance to watch the PSU Farmers' Market being set up from the Smith Memorial Student Union on Saturday morning. My favo...

I had the wonderful privilege of co-presenting two workshops at the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability (AASHE) Conference on " Transforming Sustainability Education " in Minneapolis this past week, and am so pleased to report that not only were both sessions really well attended, our participants were deeply engaged and passionate about both topics: "Re-thinking Options for Curriculum and Faculty Development: How will we take it to the next level?" and "Sustainability Officers: The Dream, the Sometimes Harsh Reality, the Reasons You Want Us on Your Leadership Team" (a video shoot). Many thanks to my colleagues for a great collaborative experience! It's rejuvenating to be in the company of such thoughtful and skilled sustainability educators, and I keep finding new facets of meaning in "sustainability" (even if the term sometimes falls short as a tool to convey an idea). There was a strong voice for change in both workshops - ...

Visit the Monadock Farm & Community Coalition 's event page for details: Produced by the Monadnock Farm and Community Coalition and Monadnock Food Co-op, Healthy Monadnock Champions November 9 – 15, 2015 The  6th Annual Feast on This! Film Festival features movies that educate our community about the diverse issues affecting our national, regional and local food and agricultural systems. We chose films that  will spark conversation and action  around building stronger local, regional and sustainable food systems. FILM SCHEDULE: 5:30pm Monday, November 9, 2015  – Hosted by Prime Roast Coffee, Keene 3 Acres in Detroit A willful urban farmer sets out to transform an abandoned house into a greenhouse 7pm, Tuesday, November 10, 2015  –  Hosted by   The Cornucopia Project, Peterborough Lunch Love Community Passion, creative energy and persistence come together when Berkeley advocates and educators tackle food reform and food justice ...

On behalf of The Sustainability Center, Student Involvement, and community partners, a special invitation: Many of our students come from food insecure families and communities. Some of them are thinking about careers in politics, business, human services and education, where they can be powerful forces for change. All of them have the potential to be touched by this film. Talk about "an education that matters." Following the film, there will be a panel discussion , moderated by Senator Molly Kelly, where participants will see examples of the work that's being done locally on the related problems of hunger, food insecurity, obesity, and poverty. There will be opportunities to take meaningful action in our own community, and perhaps continue the discussion back on our campus. The event is FREE , and includes a live musical performance , reception & refreshments. Suggested admission is a donation of fresh or canned food for local charity. Click HERE to re...