All you need is a green thumb and a classroom of hardworking students to put together a perfect campus garden.
A new course during the three-week summer intersession, Campus and Community Gardens, provided 91²Ö¿â at Stark students with the opportunity to design, plant, water, weed and harvest a campus garden. The course, taught by Chris Post, Ph.D., associate professor of geography, focused on giving students the tools, time, contacts and guidance necessary to set up a network of organizations and individuals who participated in the food’s organic production and distribution. The goal: to empower students to find better solutions to food concerns.
The students planted a wide variety of vegetables and herbs, including tomatoes, kale, eggplant, peppers, radishes, cilantro and rosemary.
Post also used the garden as a teaching tool in the class by educating students about sustainability and the difference between large- and small-scale agriculture.
In addition to serving as an educational tool for students in terms of sustainability, another goal of the campus garden is to serve the surrounding community – including some of their fellow students – as a local food source for those in need.
“The overarching goal is to use the garden as a food incubator to provide fresh vegetables for our Conference Center but also for Flash’s Food Pantry and the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank,†says A. Bathi Kasturiarachi, Ph.D., associate dean for academic affairs at 91²Ö¿â Stark.
Post’s summer garden class also explored areas of the world where food is produced and areas where there is malnutrition.
The course may be over, but Post hired a student employee this summer to care for the garden. He says students in the class formed a club and also will help. Additionally, this fall, students in classes such as Sociology of Food will be able to help care for the garden.