Lezlie Lull ’20 participates in the Bags to Benches plastics drive that is uniting the Kalamazoo College community in an effort organized by the Council of Student Representatives and the Eco Club. If the campus can collect 500 pounds of plastic or 40,500 pieces of film during the six-month drive, it will receive a bench made of recycled plastic from the Trex Recycling Co. in Winchester, Virginia.
The Kalamazoo College Council of Student Representatives (KCCSR) and the Eco Club are offering a creative way for you to deal with your plastic waste—including that supply of plastic bags that seems to grow every time you shop.
From now until July, the organizations are collecting clean, dry and residue-free produce bags, closeable food-storage bags, cereal bags and more in receptacles around campus through their self-titled Bags to Benches program.
Council of Student Representatives President Karina Pantoja encourages the K community to think big when dropping off plastic. Don’t just settle for plastic grocery bags; think about bread bags, bubble wrap, dry-cleaning bags, newspaper sleeves, plastic overwrap, closeable food-storage bags and more.
She said the Bags to Benches program began as representatives were looking for a way to unite the campus and build community around a common cause. The sustainability aspect of the project is a bonus and it shows prospective students they can come to K and seek ways of acting to benefit the greater community.
“We avoided making this a competition between student groups or departments because we think it’s important for everyone to come together and work toward one goal,” said Pantoja, of Paw Paw, Michigan, who majors in English with a concentration in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. “An effort like this can tell students that someone on campus cares about sustainability, that student contributions are valued, and that student representatives exemplify their values. It’s nice to have something that sustains an optimistic and exciting energy throughout campus as all of us can come together to accomplish a goal like this.”
For questions and more ideas about how you can support the Bags to Benches program, email KCCSR at StudentRepresentatives@kzoo.edu.
Eighteen Kalamazoo College students traveled to the eighth annual Midwest Outdoor Leadership Conference at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, where they affirmed K’s standing among its peers as a leader in environmental education.
Adventures are common for Kalamazoo College student organizations, and one February adventure was notable for stirring Outing Club’s devotions to pursuing outdoor activities and professions. The student group of 18 traveled to the eighth annual Midwest Outdoor Leadership Conference at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, where they affirmed K’s standing among its peers as a leader in environmental education and met peers with similar passions from around the region.
The conference, conducted annually at a different higher-education institution each year, provides undergraduates interested in outdoor-recreation careers a chance to learn from each other while networking, developing their leadership skills and building new technical skills.
“To most of the colleges attending this conference, a small college has about 5,000 students,” said Outdoor Programs Director Jory Horner, noting K’s student body of just over 1,400. “Attending this program differentiates us as a liberal arts school because the students are keeping their interest in it alive by dedicating their time. Other colleges are blown away that this is something our staff can handle with just the ingenuity and resourcefulness of our students, who receive no academic credit for it.”
All attendees are encouraged to serve as presenters during the outdoor leadership conference, including Riley Gabriel ’21 and Matt Giguere ’21, who presented on linking the principles of Leave No Trace, dedicated to leaving wild places the way others would like to find them, to everyday life. Kit Charlton ’21 also was among K’s representatives, and all of them noted how K stands out among schools attending the conference as a leader in environmental education.
“We have an emphasis on sustainability, plus comprehensive composting and a hoop house,” said Gabriel, an English major with a concentration in environmental studies from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, mentioning just a few of K’s environmental projects. “A lot of the programs we have undertaken aren’t available at other schools.”
Workshops over the conference’s two days included lessons in best practices for hiking, diversity and inclusion in outdoor education, and methods for adaptive recreation activities such as rock climbing. The event fits well with the Outing Club’s mission of providing K students with environmental awareness while teaching how to lead outdoor activities and wilderness trips.
“We’ve been very fortunate to have a committed group over the years,” said Charlton, an English and critical ethnic studies major from Berkley, Michigan, referencing K’s participation in seven of the conference’s first eight years.
