Looking for an out-of-the-ordinary summer class? Get some fresh air and dirt under your nails in RU’s Sustainability Studies program innovative special topics course, SUST 390 Rooftop Garden, at the Chicago Campus! The class will utilize RU’s unique 5th-story rooftop garden on its LEED Gold-certified Wabash Building as a living classroom for a hands-on, place-based, get-your-hands-dirty learning experience. This hybrid / experiential learning class is quite flexible, so it can fit into your summer schedule!
Semester offered: Summer 2023 (from May 30 thru Aug 14)
Location: Chicago Campus
Day/time: Online learning commences 5/30, with garden workdays and field trips to selected urban farms/green rooftops in the Chicago region scheduled by the instructor according to students’ availability
Pre-req: ENG 102
SUST majors and minors may take this class to fulfill an upper-level SUST 3xx requirement, but 390 also is open to students at large seeking an experiential learning course, needing a general education course, or desiring elective credit.
This coming summer semester (2022) the Sustainability Studies program will reprise our popular and innovative special topics course, SUST 390 Rooftop Garden, at the Chicago Campus. The class will utilize RU’s unique 5th-story rooftop garden on its LEED Gold-certified Wabash Building as a living classroom for a hands-on, place-based, get-your-hands-dirty learning experience.
Semester offered: Summer 2022 (10 weeks from May 31 thru Aug 8)
Location: Chicago Campus
Day/time: Online learning commences 5/31, with garden workdays and field trips to selected urban farms/green rooftops in the Chicago region scheduled by the instructor according to students’ availability.
Pre-req: ENG 102
SUST majors and minors may take this class to fulfill an upper-level SUST 3xx requirement, but 390 also is open to students at large seeking an experiential learning course, needing a general education course, or desiring elective credit.
RU President Ali, staff, and students harvest greens from the WB Rooftop Garden during the #AmDreamConf service day, 15 Sept 2016 (photo: RU Media)
Course Theme: Rooftop Gardens, Campus Sustainability, and Urban Agriculture
Diana Ramirez (BA ’17) works the garden plots on the WB Rooftop Garden, July 2017 (photo: M. Viveros)
Gets your hands dirty in this ten-week hybrid course which focuses on the unique urban ecosystem, the green rooftop, and features work in and stewardship of the fifth-story Roosevelt University WB Rooftop Garden in downtown Chicago. Students will learn about the relationships among food, biodiversity, waste, urban agriculture, green space design, and campus sustainability leadership through multiple modes: reading, participating in online discussions, taking field trips, and working in the RU garden during the summer late spring / early summer planting and growing season.
Course requirements and activities include online interaction through Blackboard; participation in garden workdays as scheduled by the student and instructor; and field trips to other urban community gardens and farms, whether rooftop or street-level. Participation in this course constitutes a significant contribution to the sustainability of RU’s Chicago Campus, and helps our community make progress on our 2015-2020 Strategic Sustainability Plan.
Moses Viveros sowing seeds in the rooftop garden, August 2017 (photo: D. Ramirez)
The RU Rooftop Garden in Chicago was started in the spring/summer of 2013, the first growing season after the opening on the Wabash Building in fall 2012. Since then, it has been funded and managed by the Department of Physical Resources, with work being done primarily by student interns and volunteers from the Sustainability Studies Program in the College of Arts & Sciences.
For questions and more details about this course, please contact Vicki Gerberich (vgerberich@roosevelt.edu), adjunct professor of Sustainability Studies; or Mike Bryson (mbryson@roosevelt.edu), professor & director of Sustainability Studies.
Maria Cancilla (BPS ’18), Prof. Vicki Gerberich, and Michelle Giles (SUST senior) during #AmDreamServiceDay 2018 (photo: M. Bryson)
Mr. Michael Howard, CEO and co-founder of Eden Place Farms and Nature Center in Chicago IL, will address the Roosevelt and Resilience Studies Consortium (RSC) communities on Tuesday, 26 Oct 2021, at 11am CST on the topic of “Sustaining Environmental Justice in a Pandemic.” Please join the faculty and students of SUST 350 Service & Sustainability at Roosevelt University and ENVS 397 Environmental Justice at Western Colorado University as they host Mr. Howard’s virtual presentation and a Q&A session. This presentation is made possible by the generous funding of the RSC — thank you!
Michael Howard’s life passion is to improve the quality of life for the citizens of the Fuller Park community on Chicago’s South Side, both financially and environmentally. As Founder and CEO of the Fuller Park Community Development (FPCD) organization in the 1990s, he has worked to address housing, education, and environmental issues that have kept this generally African American and low-income community in poverty and disrepair.
