Building A Community Garden: A Collaborative Cross-Disciplinary Academic Community Engagement Project

Abstract

Most research concerning service learning discusses the benefits studentsexperience when working on a project; however, for faculty, the challengesinvolved in facilitating the project are also great. We designed a collaborative cross-disciplinaryproject to address two goals: 1) to increase student engagement throughservice learning, while also 2) redistributing the work involved in managing theproject from the instructor to a second group of upper-level operations managementstudents. Specifically, we used the Academic Community Engagement (ACE)pedagogy, which combines community engagement with academic instruction, ina collaborative project between a freshman-level environmental science class andan upper-level operations management class. The project goal for the students wasto research and establish a formal plan for the creation of a community garden inthe local town. The community garden project goal was achieved over the courseof the semester and survey results suggest that we accomplished both of the cross-disciplinaryproject goals. Specifically, many of the students developed a deepersense of connection to the local community and a more tangible idea of how they canserve their communities in the future.