The Outing Club allows K students to continue where many leave off with LandSea, the College’s outdoor orientation program offered to incoming students through Outdoor Programs. LandSea, conducted in Adirondack State Park in New York State, helps students meet their peers, gain self-confidence, earn a partial physical education credit and develop classroom skills, even before moving to campus. Outdoor Programs also offers wilderness trips over student breaks, outdoor-themed physical education classes, equipment rental and opportunities to learn wilderness first aid.
Horner “reminds us often of the differences between Outdoor Programs and Outing Club,” said Giguere, a biology major from Portage, Michigan, who attended the conference for the second consecutive year. Outing Club “encourages other students by example to get outdoors, and the support we’ve had from LandSea and Student Development has been exciting.”
Outing Club, Outdoor Programs and the Center for Environmental Stewardship will work together to extend the College’s reputation for environmental education next February as they host the Midwest Outdoor Leadership Conference Feb. 7-9 at K. Although organizers have just started making plans, they say they will incorporate K’s dedication to diversity, inclusion and social justice into their conversations.
“We’re excited to draw on the resources we have at K to bring social justice ideas into the conference and view it through that lens,” Charlton said.
Two student-athletes represented Kalamazoo College at the 2019 NCAA Convention in Orlando, Florida, earning an insider’s look at the governance and maintenance of college sports.
Jared Pittman ’20 and Amanda Moss ’19 attended the NCAA Convention in Orlando, Florida.
Jared Pittman ’20 and Amanda Moss ’19 attended business sessions with hundreds of athletes, athletic directors and college administrators from Division I, II and III schools around the country, including K Athletic Director Becky Hall. By attending these sessions and sharing their feedback with Hall, a voting member of the NCAA, they were able to have a voice in how rules affect Division III athletes’ experiences.
Football coach Jamie Zorbo approached Pittman, a running back and captain on the football squad, about attending. Women’s basketball coach Katie Miller recommended that Moss, a guard on Miller’s team, attend. As leaders in their sports at K and as participants in the school’s Athletic Leadership Council, Pittman and Moss were logical choices, especially as they hope their careers one day involve athletics.
“It was fascinating because the NCAA president [Mark Emmert] emphasized that [the organization] is a democracy,” said Moss, who is also a midfielder for K’s women’s lacrosse team. “In addition to being informational, it was also a time for college representatives to interact and share best practices.” For example, through Division III legislation proposed at the conference, representatives agreed to drop some social media restrictions for coaches and athletic department staff to better align Division III recruiting rules with those in Divisions I and II.
“The world of college athletics is much bigger than I thought it was,” Pittman said of his experience at the convention. “It gave me a new-found appreciation for how rules and regulations are developed in college sports. It also gave me a bigger passion for all sports, because I interacted with athletes I wouldn’t otherwise know, especially those from sports K doesn’t have. Athletics can do a lot for young people.”
Jared Pittman ’20 and Amanda Moss ’19 attended the NCAA Convention with hundreds of athletes, athletic directors and college administrators from Division I, II and III schools around the country, including Athletic Director Becky Hall.
Pittman and Moss agreed an opportunity to network was their best benefit of attending at the convention.
“We were fortunate enough to travel in a group with other MIAA [Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association] athletes from schools like Calvin, Hope and Alma,” said Moss, who also has prepped for a career in sports with an NBA internship and by serving as the president and co-founder of K’s Sports Business Club. “It was enjoyable because we brought that K perspective, but heard from the schools we compete with each year. It was great because we attended business sessions during the day, and at night, we were able to explore Orlando.”
“Honestly, we didn’t talk about sports much,” Pittman said. “It was more about character and how we improve our institutions, especially with Division III being about academic experience as much as athletics.” In fact, he noted from his networking that K’s student counseling resources such as the Counseling Center and efforts related to sexual-violence prevention through groups such as Green Dot are advanced when compared with its peer institutions. “It was really cool getting to know the delegates from other MIAA schools and developing friendships,” Pittman said. I’m blessed to have the chance to attend K and compete in Division III. If I didn’t, I probably never would have had the chance to attend the convention.”
Read more about the 2019 convention and its news at the NCAA’s website.
What buries food, stares at you, drags pizza across campus and runs across tree limbs in the Quad? They’re squirrels, and a group of Kalamazoo College students dedicates time to watching them.
