Sustainable Development in Downtown Columbia, MO; a Service Learning Class
Project leader: Adam Saunders: amsh58@mizzou.edu
About | Volunteer Opportunities | Volunteer Benefits | Project Statistics
About Sustainable Development:
Sustain Mizzou is sponsoring a Service Learning class that teaches sustainable development! Students enroll in a registered Mizzou class and receive 3 hours of class credit for participating in this unique hands-on learning experience. The class is lead by three Sustain Mizzou volunteers (Adam Saunders, Bobby Johnson, and Daniel Soetaert) and is sponsored by Sustain Mizzou’s faculty advisor (Dr. Jan Weaver). In the class’s first semester (fall 2008) students and volunteers established a composting system that collects post-consumer foodscraps from Rollins dining hall and hauls them with a bike trailer to be composted at local community gardens as well as an urban research farm managed by the class. The fall class also prepared a 1/16th acre plot for production and built a compost heated greenhouse. This spring the class will design and plant an intensive organic garden on the 1/16th acre. The spring semester class will also expand the composting program to new community gardens, grow salad greens, and grow all the starts for spring out planting.
This class still has seats available for the spring 2009 semester! Sign up today on MyZou for Environmental Studies 2150 section 1! If you would like more information please e-mail Adam at amsh58@mizzou.edu. If you want to get involved but don’t have time in your schedule, you can come out and volunteer during any one of our three labs. We will meet Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 3 to 6 pm. Come get involved and see what is developing in your own back yard!
Volunteer Opportunities:
We need volunteers every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 3 to 6 pm! Volunteers will help the class with the composting program, manage the salad greens in the greenhouse, plant and tend the garden, and much more. Volunteers are encouraged to build a lab time into their schedule so they can come out and help each week! Come check it out!
Volunteer Benefits:
Volunteers will get to be directly involved in cutting edge sustainable development going on here in your own back yard. Volunteers learn basic organic agriculture skills and meet people interested in taking significant steps toward reducing their personal impact on the world.
Project Statistics:
This fall we collected over 18,000 pounds of food scraps! All of it with a human powered bike trailer! These food scraps have been mixed with equal parts horse bedding, yielding an estimated 36,000 pounds of compost! This compost is now “cooking” in four bins at St. Joseph Community Garden, one huge bin at Circus-Lyons Community Garden, and two bins at the Sustain Mizzou Research Farm.
We have logged over 1000 hours of lab time and well over 1000 hours of volunteer time this fall.
We have tilled and planted about a 1/16th acre of wheat that will be put into veggie production next spring.
We have constructed a greenhouse at the research farm that will be used to grow salad greens during the winter.