In the late 1990s, Michael and his wife Amelia Howard led the effort to clean up a three-acre vacant lot near their Fuller Park residence that was piled two stories high with illegally dumped waste. With help from many in the community, the site was cleared of debris and restored into a thriving green space called Eden Place — still the only nature center on the entire South Side of Chicago. In the early 2010s, Eden Place opened its farm operation about a half-mile south of the nature center. They host community events, market their produce to local restaurants and farmers markets, and provide ecology, urban farming, and nutrition workshops to citizens of Fuller Park and beyond.
Since 2014, students in Roosevelt University’s SUST 350 Service & Sustainability class have volunteered one morning a week in a multi-year service project at Eden Place, helping with farm chores, repairing and painting structures, building trails, planting and harvesting crops, and organizing events to support the organization’s mission. In return, Eden Place has taught them much about the process and importance of community organizing, the rigors of urban environmental conservation and farming, and the challenges of fostering sustainability and community resilience in this era of social and economic stress.
Zoom Login Info:
Topic: Michael Howard on Environmental Justice for RSC
Time: Oct 26, 2021 11:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)
Contact Mike Bryson (mbryson@roosevelt.edu), Professor & Director of Sustainability Studies, Roosevelt University
The Resilience Studies Consortium, of which Roosevelt is a charter member, is a network of small liberal arts Institutions dedicated to sustainability and community resilience, place-based educational experiences, and shared academic and co-curricular offerings in ways that empower students with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in a rapidly evolving world.
Dear lovers of good music and supporters of urban agriculture in Chicago: this Friday 10/15 at Eden Place Farms, local musicians Wyatt Waddell and Headed Home will perform at 6:30pm in a livestreamed benefit concert. Located in the heart of the Fuller Park community at 4911 S. Shields Ave., Eden Place Farms is an iconic family-run urban farm on Chicago’s South Side.
To view the concert and support Eden Place, please make a donation at this link. After your donation, you will receive a link for the livestream event. No donation is too small! If you prefer your live music in person, admission is free and donations are accepted/encouraged; just be sure to bring your mask and proof of vaccination. Doors open at 6pm at the Farm.
The story of Eden Place is as inspiring as it is improbable. Eden Place Nature Center was founded on the site of an illegal waste dump by community activists Michael and Amelia Howard, who built a Nature Center in the late 90s and established their Farm about 15 years later. Eden Place has been a longstanding community hub and green oasis in the Fuller Park neighborhood, and is seeking to raise money to help recover from the Covid-19 pandemic and continue its mission to provide fresh organic produce and environmental education to its community. Though it has experienced setbacks this past year, Eden Place is a resilient and high-impact institution known throughout the US and beyond for its urban conservation work here in Chicago.
Roosevelt University has deep ties to Eden Place, as well. Since 2014, RU students each fall semester have worked onsite at the Nature Center and Farm through Prof. Mike Bryson’s SUST 350 Service & Sustainability class. Students from all walks of life learn what it’s like to work on an urban farm and in return provide their labor and ideas to the staff at Eden Place in a process of reciprocal learning and cooperation. This summer of 2021, five student interns with the Mansfield Institute’s Fellowship for Activism and Community Engagement program have worked 10 hours per week at Eden Place helping to cultivate and harvest crops, build and repair structures, and work productively as a team. We in the Sustainability Studies program at RU are grateful to have Eden Place as a community partner and look forward to many more years of collaboration.
Thanks to the Roosevelt students of SUST 350 for helping organize this concert, and to everyone reading this for all for your past support of Eden Place! Please spread the word to everyone you know who appreciates healthy food and good music.
SUST 350 students help build a hoop house at Eden Place Farms, Fall 2019 (M. Bryson)SUST 350 students harvest veggies, Sept 2021 (M. Bryson)
This year’s inaugural event will feature organic and fresh food from Eden Place and local area farms. Enjoy a four-course meal prepared by three of Chicago’s best restaurants, live music and a host of special guess attendees. Enjoy Delicious Cuisine Creations from Majani Restaurant, Roe’s Gratitude, Sweet Blooms, and Eden Place Farms.
I’m honored to deliver a guest faculty lecture at this event today at Roosevelt University. Please come and engage in a meaningful conversation about how food insecurity is prevalent and relates to our community while you learn more about issues of hunger, sustainability and how you can help. Please register for the event here.
Sponsored by the Black Student Union and the RU Counseling Center, the Oxfam Hunger Banquet provides a chance for us to address the severity of food insecurity and starvation as it relates to our community, and will assist in fostering a community of care that will allow us to join in the fight against inequality, injustice, and oppression. Oxfam is a global organization working to end the injustice of poverty.