Squirrels draw a lot of attention from Kalamazoo College students, especially from those in the Squirrel-Watching Club. Marissa Castellana ’20 won the club’s photo contest in spring 2018 with this photo taken on campus.
“My housemates and I were interested in the squirrels around our house last year because it seemed like they were always doing something strange,” said Ryan Mulder ’20, a Spanish and business double major from Grand Rapids, Michigan. One of the squirrels even sounded like it was “barking” at him.
“I was so surprised because I never knew that squirrels made noises like that,” Mulder said.
That observation sparked the idea for an official student organization, the Squirrel-Watching Club.
“We knew there were similar clubs at other schools and it seemed like fun to start our own,” said Mulder, the organization’s president. “Squirrels are just so curious that it’s easy to find them doing something weird.”
About five to 10 students attend most meetings, employing binoculars and a 10-pound bag of squirrel feed to foster their observations. They also are active on social media and have conducted a squirrel photo contest.
“The most unique thing about the squirrels on K’s campus is that they’re somewhat used to the students and are more likely to interact with us,” Mulder said. “I think the most interesting encounters we have had with the squirrels on campus would not have taken place had they not grown up with so many people around.”
Mulder is among many club members on study abroad this term, so National Squirrel Appreciation Day on Jan. 21 will have to pass this year without any official club activities. However, Mulder will still mark the day.
“To celebrate National Squirrel Appreciation Day I think I will try and learn more about squirrels’ importance in the ecosystem in order to better appreciate them,” he said.
Meetings are expected to continue again soon thanks to the rascals that keep current students entertained and capture intrigue from incoming students.
“The squirrels at K are a fun distraction from schoolwork and just being outside to relax and watch them is great for the stress that can come with tough classes,” Mulder said.
Kalamazoo College has more than 70 student organizations including the Squirrel-Watching Club. For more information on the Squirrel-Watching Club, message the group through its Instagram page, @SquirrelsofKCollege.
The Academy Street Winds concert Friday will follow a theme of “Sacred and Profane.”
Music lovers will gather at 8 p.m. Friday for an Academy Street Winds concert at Dalton Theater in the Light Fine Arts Building.
The Academy Street Winds, formerly known as the Kalamazoo College Symphonic Band, functions as a beloved creative outlet for woodwind, brass and percussion students. Community musicians joined the ensemble in winter 2016 to expand the group’s sound and capabilities.
The group, conducted by Music Professor Thomas Evans, performs one concert each term, playing exciting arrays of challenging band music. The band is a great favorite for its members and its audiences as the programs are coordinated around diverse themes, which allow for performances of much-loved pieces, both classic and new.
The theme on Friday for the fall-term concert will be “Sacred and Profane.” Songs within the performance will include “The Imperial March” from Star Wars, written by John Williams and arranged by Paul Murtha; and “Ride of the Valkyries,” written by Richard Wagner and arranged by Robert Longfield.
Admission is free.
For more information, contact Susan Lawrence in the Music Department at 269-337-7070 or Susan.Lawrence@kzoo.edu.
Other Homecoming events this Friday-Sunday include:
the Alumni Association Awards Ceremony at 7:30 p.m. Friday. Join us in the Dalton Theatre at Light Fine Arts to honor the award recipients for 2018 including Distinguished Service Award winner Rick Gianino ’78, Distinguished Achievement Award winner Sandra Greene ’74, Weimer K. Hicks Award winner David Barclay, Young Alumni Award winner Eli Savit ’05, and the Athletic Hall of Fame Awards honorees. The athletic awards honorees include Kristyn Buhl-Lepisto ’04 (women’s golf); Meaghan Clark McGuire ’05 (women’s tennis), Eric Gerwin ’00 (football), Scott Whitbeck ’04 (men’s swimming and diving), and the 1955, 1980 and 1981 men’s tennis teams.
reunions of the classes of 1968, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008 and 2013.
receptions and gatherings for groups including the 1833 and Stetson societies, the Alumni of Color, the Emeriti Club, and alumni from specific academic departments.
guided campus tours of historical sites, the campus in general and the new hoop house.
performances by Monkapult, Cirque du K and theater seniors.
opportunities for alumni to tell their K stories in video through Story Zoo.
gatherings where alumni can offer advice and compare notes with current students.
