Category: Research

Action Research at the Chicago Lights Urban Farm

Turning the soil in the Farm's west planting beds, 24 April 2013
Turning the soil in the Farm’s west planting beds, 24 April 2013

Many of the writing and research assignments I give my students at RU are fairly straightforward and prescriptive. I give them a lot of concrete guidelines and freedom to choose a topic; they crank out the work; and then I grade it and give it back with feedback. That’s how it works for the most part in academia.

But the past two springs I’ve had the privilege of teaching a service-learning course held on-site at the Chicago Lights Urban Farm, at the south end of the Cabrini-Green neighborhood on Chicago’s Near North Side — and that class is anything but ordinary.

Buidling new planting beds for the community garden, 1May 2013
Buidling new planting beds for the community garden, 1May 2013

SUST 350 Service & Sustainability has been supported these last two years by a “transformational service learning” grant from Roosevelt’s Mansfield Institute of Social Justice and Transformation, funding which has enabled my students and me to support the farm’s mission, purchase supplies for construction projects, and take area youth on educational field trips within and beyond Chicago.

This spring semester, in addition to their weekly work on the farm watering plants, building compost bins, turning over soil, constructing greenhouse grow tables, etc., my 15 undergrad students were tasked with a collaborative “Action Research” project, in which they’d work in pairs or trios to develop real-world projects meant to extend and enhance the mission and work of this extraordinary half-acre urban farm.

Having never led quite such a research project before, I wasn’t exactly sure how to instruct them in this process — consequently, I just didn’t have the procedure or the finished project all scripted out like I usually do. Instead, I offered some rough guidelines (see project guidelines here [pdf]), moral and logistical support (likewise provided by the farm’s director, Natasha Holbert), and a lot of room for creativity.

Boy, did I learn something. Give motivated, smart, and engaged students a chance to do creative applied research for a place that they respect and appreciate, and they are capable of doing terrific work. (Note to self: do this again.) Here’s what they came up with. All of these Action Research Projects are designed to be implemented, expanded, and/or revised by the Farm staff and workers — and some may be taken up and extended by future SUST 350 students here at Roosevelt.

Our last workday, 1 May 2013, at the farm. Pictured here are RU students, CLUF staff, and Growing Power / Chicago Lights "Youth Corps" interns.
Our last workday, 1 May 2013, at the farm. Pictured here are RU students, CLUF staff, and Growing Power / Chicago Lights “Youth Corps” interns.

Community Empowerment and Youth Enrichment (CEYE) Program
Allison Breeding, Scott Rogers, and Troy Withers

The CEYE Program is comprised of three branches—Community Service, Food Access and Engagement, and Roosevelt Credit—which collectively aim to benefit the lives and futures of Chicago Lights Urban Farm (CLUF) volunteers, at-risk urban youths, and Cabrini seniors. CEYE seeks to take teens out of a path of trouble and into a path of service, volunteerism, and eventually college and career. The program also seeks to empower and assist local seniors by improving their food access and strengthening their community connections. (CEYE Proposal pdf)

Community Gardeners’ Guide
Jordan Ewbank, Kristen Johnson, and Ana Molledo

A practical how-to resource for people wishing to start their own community garden, based on the knowledge and practices of the CLUF community garden, established in 2002. Discusses land preparation, garden organization and design, raised beds vs. in-ground gardening, soil quality, compost, and what kinds of vegetables to grow. (Gardeners’ Guide pdf)

Troy and his son, working together on our 24 April 2013 workday
Troy and his son, working together on our 24 April 2013 workday

Farm Education Lessons and Activities
Bob Basile, Christian Cameron, and Molly Connor

Educational lessons and activities for K through Grade 6 students on composting, planting, and nutrition meant to be used at the CLUF to connect urban farm education with sustainability. May be expanded by future students for 7-12 grade levels on these and additional topics. (Farm Curriculum pdf)

Knowing Your Neighborhood: Community Assets Brochure and Map
Mike Miller and Ken Schmidt

Brochure (pdf)and interactive Google map designed to highlight resources and assets with a one-mile radius of the Chicago Lights Urban Farm.

