Progress 09/01/16 to 08/10/21
Outputs
Target Audience:Over the duration of the project, our primary target audience has remained consistent: predominantly under-represented undergraduates at UCSC interested in food studies, community engagement, food justice, and garden-based education. The UCSC USDA NIFA HSI project offered experiential learning, leadership opportunities, and campus/community collaborations for students through a variety of mechanisms: an after-school, garden based educational program with youth at Calabasas Elementary School in Watsonville; a food justice garden class at Colleges Nine and Ten at UCSC; an Alternative Spring Break program in Watsonville; volunteer opportunities in Watsonville for students in PRAXIS, a service learning club; and research efforts with interns through the UCSC SUPERDAR (Supporting Undergraduates by Promoting Education, Research, Diversity and Agricultural Resilience) fellowship program (also funded by USDA NIFA). With this grant, we established a new program, the Apprenticeship in Community Engaged Research or (H)ACER. Most of these students engaged in (H)ACER are low-income, people of color who are the first generation of their families to attend university. As a result of these efforts, UCSC undergraduates undertook a variety of activities, from developing and implementing curricula for the children of Watsonville and establishing a community garden for their parents to grow plants for their own food security, to helping organize a day-long conference entitled, Dig In: Cultivating Inclusive Approaches to Food Justice, in March 2018. Such activities not only foster greater knowledge about issues of power, class, race, and marginalization in food systems, but also expand the scope of food studies at UCSC to include issues of environmental justice, which reflects the concerns and experiences of an increasing number of UCSC students coming from diverse backgrounds. And our efforts not only impact UCSC undergraduates interested in agricultural and food studies, but high school students as well. As part of the Alternative Spring Break in Watsonville, UCSC students partnered with high school students from Watsonville High's youth leadership organization ECHO (Education, Community, Humanitarian, Outreach) to undertake efforts such community beautification projects and service at the local food bank. Additionally, through the Environmental Justice Youth Leadership Academy through our subcontractor Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, a group of 17 youth from the rural agricultural towns of Kettleman City and Gonzales visited UCSC on July 21, 2018. They participated in a day of presentations and panel discussions about pathways to higher education, pesticide drift, food and economic insecurity, and traditional ecological knowledge; a campus tour; and lunch at the Colleges Nine and Ten dining hall. Changes/Problems:This reporting period corresponded to a no-cost extension on the project to support ongoing work and utilize remaining funds (about $10,000). These monies were directed toward salary support for the community outreach coordinator, Michelle Hernandez, who is particularly focused on serving the target audience of our Latinx community partners who are both employed in the agricultural sector and also advocate for food security and justice. Obviously the past year has been fraught with the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, on top of additional stressors in this region due to wildfires, power outages and risk of debris flows. Once quarantine was enforced, we coordinated with our community partners in Watsonville as to how to alter the protocols at the Calabasas community garden to assure safety (e.g., provide PPE) as well as retain the outdoor space for families' welfare and subsistence. The leadership and teamwork exhibited by our staff at Colleges Nine and Ten and the community partners at Calabasas was really remarkable--everyone pitched in, exhibited good judgement and care, and worked hard to maintain the garden as a vital space. For our students at UCSC, the reporting period entailed trying to maintain a sense of community with Colleges Nine and Ten and UCSC while everyone was remote. To that end, we successfully restructured most of our annual programming while reassessing our main focus and goals as we adapted our work to a virtual setting for the year. We wanted to make sure both our student staff and community felt supported, cared for, and had all the resources we could provide to support their work and education. These efforts and community engagement were guided by the challenges we were collectively facing and the feedback we received by many students through community surveys, feedback forms, and conversations with our student staff. New partnerships and collaborations were developed through these efforts. This was nonetheless a challenge because the nature of many of our collaborations and partnerships is very hands-on; however, with the support of Community Outreach Coordinator, Michelle, students did an amazing job at continuing to nurture our partnerships while organizing virtual programs and events that were relevant and beneficial to our students and community. After developing a COVID-19 safety protocol for the Calabasas Community Garden, Michelle maintained consistent communication with manager, Yolanda Perez, and provided support by purchasing and delivering safety materials monthly. Michelle also facilitated communication amongst gardeners. As the year progressed and vaccination rates increased throughout the county, Michelle began working with Colleges Nine and Ten garden club staff to develop a COVID-19 safety protocol for student staff to begin revitalizing the Colleges Nine and Ten Garden and to give access to an outdoor space to support the wellbeing and sense of community of students living on campus. As the pandemic continues, Michelle continues to work closely with Colleges Nine and Ten staff and community partners to rethink programming and events to ensure the safety and the wellbeing of our students and community. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Because of the pandemic, all engagement with students at UCSC had to happen remotely, mostly over Zoom. CLTE 92 - Social justice Issues Colloquium In past years, Alternative Spring Break (ASB) has been aimed at College Nine and College Ten students who are interested in an in-depth volunteer experience in the Santa Cruz Community. Participants explored a variety of personal, cultural and socio-economic issues through readings, reflective writing, discussions, exposure to guest speakers from Watsonville, and hands-on experiences in Watsonville. This past year, during remote instruction, ASB partnered with another program at College Nine, Intercultural Community Weekend (ICW), to create the Social Justice Colloquium. The course's learning outcomes were: Gain knowledge and understanding of current community-run social, economic, educational and environmental justice projects in Watsonville and Santa Cruz County. Appreciate the importance and power of stories of community-run justice efforts in supporting self-reflection and analytic thought regarding power, privilege and inequity. Develop intercultural awareness through interactive exercises and small group discussions facilitated by student leaders. Increase understanding of one's own identity formation, cultural competency and awareness of social justice issues. Utilize critical service learning to hone intercultural communication skills and understanding of power, privilege, and oppression. The course consisted of 7 different class meetings: 3 guest speaker sessions featuring local community leaders from Watsonville and 4 class discussion sessions. Four undergraduate students worked alongside (H)ACER Community Outreach Coordinator, Michelle Hernandez, to organize and facilitate the class during Winter and Spring quarters, respectively. The class highlighted the work of local community leaders and organizations. The first guest lecture highlighted the food justice and community work from two leaders at the Calabasas Community Garden, Yolanda Perez and Jovita Matias, who shared about their experiences in agriculture, the history of the garden, and community solidarity and culture. CLTE 35 - Introduction to (H)ACER Program & Critical Research This course serves as an introduction to the (H)ACER program at College 10 and the ideas and practices of critical research. This course aims to give students a foundation in: (1) understanding the context of the research university, and (2) developing an understanding of critical research methods developed to work with communities. This course grapples with the questions of how to conduct research in an ethical way. And how universities and communities build relationships that both recognize and are not foreclosed by histories of violence. The course pays particular attention to these power dynamics with regards to race, class, gender, and nationality. Course fulfills general elective Ethnicity and Race (ER). The course final project is a research proposal grounded in the background and theory of the class, as well as the student's own interests. CLTE 35 enrolled 20 students in 2020. The course was taught remotely using zoom and online discussion forums. Through discussion, writing assignments, feedback, and one-on-one with the instructor the students developed as critical researchers. In spite of the pandemic, the course was rigorous, and the majority of the students had positive feedback. CLTE 135 - Water Justice Water is more than merely a natural resource. In fact, its use and distribution have much to teach us about social and political relationships. These insights shaped the approach of CLTE 135, which centered critical race, Indigenous, and feminist frameworks to guide an interdisciplinary study of water and explore questions of water justice. Substantively, students learned about the historical context that shaped the irrigation of "the West", and of California more specifically, in order to consider the entanglements of modern water, settler colonial statehood and development. We studied these histories in order to understand their connections to the ongoing (mis)use of water in the present. Students also studied a water "resource" that is particularly challenging to manage and conserve, and one that is increasingly depleted across the world: groundwater. Through case studies of critically impacted groundwater basins in California, students examined how groundwater scarcity and access are disparate and related to entrenched relations of power, including but not limited to race, indigeneity, citizenship, property-ownership, gender, and class. In addition, the class supported students to develop a practice of critical reflexivity regarding their own positionalities. Students deconstructed their relationships to systems of power that structure uneven relationships to (ground)water access. By attending to the social and cultural production of our own worldviews, the class supported students to consider the worldviews and resulting relationships that are necessary to address the colonial climate crisis towards decolonial visions of sustainability. Finally, students learned from and engaged with scholars from the international research project, Transformations to Groundwater Sustainability. The final course projects invited students to learn from distinct struggles for groundwater sustainability at the global scale. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?As we end the project, the lessons learned and insights gleaned from our efforts will be disseminated through the book, Critical Campus Sustainability: Bridging Social Justice and the Environment in Higher Education, which is under contract with Springer. The book is situated at the nexus of sustainability, higher education, and social/food justice, reflecting our efforts in the past five years to develop innovative, community-engaged, student-centered co-curricular programming. Three of the chapters specifically focus on accomplishments supported by the USDA NIFA HSI grant: the development of the Apprenticeship in Community Engaged Research (H)ACER program, the establishment of the Calabasas Community Garden in Watsonville, and a reflection of one of our undergraduate students, Luna Hernandez Ramirez, who was supported under the grant and was an active participant in the food justice work in Watsonville. It is important to note that faculty, staff, former/current students, and community partners are co-authoring this work, a reflection of the values of this project which sought to elevate and center the knowledges and voices of those whose expertise is often under-recognized in the academy. We are also planning a departmental symposium for Environmental Studies in Spring 2022, once the book is completed. Our efforts will be made publicly available on the (H)ACER page as part of the Colleges Nine and Ten website. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
As this is our final report, we reflect on all the accomplishments over the life of the project. When the grant was awarded, we did not have a program at Colleges Nine and Ten that offered undergraduates the opportunity to meaningfully participate in community-engaged research and experiential learning in FANH specifically and environmental justice more broadly. This award was pivotal in supporting two positions, held by Dr. Linnea Beckett and Michelle Hernandez, as the Director and Community Outreach Coordinator, respectively, of the Apprenticeship in Community Engaged Research or (H)ACER program. (H)ACER offers lower and upper division courses, internships, research and volunteer opportunities for UCSC students, and has supported collaborations across the educational pathway, whereby elementary students and high school students in Watsonville, Kettleman City and Gonzales (all mostly Latinx, farmworker communities) have connected with undergraduates. Programs and events like our Alternative Spring Break and Dig In Conference have garnered media attention, been presented at conferences, made accessible to the public on websites, and shared in academic publications. Perhaps the most enduring accomplishment of this project is the community garden at Calabasas Elementary, which did not exist at the beginning of this grant. It is now a thriving collective space in which almost 50 Latinx families truly feel connected to, invested in, and ownership of. The school has been able to more effectively recruit teachers because of it; we have offered workshops there for scholars from across the country as part of the UCSC Community Engaged Research Institute; UCSC graduate students from the Science Communication and Social Documentary programs have been inspired to undertake projects there; and we have been awarded funding from the Spencer Foundation to undertake a research project about informal science education (see https://news.ucsc.edu/2021/06/calabasas-garden.html).
Publications
- Type:
Books
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Lu, Flora, ed. Critical Campus Sustainability: Bridging Social Justice and the Environment in Higher Education. Springer.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Submitted
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Linnea Beckett, Flora Lu, Aysha Peterson, Christopher Lang, and Michelle Hernandez. Creating Community-Engaged Learning Spaces at the University: Toward Intersectional, Equity-Oriented and Anti-Colonial Justice. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Linnea Beckett, Sheeva Sabati, Flora Lu. Reflections in Praxis: Developing Ethnographic Sensibilities, Critical Consciousness and Sense of Belonging through an Apprenticeship in Community-Engaged Research.
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (QSE)
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Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/20
Outputs
Target Audience:During the reporting period, our target audiences were predominantly underrepresented undergraduates at UCSC interested in food studies, community engagement, food justice, and garden based education. The UCSC USDA NIFA HSI project offered experiential learning, leadership opportunities, and campus/community collaborations for students through a variety of mechanisms: partnerships with predominantly farm working families at Calabasas Elementary School in Watsonville; a food justice garden class at Colleges Nine and Ten at UCSC; an Alternative Spring Break program in Watsonville; volunteer opportunities for students as part of PRAXIS, a service learning club; and research efforts with interns through the UCSC SUPERDAR (Supporting Undergraduates by Promoting Education, Research, Diversity and Agricultural Resilience) fellowships program. Most of these students are low-income, people of color who are the first generation of their families to attend university. As a result of these programs, UCSC undergraduates undertook a variety of activities, from developing and implementing garden-based curricula for the children of Watsonville and establishing a community garden for their parents to grow plants for their own food security, to assisting at Second Harvest Food Bank and collaborating with el Pajaro Community Development Corporation which supports new food entrepreneurs. Such activities not only foster greater knowledge about issues of power, class, race, and marginalization in food systems, but also expands the scope of food studies at UCSC to include issues of environmental justice, which reflects the concerns and experiences of an increasing number of UCSC students coming from diverse backgrounds. Additionally, our efforts not only impact UCSC undergraduates interested in agricultural and food studies, but high school students as well. As part of the Alternative Spring Break in Watsonville, UCSC students partnered with 20 students from Watsonville High School's youth leadership organization ECHO (Education, Community, Humanitarian, Outreach) who participated in the mural painting project and enjoyed a visit from UCSC students to their history class. Three undergraduate students also visited a senior Social Justice class at Watsonville High School and worked with students on their capstone senior projects, many of which dealt with environmental, educational and economic justice. Thus, just like last year, the UCSC project continued to make connections between elementary, high school, and college students. The project continues to forge a pipeline of interaction and exchange through various life and educational stages. We know that peer-to-peer and youth-to-youth learning is powerful, and, especially for under-represented undergraduates, opportunities to partner with community members enriches the college experience. Changes/Problems:Our in-garden programming halted due to COVID-19 in spring 2020. Our student leaders redirected their efforts to enhancing the After School Program Internship (CLTE 30). Through this work, student leaders continue to develop a garden based science curriculum that will highlight community leaders and their agricultural knowledge. Additionally, students and staff are focused in the development of a garden manual for the Calabasas Community Garden that would support and facilitate all activities and maintenance of the garden. Community Outreach Coordinator, Michelle Hernandez,continues to support the Calabasas Community Garden Manager by providing safety materials such as hand sanitizer, masks, and gloves for all garden families on a monthly basis. Our staff effortsare also focused in finding newways of effectivelyoffering virtual programming and support to all our students. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Students participating in our food justice programming are able to take a variety of courses that hone their academic, methodological, and professional development. They can also participate in our five-day Alternative Spring Break which focuses on issues of food justice in Watsonville and fosters intergenerational and intercultural dialogue. Although ASB was not available this past reporting period, CLTE 135 and CLTE 136 were available in the Fall and Winter. CLTE 135: Water Justice (5-units). This course introduces students to the study of groundwater sustainability, a resource that is increasingly depleted across the world. Students examine the complex tensions that shape groundwater management and agricultural production through local, national, and international case studies, with a particular focus on the California context. Students are introduced to critical race and feminist methodologies, and are supported to engage in qualitive research. CLTE 136: Methodologies of Critical Practice (5-units). Considers an ethic of engaging with communities that honors existing knowledges and integrates them into community-engaged action plans and research strategies. Explores questions and tensions critical scholars must consider when building socially just community partnerships. Research methods that have emerged from social movement (critical power mapping, direction action, art, interviews, and ethnography) are expanded on. Draws on critical university studies that unsettles universities as singular/progressive knowledge producers. Students developed research questions and projects, many of which continued the work they were already doing in their own communities of struggle. CLTE 98-01: Alternative Spring Break (2-units). Students apply for and must be selected to participate in the ASB program. In Winter Quarter, students attend a retreat where they engage in group activities and discuss assigned readings. They also hear from a panel of local leaders in the city of Watsonville. The 2019 ASB took place from March 23 to 27. The majority of the 25 undergraduate participants were Latinos, the two student co-leads were both Latino, and the two videographers were Latina. Students undertook a variety of activities in Watsonville: mural painting, working at community gardens at Calabasas Elementary, sorting food at Second Harvest Food Bank, and assisting food entrepreneurs at the Community Kitchen Incubator through El Pajaro Community Development Corporation. 20 ECHO youth leaders from Watsonville High School also participated, as did ten members of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), a Friends Group at UCSC comprised of local retirees. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?During Fall welcome week, our program's student leaders and Community Outreach Coordinator participated in a Leadership Fair organized by all the units in Colleges Nine and Ten for new freshman undergraduates. Students developed a presentation and presented to 16 different groups of 50 incoming freshman students at Colleges Nine and Ten, 800 students total. Michelle Hernandez began the presentation introducing our food and environmental justice programming, its goals, and all the different levels of involvement available for students. ASB, PRAXIS, Garden Club, and the Calabasas After School Program student leaders each spoke about their program, the work they do, and their journey through leadership roles.? Community Outreach Coordinator, Michelle Hernandez spoke to Cabrillo College students about our Food and Environmental Justice programming and the work at Calabasas Community Garden as a guest speaker for the Food and Culture Anthropology class taught by Dr. Rachel Mitchell. Presentation included all the different ways students in Cabrillo can participate and stay informed about the work in the Community Garden and (H)ACER. Students are invited to participate in community work days and events. Ms. Hernandez was also a guest speaker at Watsonville High School's college week. She spoke about the community engaged research project at the Calabasas Community Garden and different opportunities available for students to engage with research and community work. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?One of our main activities, training and supporting our scholarship recipient Erika Luna Hernandez Ramirez, will be complete at the end of August 2020. As a first-generation college student from an economically disadvantaged background, Luna continued to apply her research training in community-engaged research methodologies to her work as program lead of the Calabasas After-School Enrichment Program. With her responsibilities as program lead she decided to conclude her auto-ethnographic paper that she presented at the Anthropology conference in Vancouver at the end of last year, and instead shift her focus and energy to strengthen the Calabasas After-School program which included research to enhance the garden curriculum, research to enhance the program structure, and research to introduce pedagogical approaches and theories to improve the outcomes of the program. She created a garden manual that brought together her research on curriculum and pedagogy, where she incorporated three learning philosophies (1) nurturing critical thinking skills (2) anti-racist & social-justice education (3) knowing and learning where we stand, and a positive discipline learning approach. These learning philosophies and learning approach guided the program towards reflecting on how students were learning and made way for an environment that shifted its focus from how much material students were receiving to instead a focus on relationships. Luna also created an evaluation for the program to assure that the program is continuing to reflect on it's approach and creating a space where students co-create not only the program's curriculum but also the program's structure. Luna also created a program-lead training for the new and incoming program leads to assure the continuation of the research and that the program continues to reflect on best practices and approaches to continue to improve and strengthen the program.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
American Anthropological Assciation (AAA) Conference Presentation:Members of the USDA NIFA HSI team traveled to Vancouver in late November 2019 to present at the American Anthropological Association's Annual Meeting in a panel co-chaired by Drs. Flora Lu and Linnea Beckett. Our panel was entitled, "Pedagogies of Environmental Justice to Imagine Alternative Sustainabilities," and sponsored by Council for Anthropology of Education's Committee 13 on Science and Environmental Education. The panel examined locals in and around UC Santa Cruz (UCSC) as sites of inquiry, contestation, and innovation on issues of sustainability and environmental justice. Our panel was grounded on the premise that that all people learn through their upbringing how to relate to land, landscapes, and natural resources in specific ways. These 'teachings' are conveyed through a myriad of sources (e.g., family, history, ancestors, community, schooling, society, etc.), which then shape relationships with nature, food production, and society at large. As such, we learn which landscapes and spaces are worthier of stewardship, by whom, and through what interventions; we also intuit where the sacrifice zones are and who are relegated to bearing the disproportionate burdens of environmental degradation. We then argue that sustainability and environmental justice are inherently pedagogical endeavors: certain epistemologies take center stage as futures are envisioned, championed, or foreclosed. The panel examined three different contexts with an eye toward the pedagogies that seek visions of sustainability and environmental justice that center non-dominant knowledges, world views and lived experiences. Drs. Lu and Beckett focused on curricular and co-curricular innovations around sustainability education at UCSC, afforded by the USDA NIFA HSI grant. They talked about coursework and programming efforts that have centered issues of race, class, culture, LGBTQ+, and other identities as they intersect with environmental concerns. The exciting element of the panel was that besides Lu, Beckett and discussant Dr. Constanza Ocampo-Raeder from Carleton College, all the other panel participants were students, both graduate and undergraduate students with varying levels of participation in the USDA NIFA HSI grant. Two of the presentations focused on our community garden project at Calabasas Elementary (97% Latinx student body) in Watsonville, a project made possible by the USDA NIFA HSI grant. UCSC alumna Michelle Hernández, who works with Calabasas Elementary School in Watsonville as (H)ACER's Community Outreach Coordinator, gave a talk that explored how community members from a diverse Mexican diaspora learn with each other through gardening together. Undergraduate and USDA NIFA intern Erika Luna Hernández Ramirez provided a decolonial critique of place-based school garden science education and offers questions and insights to guide garden-based science education toward anti-racist and decolonial practices. Two other graduate students discussed issues of diversity and inclusion in Environmental Studies, drawing upon what they learned through the classes mounted through the USDA NIFA HSI grant. All Hallows Eve Event at UCSC -On October 25th, 2019 over 150 family members from Watsonville (Calabasas Elementary students and their families) came to UCSC for an evening of crafts, games, trick or treating, music, and bonding with undergraduates. A mainstage program during dinner involved a presentation by Michelle Hernandez, and Calabasas Elementary School in Watsonville community garden leader Yolanda Perez and the screening of "Las Semillas También Tienen Memoria" a film about the community and communal corn planting in Calabasas Community Garden by film graduate student, Jeanne Lieberman. This event proves to be one of the best ways to recruit gardeners for the community garden. UCSC was able to host double the amount of families from prior years due to support from our undergraduate student volunteers and Colleges Nine and Ten staff. Calabasas After school program - The Calabasas After School Program class, which was previously an independent study class, was added to the College Ten courses as an official internship class, CLTE 30 for fall 2019. USDA NIFA HSI funded undergraduate researcher Erika Hernandez and undergraduate interns were integral in developing the garden-based curriculum which supports this effort. In the fall, eleven undergraduate students, our largest class size so far, worked in the after school garden enrichment program and supported programming in the one-acre school and community garden with about 55 elementary students varying from 3rd to 4th grade. CES community garden - Community Outreach Coordinator, Michelle Hernandez, and Garden Manager, Yolanda Perez continued to work together to support families, projects, and programming in the garden. This year they expanded the garden by making space