This fall 2017 semester I am teaching two linked sections of SUST 350 Service & Sustainability. The Chicago-based section (01) will meet in AUD 825 the first week of class (Tues 8/29) at 10am and subsequently off-campus at Eden Place Nature Center on Chicago’s South Side (4417 S. Stewart in the Fuller Park neighborhood). Starting week 2, we will convene at 9:30am in the WB Lobby and walk to the Red Line’s Harrison Stop. Eden Place is a half-mile walk from the 47th Street stop. Street parking is also readily available at the Nature Center for anyone traveling by car.
The online section (98) officially starts on 11 Sept 2017. However, students in that section are encouraged to participate in the 8/29 introductory session via Zoom video-conference. The session will also be recorded and archived on the course Bb site for the reference of students who have a scheduling conflict for 8/29.
Login information for the 350 Zoom session is as follows:
Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://roosevelt.zoom.us/j/903113673
Or iPhone one-tap (US Toll): +14086380968,,903113673# or +16468769923,,903113673#
Here is an announcement for unpaid internships at a new aquaponics urban farm on the West Side of Chicago, available starting in April.
Metropolitan Farms is a commercial scale urban farm that is dedicated to the growth and development of aquaponic farming in Chicago. By condensing the agricultural food chain, reducing the use of water and electricity, and converting unusables to healthy consumables as efficiently as possible, we aim to foster an agricultural revolution. They produce organic and chemical free edible plants and fish in our advanced aquaponics system, which will be distributed all over the Chicago area.
Source: Metropolitan Farms
We are looking for two reliable, hardworking, and passionate people to help us with the beginning stages of our aquaponic planting and harvesting process.
Time Frame:
April-July
4-6 hours per week
Requirements:
Experience with plant production and care preferred
Access to a car with a valid drivers license
Familiarity with aquaponics preferred
Excellent communication skills
Great work ethic
High attention to detail
Ability to work independently as well as part of a team
Compensation
This opportunity is an unpaid educational internship.
For more information, visit our website and our Facebook page. To apply, send an email to Ashley Luciani at alucianigarden@gmail.com with “Metropolitan Farms Internship” in the subject line. Please let her know a little about yourself, your experience with urban farming or gardening, and why you would be interested in joining this endeavor. Make sure to provide the best way to reach you.
Kyle Lennan and Geoff Norris (photo: J. Liebregts, durhamregion.com)
This past Sunday, Toronto-based independent filmmakers Geoff Norris and Kyle Lennan came by my house in Joliet to interview me about the long-simmering Peotone Airport controversy in agricultural lands south of Chicago in Will County, IL. Norris and Lennan have been making a film about the proposed Pickering Airport project in the rural areas near Toronto, which has resulted in the government seizure of property and demolition of homes over the past several decades despite no tangible progress on the airport’s construction.
The story bears an eerie resemblance to that playing out in eastern Will County within the vast stretches of prime Illinois farmland near the rural villages of Peotone, Monee, and Beecher. Geoff and Kyle came across my op-ed series about the Peotone airport written for the Joliet Herald-News up through 2012, and were kind enough to include me as a local voice from the community on their road trip to the Chicago area, where they also filmed local activists/opponents to the project.
First SUST 350 workday at EPNC, 2 Sept 2014 (M. Bryson)
This coming fall semester (2015) I will be offering a transformational service learning course, SUST 350 Service and Sustainability, at the Chicago Campus. Our course theme is Urban Farming, Environmental Education, Community Development, & Social Justice.
Title/number: SUST 350 Service and Sustainability (section 01)
Semester offered: Fall 2015
Location: Chicago Campus / Eden Place Nature Center
Day/time: Tues 12-3pm
Pre-req: UWR
SUST majors and minors may take this class to fulfill an upper-level SUST requirement, but 350 also is open to students at large who need a general education course or desire elective credit.
Introduction to the Course
SUST 350 focuses on one of sustainability’s “Three Es” — social Equity — within the broad context of Environmental stewardship and Economic development. Students will learn about one of the most important components of sustainability — food production and consumption — in the context of urban neighborhoods and ecosystems.
By doing hands-in-the-dirt labor at Eden Place Nature Center on the city’s South Side neighborhood of Fuller Park, students will gain direct knowledge of contemporary organic/urban agricultural systems as well as learn about pressing urban social justice issues such as food deserts, gentrification, pollution, environmental racism, and persistent poverty. The initial class meeting will be at RU’s Chicago Campus, and subsequent class meetings will take place at Eden Place Nature Center.