Rainwater Harvesting Plan
Michael Magdongon and Lore Mmutle

A concrete proposal for the installation of a rainwater harvesting system on one of the Farm’s hoop houses. Would provide a sustainable supply of water to decrease dependence upon usage of the street hydrant on Chicago Ave., now the Farm’s main water source. Projected return on investment within one year.
(Rainwater Proposal pdf)

Self-Guided Tour and Farm Map
Bryan McAlister and Lauren Winkler

This beautifully designed one-page, double-sided guided tour information sheet and map is ideal for first-time visitors to the Farm who would like a brief and fun introduction to all of the spaces and growing areas within its half-acre footprint. Includes information of selected vegetables and several recipes for cooking them.
(Guided Tour and Map Brochure pdf)

350 Self-Guided Tour Map _Page_2

Winter Symposium on Sustainability at Augustana College

Today I head west to the city of Rock Island, which hugs the Mississippi River in northwestern Illinois (right across the water from Davenport, Iowa). I’ve been invited to give a talk on urban sustainability issues in Chicago at Augustana College’s annual Winter Symposium, which this year is focused on sustainability and environmental issues. Since I can never resist a chance to talk about urban waterways, my talk is entitled “Paddling the Chicago River: A Good Way to Think about Science, Art, Ethics, and the Sustainability of Cities.”

Heading downstream on the Upper North Branch, about a half-mile from our destination in the Linné Woods forest preserve in Morton Grove, IL (M. Bryson)
Heading downstream on the Upper North Branch, about a half-mile north of Linné Woods forest preserve in Morton Grove, IL, north of Chicago, Oct. 2012 (M. Bryson)

The degraded yet undeniably charismatic Chicago River is a mighty fine place to contemplate the tangled relationships among water quality, land use, and sustainability within cities and suburbs. As a site for exploring urban nature, an object of analysis in the scientific assessment of water quality and urban ecology, and a case-study in landscape aesthetics, the Chicago river provides students and citizens myriad opportunities to develop a sense of place. More generally, experiencing urban rivers — and understanding their function within the complex watersheds of metropolitan regions — can foster not just ecological literacy about urban ecosystems but also ethical engagement with one’s community.

Here’s a pdf version of my presentation.

City Creatures Retreat at the Indiana Dunes (Pictures and Random Thoughts)

A marsh within the Calumet River watershed in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore
A marsh within the Calumet River watershed in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore

I’ve never been invited to a writer’s retreat before (not to mention a writers and artists retreat), and despite long anticipation and careful planning for this one, I almost didn’t get to go to this one when my spouse took ill and the kids needed tending. Thank goodness for CHN retreat organizer and all-around problem-solver Gavin Van Horn’s wisdom and quick decision-making, as he called me up and said, “Bring the girls along.”

I’m glad I did, as we had a terrific time — and I’m grateful to Gavin’s wife Marcie, who generously and graciously volunteered to watch my children during the times when I was occupied with fellow participants in wonderful discussions about our forthcoming City Creatures project.

For me the retreat had a number of highlights. Some of them were formal, in the sense that they were on the planned agenda — like the splendid hike through the wetlands of the Great Calumet Marsh on Friday led by Ron and Joan Engel, who escorted us along some of their favorite biodiversity-rich trails in the Dunes back-country; the lovely reception hosted by the Engels at their beautiful home in Beverly Shores (which surely has the best home study/library I’ve ever seen); the delightful dinner at Sage restaurant in Chesterton; and the “soundwalk” excursion we took in Gary on the grounds of the Paul Douglas Environmental Learning Center at the western end of the National Lakeshore.

Joan and Ron Engel, with Steve Packard

But the less-scripted elements of the retreat held many delights, as well. I became pals with a conservationist and writer I much admire, Stephen Packard, who rode in my car from field site to field site, and delighted my children with his funny stories, endless questions, and brilliant bird call imitations. At one point on our way to the soundwalk field trip, I deliberately got us lost (no, really!) so I could listen to the end of a story that involved “mucking about” a salt marsh on Cape Cod; the ensuing delay was worth it. I met some old friends but also made a bunch of new ones among a group of immensely talented and utterly fascinating people. And I learned a lot about what our collective project is aiming for, and had time and encouragement to think about how my small contribution fits into the bigger picture.