for 10 new plots. This allowed the garden to serve more families from the growing waiting list. There are 48 families with signed contracts in the Community Garden, the largest number of families since the garden's founding in 2017. Before the pandemic, our community was able to hold monthly community meetings and our annual community workday to plant corn and pumpkins in two big communal plots. When shelter in place was established, all admin gathered to discuss and implement new protocol and guidelines for continuing access to the community garden, as an essential space that provides food for the community. Eighty-five percent of all families continue to tend their gardens. All community members are required to follow all safety guidelines to visit the garden. PRAXIS Student Club - PRAXIS student leader, Fuey Saefong worked with Michelle Hernandez and Yolanda Perez to organize 4 successful student and community work days in the fall and winter quarters at the Calabasas Community Garden. PRAXIS undergraduate students were able to work in the garden alongside community members to prepare for the season planting. Fuey and Michelle began efforts to fundraise for the construction of a greenhouse at the community garden. When the pandemic began, the fundraiser was redirected to financially support garden families most impacted by the pandemic. Alternative Spring Break (ASB) planning and cancellation -ASB week was cancelled due to the pandemic, however under the supervision of Director Linnea Beckett, undergraduate student leaders Kayla Gomez and Sean Butawan worked hard to organize all aspects of the class. Students outreached and worked with community leaders and organizations to plan each day with the best intentions for meaningful collaborations. The planned week included: A workday alongside local gardeners and elementary students in the Calabasas community garden; a day of cooking and preparing food with local entrepreneurs in the El Pajaro CDC Kitchen Incubator; an open discussion forum with high school students from Watsonville High; and the Annual Community Mural painting Day with the Monterey Bay Murals Project & community members. The class was fully enrolled and the mini retreat, held a month before ASB week, was successfully organized and attended by all ASB members, OLLI, and community leaders Yolanda Perez and Carmen Herrera.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Flora Lu. Sustainability perceptions and efforts toward greater environmental inclusion at UCSC. Presentation at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting. Vancouver, Canada as part of the panel, Pedagogies of Environmental Justice to Imagine Alternative Sustainabilities, Co-Chairs: Flora Lu and Linnea Beckett, University of California Santa Cruz. November 23, 2019.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Linnea Beckett. Undergraduate Students Imaginings of Sustainable Futures at UC Santa Cruz. Presentation at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting. Vancouver, Canada as part of the panel, Pedagogies of Environmental Justice to Imagine Alternative Sustainabilities, Co-Chairs: Flora Lu and Linnea Beckett, University of California Santa Cruz. November 23, 2019.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Erika Luna Hernandez Ramirez: Decolonizing Garden-Based Science Education. Presentation at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting. Vancouver, Canada as part of the panel, Pedagogies of Environmental Justice to Imagine Alternative Sustainabilities, Co-Chairs: Flora Lu and Linnea Beckett, University of California Santa Cruz. November 23, 2019.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Michelle Hern�ndez: Co-Producing Abundance in a Community Garden. Presentation at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting. Vancouver, Canada as part of the panel, Pedagogies of Environmental Justice to Imagine Alternative Sustainabilities, Co-Chairs: Flora Lu and Linnea Beckett, University of California Santa Cruz. November 23, 2019.
|
Progress 09/01/18 to 08/31/19
Outputs
Target Audience:During the reporting period, our target audiences were predominantly underrepresented undergraduates at UCSC interested in food studies, community engagement, food justice, and garden based education. The UCSC USDA NIFA HSI project offered experiential learning, leadership opportunities, and campus/community collaborations for students through a variety of mechanisms: partnerships with predominantly farm working families at Calabasas Elementary School in Watsonville; a food justice garden class at Colleges Nine and Ten at UCSC; an Alternative Spring Break program in Watsonville; volunteer opportunities for students as part of PRAXIS, a service learning club; and research efforts with interns through the UCSC SUPERDAR (Supporting Undergraduates by Promoting Education, Research, Diversity and Agricultural Resilience) fellowships program. Most of these students are low-income, people of color who are the first generation of their families to attend university. As a result of these programs, UCSC undergraduates undertook a variety of activities, from developing and implementing garden-based curricula for the children of Watsonville and establishing a community garden for their parents to grow plants for their own food security, to assisting at Second Harvest Food Bank and collaborating with el Pajaro Community Development Corporation which supports new food entrepreneurs. Such activities not only foster greater knowledge about issues of power, class, race, and marginalization in food systems, but also expands the scope of food studies at UCSC to include issues of environmental justice, which reflects the concerns and experiences of an increasing number of UCSC students coming from diverse backgrounds. Additionally, our efforts not only impact UCSC undergraduates interested in agricultural and food studies, but high school students as well. As part of the Alternative Spring Break in Watsonville, UCSC students partnered with 20 students from Watsonville High School's youth leadership organization ECHO (Education, Community, Humanitarian, Outreach) who participated in the mural painting project and enjoyed a visit from UCSC students to their history class. Three undergraduate students also visited a senior Social Justice class at Watsonville High School and worked with students on their capstone senior projects, many of which dealt with environmental, educational and economic justice. Thus, just like last year, the UCSC project continued to make connections between elementary, high school, and college students. The project continues to forge a pipeline of interaction and exchange through various life and educational stages. We know that peer-to-peer and youth-to-youth learning is powerful, and, especially for under-represented undergraduates, opportunities to partner with community members enriches the college experience. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?In addition to internships, students participating in (H)ACER can take advantage of a variety of courses that hone their academic, methodological, and professional development. They can also participate in our five-day Alternative Spring Break which focuses on issues of food justice in Watsonville and fosters inter-generational and inter-cultural dialogue. CLTE 98-01: Alternative Spring Break (2-units). Students apply for and must be selected to participate in the ASB program. In Winter Quarter, students attend a retreat where they engage in group activities and discuss assigned readings. They also hear from a panel of local leaders in the city of Watsonville. The 2019 ASB took place from March 23 to 27. The majority of the 25 undergraduate participants were Latinos, the two student co-leads were both Latino, and the two videographers were Latina. Students undertook a variety of activities in Watsonville: mural painting, working at community gardens at Calabasas Elementary, sorting food at Second Harvest Food Bank, and assisting food entrepreneurs at the Community Kitchen Incubator through El Pajaro Community Development Corporation. 20 ECHO youth leaders from Watsonville High School also participated, as did ten members of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), a Friends Group at UCSC comprised of local retirees. CLTE 135: Apprenticeship in Community Engagement (5-units). This course introduced students to the historical and theoretical foundations of qualitative research methods. Students receive hands-on research training, consider the complexities of community-engaged research methodologies and investigate relationships between settler colonialism and present institutional arrangements in Santa Cruz County. This course explores the underlying beliefs and values laden in dominant practices of environmentalism and sustainability. Students conducted place-based research projects across campus to deconstruct discourses of sustainability, well-being and belonging. CLTE 136: Methodologies of Critical Practice (5-units). Considers an ethic of engaging with communities that honors existing knowledges and integrates them into community-engaged action plans and research strategies. Explores questions and tensions critical scholars must consider when building socially just community partnerships. Research methods that have emerged from social movement (critical power mapping, direction action, art, interviews, and ethnography) are expanded on. Draws on critical university studies that unsettles university as singular/progressive knowledge producer. Students developed research questions and projects, many of which continued the work they were already doing in their own communities of struggle. (H)ACER runs three courses: CLTE 135, 136 and 98-01 (H)ACER courses train students in ethnography research internships introduce students to data collection such as field notes ands participant observations ASB students had the opportunity to present their work during final presentations event Students in all (H)ACER programming had the opportunity to present on their work during the June 5th Student Experience and Recognitions event. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The USDA-funded conference at Colleges Nine and Ten was the inspiration for an entire panel we organized at the 117th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in San Jose, CA from November 14-18, 2018. Our oral presentation session, "DIG IN: Cultivating Resilience and Inclusion in Alternative Food Justice Settings," occurred on Sunday, November 18, 2018 from 10:15am to 12:00pm. Linnea Beckett presented a paper based on the USDA NIFA HSI grant entitled, "Designing Learning Spaces at Universities Toward Food Justice: Reflections and Future Considerations." The paper examined how the conference organizers operationalized a definition of diversity that intentionally unsettled the epistemic hierarchies that construct the fields of knowledge about food, the environment and environmental justice. The paper drew from critical and indigenous scholars in the learning sciences to explore the relationship building in the process of creating and convening the conference. The paper concludes that the conference emerged as a space of epistemic openness, which ' privileged multiple sources of authority and meaning and treated students' sense making as valid and full of potential" (Bang & Vossoughi). Efforts to forge anti-racist, inclusive and resilient food justice efforts must not only encapsulate socio-ecological connections but also dynamics of power and positionality. Authors are well poised to continue to explore how the frameworks of learning sciences can help us carefully design learning spaces at universities toward more diversified notions of food and justice. After the Alternative Spring Break program in late March, the undergraduate participants and Osher Lifelong Learners re-convened on April 13, 2019 for a dissemination event at Colleges Nine and Ten's Community Room. The student co-leads gave a presentation followed by words of appreciation from retirees from OLLI. Then attendees, which included Watsonville residents, took part in two gallery walks where students presented their final papers/art projects. One of the highlights of the event was the unveiling of the ASB video, available at: https://youtu.be/rsSaT7txUM8 Every year, units at UC Santa Cruz take part in Student Achievement Week during which students are recognized for their achievements in research and scholarship, from art exhibitions and theatre productions to poster sessions. For the first time, Colleges Nine and Ten put on an event on June 5, 2019 entitled, "Centering Student and Community Experiences in Research." Oral presentations were given by Dr. Beckett, Michelle Hernandez, Luna Hernandez, and Calabasas Community Garden manager and Watsonville resident Yolanda Perez. ASB co-leads Ramon Ayala and Rutilo Rodriguez shared their experiences of the program and showed the video. Then attendees visited various tables to talk with students who took part in the CLTE 135 and 136 classes, Watsonville High School educational equity program, and ASB. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the final year of the HSI grant, we will undertake two main activities: continue the training and support of our scholarship recipient, Luna Hernandez, who is a first-generation college student from an economically disadvantaged background. Luna is the (H)ACER program undergraduate student researcher that has taken both the CLTE 135 and CLTE 136 research training courses. Luna is applying her research training in community-engaged research methodologies to an autoethnography that is examining garden-based science education through a decolonial framework, to complicate the assumed colonial relationships, cultural constructs, and understandings of Land that are predominant in place-based garden education programs. Luna is drawing upon her own experiences with the nationally recognized garden education program, Life Lab, and her current and ongoing work with the Calabasas Community Garden and the Calabasas After-School Program. Another part to her research is the development of an anti-colonial, anti-racist garden curriculum for the Calabasas After-School Program. She will also continue to assist the garden managers, Michelle Hernandez and Yolanda Perez, at the Calabasas Community Garden. Additionally, we are planning a research workshop in late Winter or early Spring Quarter in which graduate students, junior scholars and faculty share food studies-related research pieces in progress and receive feedback. The workshop will center the efforts of people of color, women scholars and junior scholars. A few senior faculty will participate to offer insight and networking possibilities. Papers in preparation will be shared in advance of the workshop, and then the actual time together will be utilized for providing feedback and engaging in intellectual discussion. Beyond the actual workshop, our expectation is that relationships begun and strengthened during the time together will lead to future collaborations such as conference panels, grant proposals, edited volumes and other co-authorships.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Through USDA support and our hard work to date, this past year witnessed the establishment of a new program, one that connects various classes, internships, research opportunities, and garden spaces under a cohesive vision of food and environmental justice. The importance of USDA/NIFA HSI funding in making this possible cannot be overstated: it has generated a great deal of excitement and momentum around the issue of food justice both on the UCSC campus and in the larger Santa Cruz County, from the organizing of a day-long conference in 2018 entitled "Dig In: Cultivating Inclusive Approaches to Food Justice" in early March 2018 (please see our report from last year) to the formation of teaching and community gardens at Calabasas Elementary School in Watsonville. Now these efforts have been transformed into a unit that provides structural support and visibility on campus and beyond. PI Lu is provost of Colleges Nine and Ten, the youngest of the ten residential colleges that distinguish UCSC from other UC campuses. Through courses and programming, Colleges Nine and Ten foster a living-and-learning space for students to grow as a critically- thinking, globally-conscious, and justice/equity-minded community. Colleges Nine and Ten have a wide array of courses, programs, and opportunities for interdisciplinary and community engagement, scaffolded to be developmentally appropriate as students move through the university. A 2018 UCSC Institutional Engagement Study found that students feel disconnected from the community as well as disconnected from other majors outside of their own. Many students report a desire to extend beyond the university walls but are unsure how to do so or how that fits into their experience at UCSC. The new program is called the Apprenticeship in Community Engaged Research, or (H)ACER (https://collegeten.ucsc.edu/hacer/index.html). It is housed in College Ten, whose theme is Social Justice and Community. Dr. Linnea Beckett, who earned her PhD from UCSC in Education and worked on this grant as the food justice coordinator, serves as Director of (H)ACER. Michelle Hernandez, UCSC alumna and former intern for SUPERDAR, is (H)ACER's Community Outreach Coordinator. Together we initiated an interdisciplinary, community-engaged program designed to train undergraduate students to become culturally responsive and critically minded researchers and social actors. (H)ACER is built on an apprenticeship model, which entails learning with others, learning in situ, and learning by doing. Apprenticeship rarely happens exclusively in the classroom and requires varying activities that supports diversified student engagement. The (H)ACER program offers a scaffolded, developmentally appropriate pathway to distinction for students that integrates community service, methodological and ethical training, experiential learning, and undergraduate research mentored by faculty. We have built relationships with a select few schools and community organizations in Watsonville with whom we have developed research and action projects around themes of educational equity, connection to place, food justice and sovereignty and imagining sustainable futures. Our program design positions students in conversation with their peers, faculty, staff and community members in unique and potentially transformative ways. Through (H)ACER, students can journey along a pathway of academic distinction that changes and deepens over time. For example, students can get involved through 2-unit opportunities that expose them to the world beyond campus, such as internships in which they work in our after school garden program, support programming in the one-acre school and community garden, intern in a social justice high school classroom. or work with a local community based organization affiliated with (H)ACER. In each of these contexts, the students work next to teachers, high school students and community members to develop cutting-edge curriculum for an after school program, support high school students with their community-engaged projects and build a thriving community garden. Students read relevant academic texts and explore their own role at these sites and work with their partners. Developed two new courses that prepare students ethically, methodologically, and conceptually to undertake research about food and social justice in partnership with communities like Watsonville CLTE 135 & 136 Students were guided by questions such as, 'What is research?' and 'What does sustainability look like on campus?' to develop a research project that studied discourses of sustainability on campus. Students unpacked and theorized the term. They also explored how research can support hands-on investigation on their very own campus. The (H)ACER Program continues to provide opportunities for community engagement and service learning around issues of food security and justice for UCSC students, including: The Alternative Spring Break program, previously under the leadership of the colleges Service Learning Program. Through (H)ACER we were able to innovate the ASB program to incorporate more academically rigorous activities in collaboration with our existing community partners. Program Director Linnea Beckett worked with two Latinx, first generation, men throughout the year to organize the program with the intention of re-defining "service learning." Our