Several Kalamazoo College students with local ties are helping prospective students and their families learn about the school, the campus and the city this summer through the Admission Center. Madelyn Betts ’19, Leah Todd ’20 and Faruq Schieber ’20—all of Kalamazoo—are among the campus tour guides, and they say summer is an excellent time to visit.
Leah Todd ’20 is one of several tour guides serving Kalamazoo College this summer.
“Summer gives you an opportunity to see things when they’re at their best,” on campus and in the City of Kalamazoo, said Schieber, an international area studies major. “Everything is in bloom and it’s quiet without the hustle and bustle on campus.”
As members of the Holistic Inclusive Visitor Experience (HIVE) team, these three also fulfill roles as communicators and hosts to prospective students and their families. Each is an excellent source of information on the K-Plan, Kalamazoo College’s distinctive approach to academics in the liberal arts and sciences, and what you can see and do when you visit. Here are four of their tips for college visits.
Have Questions for Your Tour Guides
Betts, who studies German and business with a concentration in film and media studies, advises prospective students and families to develop a list of important questions to ask when they’re on campus. She said she commonly answers questions ranging from whether first-year students can have cars on campus to inquiries about academic support and leadership opportunities.
“Everyone is here to help you get everything you want out of your visit,” Betts said, adding it’s also a good idea to ask about activities on campus.
Madelyn Betts ’19 is a member of the Holistic Inclusive Visitor Experience (HIVE) team. Her duties include serving as one of several tour guides on campus this summer.
“There’s so much going on each term you don’t hear about ahead of time, you’ll think, ‘If I only had more time,’ ” said Betts, who is the president of K’s student Swing Dance Club and Film Club, and a member of Cirque du K, a student circus troupe.
The practice of asking questions will also benefit students when they’re attending K. Todd, for example, said when she needed advice about a class, several people responded to a single email, including volleyball Head Coach Jeanne Hess, even though Todd no longer plays volleyball.
“A teacher, a dean, my study abroad adviser and my academic adviser all responded about this one class, even Coach (Hess),” Todd said. “She’s always reaching out, trying to make sure there’s a connection. We have nice people here. I enjoy meeting people from all over the world.”
Reach Out
Schieber said it can be intimidating for high school students to plan campus visits, especially if they’re uncertain about what college they want to attend. The solution for easing that intimidation is to connect with Admission in advance.
“Make a phone call to us before you come and point out your interests to us,” he said. “You can even request an interview with an admission counselor. That call can help us as guides and counselors get more of an idea of what you would like access to so we can show you a good fit.”
Faruq Schieber ’20 is among the Kalamazoo College tour guides who suggests visiting the College and the city over the summer.
As a prospective student a few years ago, Schieber said that fit involved study abroad opportunities and the easy access to professors he wouldn’t have gotten at a larger school.
“This is an environment where professors care about your success—you matter,” said Schieber, who will study abroad in Ecuador this fall.
Prepare for the Weather
Regardless of the season in which you visit, it’s a good idea to prepare for the weather. Check the forecast for Kalamazoo in advance and dress appropriately for being outside, Todd said. Also, notify Admission if you’re running late for your tour. Calling ahead ensures tour guides are at your service when you arrive.
Picture it
Betts advises that students take pictures of the campuses they visit, especially when they visit schools far from home, to ensure they remember which is which.
“I heard a horror story once about a student who visited a campus and loved it,” Betts said. “She applied to what she thought was that college, was accepted and registered for classes, only to find when she arrived on campus she had applied to the wrong college.”
For Amanda Moss ’19, the route to her prestigious internship this summer at National Basketball Association (NBA) headquarters in New York City began, improbably, with getting kicked out of a gym.
Economics and business major Amanda Moss applied for a highly competitive NBA internship and was one of 50 students chosen from a pool of 6,000.
She says that while she was a basketball player in high school, she went to the community gym in her Detroit suburb daily during the summer to practice her jump shot. One day, however, an employee of the Detroit Pistons NBA team told her she would have to leave because the courts were reserved for a team-run youth basketball program.