Lea Schweitz holds an opossum mandible

My two girls, Lily (age 10) and Esmé (age 5), had fun cavorting with Gavin’s 5-year-old son Hawkins, and they got a kick out of our field hikes, too. During our marsh walk, we had  several great kid discoveries: Steve Sullivan found the mandible of an opossum; Steve Packard found some eggshell fragments, still soft and pliable, from a turtle; and we all admired a large beaver lodge and the abundant nearby evidence of busy-ness on the part of this intrepid wetland mammal and fellow water engineer.

On our Saturday morning hike, I was initially concerned that my chatterbox children would fill the “soundscape” with their songs, stories, and sisterly bickering and thus necessitate my hanging back from the group. Turns out I greatly underestimated them. Lily hiked ahead with the grown-ups, while Esmé and I lollygagged with the renowned naturalist and writer Joel Greenberg, who happily pointed out flowers and identified bird calls for us. Esmé got a nosebleed for no apparent reason, but rather than crying or complaining, she just asked me for tissues until it stopped, and kept trudging along behind Joel and looking at everything he noted.

At a rest stop on our soundwalk, listening to the marsh and woods

The best part of that wonderful hike was when we ascended a hill about two-thirds of the way along the circuitous trail we were following, and stopped for a long listen. Here in the Dunes there’s lot of sand, of course, and this summit we were on was like a big sandbox. As we naturally formed a circle to listen, observe, and talk quietly about what we were experiencing, the girls just played quietly in the sand.

We watched them, too, and I couldn’t help but think about how our project — about connecting with nature and, more specifically, the non-human animals within the urban and suburban environment of the Chicago region — is also, ultimately, about nurturing an ethic of stewardship and love of nature in our children.

Esmé holds a piece of turtle eggshell; Gavin shows another to Hawkins

It had been way too long since I had been to the Dunes. This was a splendid excuse to return to that special landscape, and to introduce my kids to some of its treasures. It was also an inspiring way to begin our work on City Creatures.

I’m looking forward to future gatherings with these new friends and colleagues. I wonder what critters, or the leavings thereof, we’ll come across on our ensuing explorations?

Food Deserts: Myth or Reality?

I was greatly surprised to read this article by Gina Kolata on today’s (18 April 2012) front page of the New York Times about the supposed lack of documented links between urban food deserts and incidence of obesity. A couple of studies are cited here that suggest not only is the notion of a urban food desert potentially fictitious, but that it has yet to be linked with the level of obesity in a given population. The implicit argument of the article is that the concerns that have arisen about urban food deserts, in particular, may be overblown.

I find it hard to agree. Curiously absent from the article’s discussion is the several years’ worth of empirical research on Chicago’s food deserts by the Mari Gallagher Group, which uses a block-by-block analysis of the city’s population and a systematic on-the-ground assessment of the location of every food outlet in Chicago (from supermarkets to smaller groceries to convenience stories to liquor stores that sell “food” products). This research, updated annually since 2006, has clearly documented both the continued presence of large food deserts on the West and South Sides and the close correspondence of these areas to a variety of health risk factors, including higher body-mass indexes.

The good news is that the number of Chicagoans living within food deserts — places in which fresh food sources are not readily available to community residents — has decreased dramatically in recent years from about 633,000 in 2006 to 384,000 in 2011. But there’s still a ways to go to address this critical food justice, socioeconomic, and health issue. See the reports below for more details from Gallagher’s research.