goal was to innovate ASB to support strengthen our relationships with our community partners while evoking and facilitating conversations around positionality and identity in "service learning work" in relationship to the different pressing issues present in our communities. Each day of the program was organized with meaningful intentions to center collaborations that are beneficial on both sides. Students undertook a variety of activities in Watsonville: learning from and working with El Pajaro CDC Kitchen Incubator food entrepreneurs, working with and learning from the community in the Calabasas Community Garden, mural painting the walls of non-profit Pajaro Valley Prevention with local muralist Paul DeWorken, engaging with Watsonville High School students in history dialogue, networking and learning about nonprofit Digital Nest, and engaging in conversations about food access and injustices while sorting food at Second Harvest Food Bank. Please see our 2019 ASB video: https://youtu.be/rsSaT7txUM8 Volunteer opportunities at Calabasas Elementary School's community garden for students involved in PRAXIS, Colleges Nine and Ten's service learning club. The Calabasas Community Garden flourished this past year with families growing healthy, culturally meaning food in over 45 (15 feet by 15 feet) garden plots. These families are organizing themselves, building a greater sense of community, and becoming more engaged with the school. In addition to the family and classroom plots, the garden now encompasses fruit trees, a compost area, communal corn and pumpkin patches, and a teacher shed. A Hallows Eve event on October 26th, 2018 where over 150 people from Watsonville (Calabasas Elementary students and their families) came to UCSC for an evening of crafts, games, trick or treating, music, and bonding with undergraduate volunteers. A mainstage program during dinner involved a presentation by Linnea Beckett, Flora Lu, Michelle Hernandez, and Calabasas Elementary School in Watsonville community garden leader Yolanda Perez. This year we were also able to raffle Halloween pumpkins freshly harvested from the Calabasas Community Garden pumpkin patch. This was our most successful year by far, hosting almost double the amount of families we have been able to before and receiving amazing support from our undergraduate student volunteers and Colleges Nine and Ten staff.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/17 to 08/31/18
Outputs
Target Audience:During the reporting period, our target audiences were predominantly underrepresented undergraduates at UCSC interested in food studies, community engagement, food justice, and garden based education. The UCSC USDA NIFA HSI project offered experiential learning, leadership opportunities, and campus/community collaborations for students through a variety of mechanisms: a food justice conference attended by over 500 students, faculty and community members (we estimate 350 undergraduates); partnerships with predominantly farm working families at Calabasas Elementary School in Watsonville; a food justice garden class at Colleges Nine and Ten at UCSC; an Alternative Spring Break program in Watsonville; volunteer opportunities for students as part of PRAXIS, a service learning club; and research efforts with four interns through the UCSC SUPERDAR (Supporting Undergraduates by Promoting Education, Research, Diversity and Agricultural Resilience) fellowships program. Most of these students are low-income, people of color who are the first generation of their families to attend university. As a result of these programs, UCSC undergraduates undertook a variety of activities, from developing and implementing garden-based curricula for the children of Watsonville and establishing a community garden for their parents to grow plants for their own food security, to assisting at Second Harvest Food Bank and supporting the efforts of Center for Farmworker Families in Watsonville. Such activities not only foster greater knowledge about issues of power, class, race, and marginalization in food systems, but also expands the scope of food studies at UCSC to include issues of environmental justice, which reflects the concerns and experiences of an increasing number of UCSC students coming from diverse backgrounds. Additionally, our efforts not only impact UCSC undergraduates interested in agricultural and food studies, but high school students as well. As part of the Alternative Spring Break in Watsonville, UCSC students partnered with 20 students from Watsonville High School's youth leadership organization ECHO (Education, Community, Humanitarian, Outreach) who collaborated on the mural painting project and enjoyed a visit from UCSC students to their social justice class. Additionally, through the Environmental Justice Youth Leadership Academy through our subcontractor Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, a group of 17 youth from the rural agricultural towns of Kettleman City and Gonzales visited UCSC on July 21, 2018. They participated in a day of presentations and panel discussions about pathways to higher education, pesticide drift, food and economic insecurity, and traditional ecological knowledge; a campus tour; and lunch at the Colleges Nine and Ten dining hall. Thus, just like last year, the UCSC project continued to make connections between elementary, high school, and college students. They, and members of local communities, represent our target audiences. Changes/Problems:When we wrote the proposal, Rich Casale was the long-time director at the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service in Capitola, CA. He retired soon thereafter, and other staff members retired as well. In communication with District Conservationist Whit Haraguchi, he stated that he was severely short staffed, managing the office by himself and unable to take on an undergraduate intern. We request to repurpose funding from the USDA undergraduate intern line item to support ongoing efforts of our food justice coordinator, which can include bringing NRCS representatives to UCSC to talk about job opportunities. Currently, the funding for the food justice coordinator will run out, precisely at a time when we can really use this position to continue to build and institutionalize campus-community programming, taking advantage of the momentum we have built. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Students participating in the UCSC project funded by USDA NIFA have had multiple opportunities for training and professional development, scaffolded towards their level of academic preparation. For students early in their undergraduate career, opportunities to engage in food justice related programs and events such as Alternative Spring Break or PRAXIS give students first-hand understandings about issues like food insecurity while also improving their problem solving, teamwork, communication, and other 21st century skills. At the DIG IN conference, undergraduates presented posters, were keynote speakers and panelists, and delivered workshops about topics such as campus food insecurity and UCSC garden spaces and whiteness. Our interns working in Watsonville have presented at conferences, helped to develop and implement their own research projects about topics such as Latina food knowledge and cultural competency in garden based educational curricula. One of the interns working in the Watsonville program has since graduated and now is employed as a community outreach coordinator, leveraging her Spanish skills, familiarity with the farmworker families, knowledge about decolonial food movements, and expertise about community engagement. Her professionalization now includes meeting with campus representatives and community partners, helping to support undergraduates, and most of all, building strong involvement and collective governance at the Watsonville community garden. For graduate students, our project has enabled them to hone their skills in event organizing, communication with on- and off-campus partners, public speaking, and networking. During the DIG IN conference, a group of about five graduate students, most from the Environmental Studies Department, were involved in envisioning and organizing the day's events, from interactive activities to selection of speakers. They assisted with the evaluation of the event, recording interviews with attendees. They presented their own food studies research at the poster presentation and disseminated research they helped implement assessing student experiences with food insecurity and hunger. After the conference, two of them applied for a Chancellor's Graduate Internship Program fellowship to work on mapping UCSC's various food studies and advocacy efforts and spaces. Another graduate student, who was instrumental in bringing an African American vegan scholar and activist to speak at DIG IN became immersed in the literature about race and food studies and subsequently was awarded funding to undertake preliminary research about veganism in historically black communities in New Orleans. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The opening mainstage event from the Dig In conference is available on the website (https://diginfoodjustice.wordpress.com) for the public to enjoy. As mentioned above, part of our dissemination efforts are to present our efforts at national conferences. On Friday, July 27, 2018, Flora Lu, Linnea Beckett, and SUPERDAR intern Michelle Hernandez gave a presentation entitled, "Creating Community Engaged, Inclusive Conversations about Food Justice" at the Sustainable Agriculture Education Association (SAEA) Conference in West Oahu, HI. This presentation drew upon the DIG IN conference and the understandings of food justice conveyed by some of our Latinx and indigenous speakers. We shared successful practices, design elements, and pedagogical approaches from this effort. Many of the attendees of this presentation were indigenous youth who were part of a parallel gathering, Ho??la ??ina O M??ilik?kahi Youth Food Sovereignty Congress. Additionally, the USDA-funded conference at Colleges Nine and Ten was the inspiration for an entire panel accepted at the 117th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association to be held in San Jose, CA from November 14-18, 2018. Our oral presentation session will be on Sunday, November 18, 2018 from 10:15am to 12:00pm and is entitled, "DIG IN: Cultivating Resilience and Inclusion in Alternative Food Justice Settings. Linnea Beckett will be presenting a paper based on the USDA NIFA HSI grant entitled, "Designing Learning Spaces at Universities Toward Food Justice: Reflections and Future Considerations." What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the year ahead, we will continue with conducting various food studies research projects in Watsonville, working closely with student investigators and supporting their data collection, analysis, write up and dissemination as senior theses. In terms of publications, we plan on revising the papers presented at our American Anthropological Association. The zine that students contributed to as part of the DIG IN conference will also be completed and posted on the website. We will innovate the Alternative Spring Break program to incorporate more academically rigorous activities in collaboration with community partners, and will develop two new courses that prepare students ethically, methodologically, and conceptually to undertake research about food and social justice in partnership with communities like Watsonville. We will expand our outreach and publicity efforts to recruit students to get involved with opportunities such as the Colleges Nine and Ten Garden, the Calabasas Elementary School after-school garden program, and the Calabasas community garden.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The DIG IN conference exemplifies our goal of implementing co-curricular programs at UCSC that expand the discussion around food studies to include issues such as decolonization and indigenous sovereignty, community led initiatives to promote sustainable and just food economies, and intersectionality around issues of race, gender, and agriculture. By rendering more visible student experiences of hunger and food insecurity on campus, as well as student-led efforts to alleviate these problems, we document the experiences of predominantly underrepresented students. The impact of the conference can be seen by the feedback we received from attendees, which included these comments: "I guess what's inspired me is the depth of the honesty about how people are bringing up topics. The language they're using. And, the confrontation of racism...I'm-I'm very involved in community gardens and hunger and, so the fact that this is really focusing on those issues- poverty, hunger, and food... I have a degree in nutritional biochemistry and pharmacology so food is really very essential to my intellectual life and my professional life." "One thing that inspired me about this conference so far is just the fact that we're giving, um, a stage to people whose voices and opinions don't get really listened to a lot, or that just get bypassed and overshadowed by the main discourse, so I'm really excited to hear from different people with different perspectives than what you're used to listening to in the sustainability area." "I think what was most impactful was how much, how much intention was put in this conference to talk about some really kinda like heavy topics that are really hard to grapple with at an individual matter but when you can bring so many people together and have these difficult conversations, it's pretty inspiring. It makes you realize like solutions are all about coming together." "I learned more history about indigenous-engineered agroecological systems, Lyla June's story about the Eastern Chestnut forests. I learned more personal anecdotes of my community that dealt with the meaning of sharing food, gardening and farming, and health/self-care, which are very beautiful and bring happiness." "I learned that I want to be more explicit about confronting issues of racism and classism within my workplace. I work for a nonprofit that aims to relieve food insecurity. We mainly work with low-income communities of color, however nearly all of our staff in leadership positions are white and only speak English. I was inspired by the common use of terms like "settler colonialism" and "white supremacy" at the Dig In conference, and I am learning to incorporate them more in discussions at work." "The food justice visions outlined in this conference did well at honoring economic realities, especially the reality of class in California. To highlight community entrepreneurship and alternative economies of trade and production (traditional indigenous ecological knowledge, participation from local farmers) kept the conversations grounded in the present moment and present resistance to capitalist hyper-commodification of bodies, seeds and stories. Sometimes food justice & environmental justice conferences/scholarship uplifts incomplete visions that have jumped too far ahead of themselves into a tenuous and romanticized "post-money" future without offering stepping stones from here to there. I believe this is a function of academics, landed in the upper/middle class, being insulated from the economic realities they aim to interrogate. This conference did well to break down that pattern." "This conference was so well-organized. Every workshop, speaker, and table was enjoyable and inspiring. I am not familiar with UCSC programming, so I don't know how this conference compares. But it was clear that this event was organized by very honest people with good hearts. Thank you for gathering so many people to learn about this important work." We have provided opportunities for community engagement and service learning around issues of food security and justice for UCSC students, including: The 2018 Alternative Spring Break program organized by the Colleges Nine and Ten Service Learning Program (March 24-28, 2018). The majority of the 25 undergraduate participants were Latinos, and the two student co-leads were both Latina. Students undertook a variety of activities in Watsonville: mural painting, gathering donations for low income families, working at community gardens at Calabasas Elementary and Mesa Verde Gardens, sorting food at Second Harvest Food Bank, and sharing a meal and stories with farmworkers. 20 ECHO youth leaders from Watsonville High School also participated, as did ten members of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, a Friends Group at UCSC comprised of local retirees. Please see a video of ASB 2018 at https://youtu.be/ATXUmDPveaM Volunteer opportunities at Calabasas Elementary School's community garden for students involved in PRAXIS, Colleges Nine and Ten's service learning club. The Calabasas Community Garden flourished this past year with families growing healthy, culturally meaning food in over 45 (15 feet by 15 feet) garden plots. These families are organizing themselves, building a greater sense of community, and becoming more engaged with the school. A Hallows Eve event on October 27, 2017 where over 100 people from Watsonville (Calabasas Elementary students and their families) came to UCSC for an evening of crafts, games, trick or treating, music, and bonding with undergraduate volunteers. A mainstage program during dinner involved a presentation by Linnea Beckett, Flora Lu, two SUPERDAR students, and Calabasas Elementary School in Watsonville community garden leader Yolanda Perez. Other significant accomplishments during this reporting year included: Implementation of the food justice undergraduate course, which was taught to 30 undergraduates (the class size limit) in Spring 2018. Students visited other gardens on campus, the Amah Mutsun ethnobotanical relearning program at the UCSC Arboretum, the UCSC Farm and Garden and Mesa Verde Community Gardens. Further development of the Colleges Nine and Ten garden on campus as a site of experiential learning and celebration of diverse food cultures. Students designed, built and planted annuals and perennials and organized a cover crop to enrich the soil. Continuation of a leadership team for the Colleges Nine and Ten garden club comprised of LBGTQ and undergraduate students of color. In collaboration with the SUPERDAR program at UCSC, the three women of color undergraduates continued working at the Calabasas Community Garden and After School Discovery Garden to design and implement innovative curriculum and organize Latinx families to govern the community garden. We traveled with the undergraduate students to the Sustainable Agricultural Education Association Biannual Conference in Oahu, Hawaii to present on USDA-funded efforts and undergraduate research at UC Santa Cruz. We are working with CRECE, a social science evaluation center led by Education Professor Kip Tellez, to develop evaluation instruments to assess student sense of belonging at an institution of higher education. This project is innovative in that we seek to better understanding if and how food-related programs and events that are salient to the identities and experiences of underrepresented students can increase their sense of belonging, retention and success at university.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/16 to 08/31/17
Outputs