“I started to pack up but then I looked around and saw they were way understaffed for the event they were going to hold,” she recalls. “So I went back up to the guy and I offered my assistance. He took me up on the offer and I helped set up chairs, run the scoreboard, that sort of thing, and helped to clean up when it was over.”
After the event, she says, the employee chatted with her and ended up offering her a summer job at the Pistons’ youth basketball camp.
Amanda Moss, who plays on Kalamazoo College’s women’s basketball team, is working in an NBA internship this summer.
“I did that every summer for four years,” says Moss, who plays women’s basketball and lacrosse and was just named to the Jewish Sports Review Women’s College Lacrosse All-America Team for the second year in a row.
Along the way, she got to meet Pistons players including Andre Drummond and Reggie Jackson and people in the team’s corporate office. So when it came time to seek an internship in summer 2017, she was well-situated to apply to the Pistons. She worked in community relations and marketing for the team, conceiving a career forum for girls 9 to 16 and then running every aspect of the event, which included presenting a panel of college basketball players and women business leaders.
That, in turn, set her up for this summer’s internship. With the help of K’s Center for Career and Professional Development and with advice from her professors, the economics and business major applied for the highly competitive program and was one of 50 students chosen from a pool of 6,000. She’s working in the retail division of the NBA’s Global Partnerships Department, which manages all aspects of the league’s relationship with companies including Nike, New Era, Foot Locker and Amazon.
That relationship includes activities such as licensing the sale of NBA-branded merchandise, arranging for advertising on NBA TV, approving the use of the NBA logo in social media messages and arranging player appearances at partner businesses, she says. Her role has been mainly in research. One assignment tasked her with finding out everything she could about how the NBA could work with Target Corp., and she says she discovered a natural fit in both organizations’ emphasis on supporting community voluntarism—a synergy around which her boss now is building a partnership program.
She says her K education has given her a real advantage in her role, especially a business research methods course that prepares students for their Senior Individualized Project (SIP). Business and economics professor Timothy Moffit ’80 put a heavy emphasis on identifying information sources in research papers, so in a PowerPoint presentation to NBA professionals, she says, she included a final slide listing all of her sources—about 30, and many of them recognizable names.
She says it helped cement the credibility and validity of her proposal. “They were really impressed. It’s not something that they were expecting.”
A Chinese minor who studied abroad in China during the 2017-18 school year, Moss also has had a chance to use her language skills, aiding her boss in a conference call with the NBA office in China, she says. And content- and video-editing skills she learned in a documentary filmmaking course have turned out to be in high demand, as well.
“Every day is a new day at the league,” she says. “You have to be very multidimensional. Part of the Kalamazoo College liberal arts experience is being able to study multiple subjects because the K-Plan is so flexible.”
With the experience gained in her internships, and a planned SIP contrasting consumer perceptions of professional sports in the United States and China, she hopes to land a corporate job in international sports after graduation. Her ultimate goal—“really just a dream” at this point, she says—would be to start a nonprofit venture that uses sports to connect with and empower Chinese girls.
“I was adopted from China, and when I went to my study abroad in China, I got to volunteer coach in some of the schools, and there was a huge absence of girls in all of the basketball programs,” she says, adding that Chinese girls get little encouragement to participate in team sports in general.
In another effort to help people achieve their goals, she is teaming with fellow Kalamazoo College athletes Alex Dupree ’21 and Jordan Wiley ’19 to form a sports business club for K students that will aid them in charting their way to careers in sports-oriented businesses and link them with alumni in the field.
Her effort to create what she calls “new channels and opportunities” for her classmates echoes what she says is her goal on the lacrosse field and basketball court: “to play for my teammates and make great memories.”
Moss’ enthusiasm and cooperative yet competitive spirit wins high praise from K physical education professor and coach Jeanne Hess.
“Amanda is one of the most committed players and teammates I’ve seen come through Kalamazoo College,” Hess says. “She plays with passion and ferocity and she’s fun to watch. She’s going to do great things.”
