Research & Service - Spring 2010
"Stuff"
Instructor: Chance Cardamone-Knewstub
How do we relate to the material things in our lives? Why is our happiness, sense of self, and general psychological well being tied up in the amount of stuff we have and its monetary value? Why do we feel we need so much stuff? (The amount of stuff Americans think we need is greater than any other people in history.) Why does our idea of a "big enough house" continue to get bigger? And at the same time, why are we ever more removed from the procuring of stuff? How and where was this stuff made? By who? What are its "ingredients"? How were these "ingredients" obtained? How did the stuff get to the place where it's path intersected with ours? What will happen to the stuff after I get rid of it?
This Research and Service class will look at these questions with an eye to what the answers mean to the health of our planet and ourselves. To help us better understand the eddies and currents in the torrent of stuff flowing through our lives, we will be volunteering a few days a week at Resource, Goodwill, and the Salvation Army.
Cowponics
Instructors: Adriana Comtois and Allison Fayle
In our quest to find solutions to food insecurity in Vermont and given that we had such a short growing season, our Research and Service Class will be focused on developing a hydroponic garden that can produce vegetables during our cold winter season. Later, we will transmit our knowledge to the community through the implementation of other gardens in schools around the area. Since we want to keep the idea of eating locally year round we will be working at an industry that is very active during the summer: the dairy farms. We will be visiting different dairy farms in the area but we will be working closely with Family Cow Farmstand, a raw milk micro-dairy in Hinesburg. With them we will be looking at the dairy industry in VT, conducting a survey that will be used by Rural Vermont and learning how to make cheese, yogurt and other dairy products.
Farms to Schools
Instructor: Mark Cline Lucey
This Research and Service class focuses on the relationship between childhood nutrition, hunger, education, economics and local agricultural production in the Chittenden County region. Working primarily with the Farm-to-School program in Burlington and South Burlington, the students will explore every aspect of this relationship, from planting seeds in the Intervale and harvesting salad greens in the Miskell Greenhouse to working with elementary school students at Burlington's Sustainability Academy and South Burlington's Orchard School. Students will also work with the Campaign to End Childhood Hunger, Common Roots, Healthy City Healthy Kids, and other organizations that strive to provide low-income families with access to nutritious, local food. At the same time, we will research and discuss issues like the American paradox of obesity and hunger, affordability and access to fresh, local food, challenges that school food services face in providing healthy food, and the importance of school food reform.
The Persistence of Memory
Instructor: Benjamin Patrick
This Research and Service class will explore themes around public art and how it relates to community service. Our group will be working with a variety of community organizations and work on art projects that bring a visual awareness to these organization's missions and needs.
In the beginning of the semester, we will spend time at an Alzheimer's care facility and work with residents there to explore themes in art history, memory and color. Later, we will share this art in the hallways of the facility and possibly display the work in community spaces in local towns where we can share with the community the work and research we completed. After this project, we will work with public transportation and work on public art projects making spaces involving transportation more aesthetically pleasing. Projects here include drawing and painting on paper in the format of the billboards hanging on city buses and displaying our work here. Other plans include working to display work at the airport, town halls and hospitals. Work that we produce will correlate in some way to the work that we will be doing with the community.