Target Audience:During the reporting period, our target audiences were predominantly under-represented undergraduates at UCSC interested in food studies, community engagement, food justice, and garden based education. The UCSC USDA NIFA HSI project offered experiential learning, leadership opportunities, and campus/community collaborations for students through a variety of mechanisms: an after-school, garden based educational program with youth at Calabasas Elementary School in Watsonville; a food justice garden class at Colleges Nine and Ten at UCSC; an Alternative Spring Break program in Watsonville; volunteer opportunities in Watsonville for students in PRAXIS, a service learning club; and research efforts with two interns through the UCSC SUPERDAR fellowships program. Most of these students are low-income, people of color who are the first generation of their families to attend university. As a result of these programs, UCSC undergraduates undertook a variety of activities, from developing and implementing curricula for the children of Watsonville and establishing a community garden for their parents to grow plants for their own food security, to assisting at Second Harvest Food Bank and supporting the efforts of Center for Farmworker Families in Watsonville. Such activities not only foster greater knowledge about issues of power, class, race, and marginalization in food systems, but also expands the scope of food studies at UCSC to include issues of environmental justice, which reflects the concerns and experiences of an increasing number of UCSC students coming from diverse backgrounds. And our efforts not only impact UCSC undergraduates interested in agricultural and food studies, but high school students as well. As part of the Alternative Spring Break in Watsonville, UCSC students partnered with high 20 school students from Watsonville High's youth leadership organization ECHO (Education, Community, Humanitarian, Outreach) who collaborated on the mural painting project and helped sort donated food at Second Harvest. Thus, the UCSC project made connections between elementary, high school, and college students this year. Our target audience also included about 450 attendees of a variety of food justice events we held since September 1, 2016 (when the HSI project began). We held our 14th annual Practical Activism Conference at Colleges Nine and Ten at UCSC on October 22, 2016, and two workshops directly related to issues of food justice: "Sparking Change through Environmental Justice Activism" and "Driscoll's Berries: Deconstructing Labor Exploitation." Two to three student organizers led each workshop, which was attended by about two dozen people. On November 17, 2016 and May 10, 2017, we held two speakers as part of our Gather in the Garden Speaker Series: Emily Beggs on Mayan agriculturalists in Mexico and Marcela Cely Santos about the synergies between bees and farmers in Andolaima, Colombia. On February 8, 2017, Colleges Nine and Ten helped bring Ron Finley ("the Gangsta Gardener of South Central LA") and the new film "Can You Dig This" to UCSC. The event was at capacity, attracting about 400 attendees, a mix of predominantly students, faculty, staff, and members of the Santa Cruz community. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The model of undergraduate training and professional development we advocate at Colleges Nine and Ten entails a bottom-up, student-centered approach with peer-to-peer learning and honing of "soft skills" as well as academic expertise. This is best demonstrated by concrete examples of what some of our students have been doing. One example is Diana Carrera, who has participated in the food justice programs in Watsonville all year through the UCSC Sustainability Office's Provost Sustainability Internship (PSI) program. Diana did outreach, recruited, and coordinated undergraduates to intern at the Calabasas Elementary after-school, garden-based education program and mobilized volunteers to participate in work days to develop the community garden. In addition, she assisted with the Hallows Eve event that brought Watsonville families to UCSC. Diana began the year as a very shy, reticent, and insecure person; she is a first-generation college student and comes from a low-income, mixed immigration status Mexican family. Through the professionalization skills she gained as a PSI, Diana learned how to work on a resume, make a poster in powerpoint, design a flyer, and write letters soliciting donations from local businesses. She became more adept at public speaking and explaining the food justice program at Colleges Nine and Ten. In her self-evaluation, Diana recognized that she needed to "focus on my confidence in my work and voice [and] practice talking to people." But she also noted that "my scheduling and organizing skill have actually improved a lot which I am very grateful for." The highlight of the year for Diana was attending with her mentor Flora Lu, the USDA NIFA PI meeting in Albuquerque in February 2017--it was not only Diana's first conference, but it was her first time flying on a plane. She was enthralled by the sessions for students, the quality of the posters, and meeting the other students. The interns at Calabasas Elementary have had valuable experiences working with farmworker families and schoolchildren. Cristina Vizcaino wrote in her final reflection paper, "During this internship I feel as though we have advanced food justice reform in a slight way. Through teaching young children about gardening we have enlightened them towards making better food choices. We worked with them in the garden ... by playing interactive games and asking them questions about the garden." Daniela Flores wrote, "Even in my primary school years, I received poor education on nutrition and the knowledge of where our food came from. I took the initiative in educating myself and learning from others about food justice and other ways in which people are combating social, historical, economic, environmental, and political racism.... As the quarter comes to an end, I have re-defined food justice as the right for you and your community to purchase healthy, affordable food or grow it locally (on a microscale level). Food justice is a movement pioneered by folks of all ages to combat the racist, white-elitist society we live in. Healthy, clean food is a basic human right that everyone deserves, yet this paradox exists because we live in an economically developed country where many people of color still face food insecurity." Diana Hernandez wrote, "The Calabasas Elementary School after school internship was an exciting program to be a part of. It was fun to interact with the children and to watch them interact with one another, all while knowing that we are teaching them something valuable." These are just some examples, but overall, the food justice program this year empowered undergraduates to take the initiative and leadership to design and implement interventions and activities for the benefit of local residents in Watsonville who deserve garden-based, experiential learning opportunities; a plot of land to grow healthy and favorite foods; and support to realize aspirations of higher education. In many programs like Life Lab at UCSC, undergraduates implement programming that they themselves had no role in designing; in our efforts, students were challenged to come up with activities that were fun and educational for children, such as food Jeopardy! How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Along with the Ethnic Resource Centers and Sustainability Office, Colleges Nine and Ten are part of UCSC's People of Color Sustainability Collective (PoCSC). While not funded by USDA NIFA, last Spring PoCSC conducted a campus survey about environmental sustainability, and on May 25, we held a campus wide dissemination event at the MultiPurpose Room at Colleges Nine and Ten to share the results of the survey, which was taken by 21% (3,266 of 15,746) UCSC undergraduates. Of relevance to USDA NIFA was the finding that of five different environmental issues (1: access to healthy, affordable, and culturally appropriate food; 2: conservation of natural resources and biodiversity protection; 3: environmental health; 4: environmental justice; and 5: agroecology), the most respondents (94%) deemed food access to be "important" or "very important." It was the only issue that students said was a higher priority to them than a priority for the UCSC campus. Students of color rated food access as significantly more important than white, non-Hispanic students. Conversely, students said that agroecology was more important to the UCSC campus as a priority than to them, by a difference of 20 percentage points, the largest gap in perceptions between personal and campus priorities as perceived by students. While 63% of white, non-Hispanic students rated agroecology as "important" or "very important," only 56% of students of color did, a statistically significant difference. These findings have important implications for USDA NIFA efforts at Hispanic Serving Institutions to strengthen food and agricultural studies and to address food insecurity. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Year two will hit the ground running! We have a meeting on June 20 to begin to plan the food justice conference, which will take place in February of 2018. There has been a change of directorship of the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Capitola (Richard Casale has retired) necessitates building new connections with this USDA office and establishing the internship opportunity there. Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice is already planning the youth leadership academy in Gonzales, and we are working on the evaluation instruments and activities with CERIUS here at UCSC as well as IDRA. This summer, two of our students will begin conducting research with the parents, teachers and administrators of Calabasas Elementary in Watsonville. Colleges Nine and Ten, as part of the UCSC People of Color Sustainability Collective, are also working on a food justice online orientation to educate incoming undergraduates about food security, food justice, food cultures and nutrition.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Our grant is the first time UCSC has received a USDA NIFA Hispanic Serving Institution grant, and it has taken some time to navigate the institutions involved. We hired an interim project coordinator while we undertook the hire that brought us Linnea Beckett; worked to firm up the contract with IDRA for the meta-evaluation; hired Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice as a subcontractor tasked with undertaking the youth leadership academy in Gonzales, CA; and met with faculty from CERIUS for our own internal evaluation. As elaborated above, this year has witnessed the development and implementation of innovative curricula, experiential learning and leadership opportunities, and campus/community collaborations, all designed to resonate with the backgrounds, perspectives, and concerns of underrepresented groups such as low income, people of color and first generation students. We have raised the profile of the project through campus outreach, seen for example in the Tuesday Newsday story that was featured on the UCSC website: http://news.ucsc.edu/2016/10/diversifying-food-studies.html?utm_source=10-25-2016&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tuesday-newsday
Publications
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