Examining a patch of Oriental bittersweet, an invasive plant, Mathew Holmes-Hackerd ’20 makes use of Kalamazoo College’s Lillian Anderson Arboretum as part of a research project. A $250,000 grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations will help the College spread environmental education and sustainability throughout its curriculum and make wider use of the Arboretum via the Center for Environmental Stewardship.
The center’s goals are to:
Increase sustainability and environmental stewardship across the curriculum.
Enable more students to incorporate sustainability and environmental education into their work.
Build on existing assets to expand the College’s capacity for responsible resource management and sustainable development.
Increase the effectiveness of College’s Lillian Anderson Arboretum as a learning lab for the campus and community.
The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations are a major supporter of private colleges and universities like K, based on their conviction that “an educated society strengthens democracy through principled, thoughtful and compassionate leadership.” The Center for Environmental Stewardship is consistent with Kalamazoo College’s strategic vision of integrating academic rigor with life-changing experiential education in a values-driven community.
Biology Department Chair Binney Girdler says the grant will allow the hiring of a dedicated director for the Center for Environmental Stewardship, a key element of launching a program with the breadth and depth envisioned.
Girdler, whose duties include serving as faculty director of the arboretum, says environmental studies are nothing new at K — the subject has been an interdisciplinary minor for about 30 years, and both biology and chemistry classes make heavy use of the arboretum for those and other courses. She also says the College has a record of sustainability initiatives dating back at least to the launching of a recycling effort in the 1990s.
“So we’ve had these bubbles of passion around the campus, but no one person to get their arms around the whole thing and to really center it, and enrich it, and expand it,” Girdler says.
The director, whose position will be half-time, “will be able to really do some connecting the dots and cultivating collaborations among” faculty in their classes, the College’s facilities staff, student organizations, the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership and the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement, she says.
“It will be more than the sum of the parts,” she adds.
Working with the director, she says, will be a student Environmental Leadership Corps, with paid positions dedicated to sustainability initiatives both on campus and involving the wider Kalamazoo community. She says those students will engage Kalamazoo-area residents “from pre-K to gray” through activities such as leading interpretive hikes at the arboretum, a 140-acre expanse of woods, meadows and marshes six miles from the College in Oshtemo Township.
“We’ll be cultivating a corps of students who themselves have gained from their connections with the natural world and their understanding of sustainability, and having them lead others to the understanding that we’re all in this together,” Girdler says.
Ultimately she expects efforts to acquaint students with environmental education and sustainability issues, and the related use of the arboretum, to spread far beyond science courses like the ones she teaches. She cites a music class that held a session at the arboretum, where it coaxed sound and rhythms from sticks, stones and other natural materials, and a philosophy class that used the forest to explore environmental themes.
“Our poets should go out, our musicians should go out, to experience the complexity of nature,” she says. “You have to see all those interactions, you have to feel it, you have to smell it. There’s no substitute for being outdoors.”
Grants will be available to faculty members across the College to help them design instructional modules that make use of the arboretum.
Mathew Holmes-Hackerd ’20, a biology major, shares Girdler’s enthusiasm for the arboretum’s possibilities. He will be conducting a survey there this fall of the invasive species colonizing the former farmland, a 1982 gift to the College by the late Lillian Anderson ’26.
“We’re really fortunate to have this,” he says as he searches along the Arboretum’s Meadow Run Trail for patches of Oriental bittersweet, an invasive vine that can overwhelm and damage native trees. “It’s going to be really amazing.”
Hoop house sounds like a nickname for a basketball arena.
In the field of agriculture, however, it’s a term for a kind of light yet sturdy, metal-framed greenhouse with a clear polyvinyl cover that can be erected anywhere it’s needed. A hoop house provides a year-round environment for growing vegetables, flowers and other cold-sensitive plants.
Kalamazoo College’s Just Food Collective collaborated on a proposal for a “hoop house” greenhouse that, with contributions from alumni and friends of the College, will greatly expand the year-round gardening space at the College. Gathering in the College greenhouse the group currently uses are some of the Just Food Collective members involved in the proposal (from left): Maya Gurfinkel ’20, Aiden Voss ’20, Natalie Thompson ’19, Elliott Boinais ’21 and Lee Carter ’18.