Gallagher – Chicago Food Desert Drilldown 2011 (pdf)

Gallagher – Examining the Impact of Food Deserts – Exec Sum 2006 (pdf)

Sustainability Internship Deadline Extended to 4/16

This semester my SUST 210 honors class is working on a community-based research project in collaboration with the Chicago non-profit organization, The Institute for Cultural Affairs, based in Uptown. Along with students from several other Chicago colleges and universities, we are researching and mapping sustainability initiatives throughout each of the city’s 77 community areas. The work continues this summer, so the ICA is seeking motivated and interested students for 40 unpaid internships on this tremendous and valuable city-wide project. Here are the details! — Mike Bryson

Application deadline now extended to Monday, April 16, 2012

The ICA Summer Internship Program, “Accelerate 77” is an opportunity for undergrad and graduate students to participate in preparations for the September 15, 2012 Share Fair event that will highlight, connect and accelerate local sustainability initiatives at the community level throughout Chicago neighborhoods. During the 2011-2012 academic school year, 180 students from six Chicago-based universities have participated in the first phase of the Accelerate 77 project by doing fieldwork in 54 of the 77 Chicago community areas. This summer, students will have the opportunity to take the Accelerate 77 project to the next level developing their skill-set through hands-on community based projects and acquiring skill in facilitation and enabling participatory group processes.

This spring ICA will be interviewing for 40 intern positions – flexing the program timetable between June and August.  The positions range from:

*  community documentation and engagement of sustainable initiatives,
*  designing and planning the September 15th event celebrating the 231 initiatives (three initiatives from each of the 77 communities),
*  marketing and public relations for the Accelerate 77 project and share fair event, and
*  website support for the community documentation, interchange and post-event collaboration.

Out of the 40 intern positions, the program will offer eight students an intensive leadership development course that will provide hands-on experience of co-leading teams in collaboration with eight ICA resource guides.

More information on leadership development opportunities and the Accelerate 77 project can be found at this page on the ICA website.

New application deadline: Monday, April 16th, 2012

For more information, check out these documents:

Nina Winn
ICA Program Coordinator
nwinn@ica-usa.org
Office:  773.769.6363, ext 301

Karen Snyder
ICA Volunteer and RU alum
snyder@consultmillennia.com
Home office: 773.506.2551
Cell: 773.758.2551

Undergrad Research Opportunities at the Field Museum

This summer the Field Museum of Natural History here in the Chicago is offering several Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) fellowships for summer research in the biological sciences. This is a unique and valuable opportunity to do paid (!) summer research in one of the most important natural history research institutions in the world. Please see this website for more information, and note the upcoming deadline of March 15th for applications.

As an undergraduate biology major at Illinois Wesleyan University in the 1980s, I applied for and received two REU summer fellowships. Not only did I earn a generous 3-month stipend and learn a tremendous amount about how science is done in the lab and out in the field, but as I look back on those experiences I now realize how much they helped shape my future career direction and attitudes about science and nature.

For more information beyond the above, please contact Sustainability Studies Prof. Julian Kerbis Peterhans (jkerbis@fieldmuseum.org and 312-665-7758), who has taught SUST 330 Biodiversity and BIOL Museum Internship classes at the FMNH. Minority and non-traditional students are particularly encouraged to apply.

Summer 2012 Great Lakes Research Opportunities for Undergrads at UWM

Here’s an exciting summer research opportunity for SUST majors with interests in science and water. The National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program funds summer research programs all over the US each year, and one noteworthy prospect is the summer internship program at the Center for Great Lakes Studies at the University of Wisconsin — Milwaukee.

Research Opportunities at the Center for Great Lakes Studies (Univ Wisc - Milwaukee)

Information about the program (pdf)
Duration: 4 June through 10 August 2012
This is nice: $5,000 stipend + travel and housing support
Application deadline: 5 March 2012

For those SUST majors with some science in their background, particularly biology and/or chemistry, this is a potentially outstanding opportunity to do original research under the guidance of a professional scientist on a Great Lakes science/sustainability topic of your choice. Back in my undergrad years in the 1980s, when the REU program was new, I benefited from two summer internships — one studying avian ecology at the University of Michigan Biological Station (northern Lower Michigan), the other learning about the biogeochemistry of salt marshes and coastal marine ponds at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Cape Cod). Both were tremendous learning experiences I’ve never forgotten.

