ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES INSTITUTE...
EnviroNews V O L U M E
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Help Design SCU’s New Education and Community Garden this Fall! If you haven’t picked up your ESI T-Shirt yet, please stop by the ESI office and get one in your size for only $11!
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
New Bug Emerges at ESI
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GPS Data Collectors Needed
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Baja 2010 Expedition
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Office of Sustainability
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Study Abroad in 6 Costa Rica Recap: Summer 7 2009 in Costa Inside Story
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ESI, working in partnership with Campus Facilities is leading the effort to build a new education and community garden for SCU on the vacant lot at the corner of Benton and Sherman streets a block north of campus. The garden will serve both the campus and the community as an educational facility, a source of healthy food, and a beautiful place to come together. Students in ENVS 132 Agroecology dug the first garden beds and planted the first crops during the spring quarter. Currently, most of the lot is covered in wood chips that were diverted from the landfill (approximately 60, 15 cubic yard truckloads!). These wood chips are part of an organic soilbuilding program designed to
bring the soil back to life so that it can produce lots of food and a great diversity of beautiful plants.
Students in the Spring 2009 Agroecology class tending to first crops in garden. For the last year and a half, students in several ESI classes have participated in garden design workshops, working in small groups contributing their ideas for what they would like to have in the garden and how they would structure it.
On Friday October 23rd at 2:30 PM we are having a Garden Planning Party. Everyone is invited to come and share their ideas for what should be in the garden and what it should it look like. All the drawings that students have done will be on display. We’ll use them as a starting point to collectively come up with a design for the garden that afternoon. We’ll spend the rest of the year building out the garden according to our community design. There will be lots of work parties and workshops and tons of great food and good times. Hope to see you in the garden! For more information email bug@scu.edu.
Letter From the Director Dear Friends of ESI, We are thrilled to be starting another academic year at ESI. Last year we went through a process called program review. We had two
professors visit and review our program, one from Bucknell University and another from Dickinson College, each of which have state-of-the-art environmental studies programs. One message came through loud and clear: We have been very successful in merging our academics and
programmatic offerings to enhance the learning environment for the SCU campus community. At ESI, there are many opportunities for students to get involved in campus and community sustainability through our new campus garden, our See Letter, Page 2