Repairing fences at EPNC, 9 Sept 2014 (D. Cooperstock)
An urban farm is about food, but so much more besides. The Fuller Park community is an economically stressed neighborhood that is bisected by the Dan Ryan expressway and bounded by railroads on its eastern and western borders. Here, an urban farm and community nature center is a source of freshly grown, organic produce; a training ground for local youth in need of practical job skills; a stop valve in the Cradle-to-Prison pipeline; a gathering place for people of all ages in the community for physical exercise, informal education, and social events; a demonstration site for sustainable agricultural and ecological restoration techniques; a model of economic development on a local, sustainable scale; and a means of reconnecting urban folk to the natural world. More generally, in urban areas starved for jobs, green space, safe outdoor gathering places, and fresh quality food, enterprises like Eden Place productively and powerfully address the need for social equity and progressive change.
Hauling fence at EPNC, 9 Sept 2014 (C. Dennis)
Our main focus will be on helping with various urban agriculture and environmental restoration projects at Eden Place Nature Center at 4417 S. Stewart, as well as at the Eden Place Farm at 4911 S. Shields. Our typical day will consist of meeting at the WB Lobby ~11:30am to take the Red Line to EPNC (students have the option of commuting there directly to meet at noon); convening at 12pm for discussion of assigned readings and, later in the semester, informal student presentations; and then working with Eden Place staff on various environmental, farm, and/or public education projects according to the needs and schedule of Eden Place.
Planting trees at EPNC, 2 Dec 2014 (M. Bryson)
The vast majority of our work takes place outside, regardless of weather. We built trails, planted trees, pulled weeks, raked leaves, managed compost piles, helped set up activities and structures for Octoberfest, repaired and installed fences, and many other chores/activities. We also interacted with EPNC staff to learn about their mission and vision for the future. Last but not least, we always had a little time each week to visit with EPNC’s many animals, including Gaga the goat (who loved to intervene during our roundtable discussions in the gazebo!).
Michael Howard teaches schoolchildren from Chicago’s South Side how to plant (photo: EPNC)
“In 1997, community member, founder, and Executive Director of Fuller Park Community Development Michael Howard [pictured at left] was concerned about the serious lead poisoning problems affecting the neighborhood children. Through research he discovered that Fuller Park contained the highest lead levels in the city of Chicago. As a community leader he wanted to make some serious changes for the sake of his family and his entire neighborhood, and he decided that this work would start with the illegal dumpsite located across the street from his home.
“Mounds of waste over two stories tall encompassed the entire three acres of land. Mr. Howard acquired the deed for the land and involved the community in a large scale, three year clean-up of the dumpsite. Alongside his wife and fellow activist Amelia, and in partnership with hundreds of volunteers and community members, Mr. Howard led a clean-up project in which more than 200 tons of waste including concrete, wood, tires and other toxin-laced materials were removed from the site.
Talking with EPNC founder and director, Mr. Michael Howard, 2 Dec 2014 (M. Bryson)
“Upon clean-up of the site, the next step was development. Tons of fresh soil were brought in to establish the Great Lawn, and the Hope Mound was established as the first permanent fixture on Eden Place. South Point Academy trainees contributed a number of early structures to the Eden Place grounds, including the gazebo, DuSable Trading Post, and the storage sheds. The Mighty Oak and other surrounding trees formed the woodland at the north end of the property, including a reflecting pond meant to encourage reflection and respite from the urban surroundings.
“In May of 2004, Eden Place was honored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Chicago Wilderness with The Conservation and Native Landscaping Award. The winners were recognized for their extensive and creative use of natural landscaping to support native plants and animals that contribute to the region’s biodiversity. That same month, Eden Place was filmed for a PBS special documentary called Edens Lost & Found. This documentary profiles activists and organizations in Los Angeles, Seattle, Philadelphia, and Chicago who are attempting to ‘improve the quality of life and public health by encouraging community and civic engagement through the restoration of their urban ecosystems.’
Photo: Eden Place Nature Center
“Eden Place has continued to develop and grow with the support and recognition of local leaders and organizations. We have worked to raise awareness amongst community members about the environmental problems that have affected their families for years. Local residents are making connections with nature like never before, and they are feeling a sense of community pride like never before. However, our work in the community is not finished. More than 3/5 of the local area is comprised of abandoned lots where homes and various industries once thrived, and Fuller Park residents still carry the burden of one of the highest local lead contents in the city. Through our partnership with local and national conservation organizations such as the Chicago Zoological Society, the Audubon Society, the U.S. Forest Service International Programs, Chicago Wilderness, Openlands, and NeighborSpace, we will continue to establish green community space and education that will improve the health and well-being of our community.”
For more information on this unique service learning course, please contact Prof. Mike Bryson (mbryson@roosevelt.edu or 312-281-3148).