It will be several times the size of the College’s existing greenhouse behind Hoben Hall. And unlike that structure, where potted plants are grown on tables, the crops in the hoop house will be planted in ground-level boxes, making them easier to tend, sustain and harvest.
Ultimately, say student organizers such as Lee Carter ’18, a CCE Civic Engagement Scholar, the food produced in the hoop house could become part of the supply chain for the College’s Dining Services and perhaps for other food programs in the Kalamazoo community. It’s part of a wider goal of the Just Food Collective to increase the use of locally sourced food, easing nutritional inequities, bringing more transparency to the food supply system and reducing the College’s carbon footprint.
The idea has been around for over a decade. CCE Director Alison Geist says it got its start with a group called Farms to K, a program that grew from the service-learningfirst-year seminars Cultivating Community, first taught in 2008 by English professor Amelia Katanski ’92, and Roots in the Earth, led by College Writing Center Director Amy Newday, that focus on food justice and sustainable agriculture. Katanski and Newday serve as advisors to the group and Larry Bell ’80, founder of Bell’s Brewery, has provided support.
An artist’s depiction of the College’s new 1,800-square-foot hoop house, which will be erected in a corner of the intramurals field north of the Fitness and Wellness Center.
The CCE, students and faculty revived and expanded the mission of Farms to K in spring 2016 as the Just Food Collective, whose mission includes policy work on food insecurity. The students involved included Carter, who says he grew up in a “back to the land, homesteader” household in rural New Hampshire that always had a vegetable garden. With Newday, an owner of Shelbyville, Michigan’s, Harvest of Joy Farm, as mentor, they drew up a simple proposal for a hoop house, and Anika Sproull ’17, wrote a senior individualized project (SIP) advocating that K invest in sustainable agriculture.
Over the next two years, more than a dozen students devised a detailed, illustrated proposal and prepared a presentation that, Geist says, “just bowled over” President’s Staff. The proposal lays out the plan and explains how it would provide learning opportunities for existing classes and connect to campus programs such as a composting initiative. It also details the involvement of paid and volunteer student workers, tells how it would fulfill existing College policies concerning environmental justice and sustainability, looks at what other colleges and universities are doing and even includes the results of an informal survey demonstrating K student support for the idea.
Alumni and other supporters of the College, impressed by the plan, contributed the $26,200 needed to fund it.
“I was personally blown away by how quickly [the College] raised the money,” says Just Food Collective Civic Engagement Scholar Natalie Thompson ’19, who participated in the presentation.
Geist says she believes the donors were enthusiastic because they saw it as “a really K kind of thing,” where students used the freedom inherent in the K-Plan to take the lead and work outside of traditional structures. It’s the sort of student-led initiative, with one foot in the classroom and the other in contemporary social issues, that will spread throughout K’s curriculum under the new strategic plan. The plan calls for the College to “become the definitive leader in integrating academic rigor with life-changing experiential education in a values-driven community.”
“This is a really good example” of what the plan envisions, Geist says. “We’re not educating leaders of tomorrow, we’re educating leaders of today.”
As a 2018-19 Civic Engagement Scholar, Just Food Collective member Elliott Boinais ’21 will be in charge of the project, advised by Newday.
Geist cites it as a “fellowship in learning” — a principle that has illuminated the College’s approach to education for almost a century and which defines the CCE’s mission.
“It provides a prototype for what this kind of collaborative learning community can look like and achieve in the future,” she says.
“I hope it’s going to outlast our time here,” says Just Food Civic Engagement Scholar Aiden Voss ’20.
The graduating Carter regrets he won’t be around for the completion of the hoop house, which the philosophy major says he has dreamed about since he was a sophomore in a nearby Living-Learning Housing Unit, gazing at the intramural field as he drank his morning coffee while sitting on a sofa he dragged onto the porch.
Still, his K-Plan has revolved around food, with a SIP on food and philosophy and his experience helping lead a sustainable agriculture initiative. And his next step demonstrates the value of the education he received when, he says, he chose K over culinary school: This fall, he will begin work as a line chef at Canlis, the James Beard Award-winning restaurant widely acclaimed as Seattle’s finest.