EPA Research Fellowship Opportunities for Fall 2012

This fellowship opportunity just crossed my desk. I’m sure the application process is rigorous, but the SUST major at RU qualifies as an eligible program of study, according to my quick scan of the applicant requirements. If you’re entering your junior year (approximately) in the program and have an interest in working at the EPA in the summer, check this out.

Fall 2012 EPA Greater Research Opportunities (GRO)
Fellowships For Undergraduate Environmental Study
Application Deadline: December 12, 2011

EPA, as part of its Greater Research Opportunities (GRO) Fellowships program, is offering GRO undergraduate fellowships for bachelor level students in environmental fields of study. Subject to availability of funding, and other applicable considerations, the Agency plans to award approximately 40 new fellowships by July 30, 2012. Eligible students will receive support for their junior and senior years of undergraduate study and for an internship at an EPA facility during the summer of their junior year. The fellowship provides up to $19,700 per academic year of support and $9,500 of support for a three-month summer internship.

Check this link for more information.

Re-discovering Leonard Dubkin, Chicago Urban Nature Writer

As a literary critic, one recognizes the rare privilege in discovering an obscure yet talented writer — whether someone living or from the distant past — and reintroducing that person to a contemporary readership. Such was my opportunity a few years ago when I came across a book by Leonard Dubkin (1905–72) in a used bookstore in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood. That serendipitous finding was the seed of a research project on Dubkin, a self-taught naturalist and longtime Chicago journalist, which culminated this month in the publication of my essay, “Empty Lots and Secret Places,” in the Winter 2011 issue of Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature and the Environment. As I write in the article’s introduction:

Dubkin [was] an urban naturalist and Chicago writer who immersed himself in Chicago’s natural history long before the recent rediscovery of urban environments by literary critics and nature writers. Like the [small city] park that commemorates him, Dubkin has been easy to overlook. Although he penned several books on nature in the city, wrote a widely read nature column for Lerner Newspapers in Chicago for many years, and published frequently in major national newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and New York Times, Dubkin today is a virtual unknown.

Yet the recent resurgence of interest in the environmental issues and history of urban areas in general and the Chicago region in particular makes Dubkin’s work important. His writings are a rich historical document of urban nature as well as a detailed exploration of one person’s engagement with the “wild” elements of the city: plants, birds, insects, mammals, and various representatives of the human population. Dubkin has much to say not just to Chicagoans interested in their city’s environment or to aficionados of nature writing, but to all who are engaged in the conservation, preservation, restoration, and representation of urban nature. He speaks, as well, to city and suburban dwellers who feel alienated from an idealized nature they imagine exists only “out there,” away from urban sprawl and congestion.

Dubkin’s essays and books extol the value of the commonplace and mundane for exploring biological adaptation and ecological complexity, illustrate the rewards of patient observation of and direct experience with natural phenomena, and explore the inescapable interconnection of humanity and nature in the urban landscape.

I frequently teach selections from Dubkin’s books in my humanities seminar at Roosevelt University, and students respond enthusiastically to his work. While my essay is the first scholarly treatment of Dubkin’s work, short excerpts from his books have been included in two recent literary anthologies: Terrell Dixon’s City Wilds: Essays and Stories about Urban Nature (2002) and Joel Greenberg’s Of Prairie, Woods, and Water: Two Centuries of Chicago Nature Writing (2008). These books not only signal the growing interest in the genre of urban environmental writing, but also illustrate the significance of Dubkin’s work within national literary contexts as well as the environmental history of the Chicago region.

Appreciations and thanks go to Terrell Dixon, professor of English at the University of Houston and colleague in the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, who back in 2005 strongly encouraged me to follow my interest in Dubkin’s writings. Roosevelt University supported my work with a faculty research and professional development leave in the spring of 2007. Last but far from least, Chicago Jewish News journalist and editor Pauline Dubkin Yearwood granted me two interviews and access to a treasure trove of her father’s documents and letters that greatly informed and inspired my research.