U-ACRE Wins National Honor

U-ACRE participant Andrew Shensky hands out seeds to students at Ladera Vista Junior High School. U-ACRE has been nationally recognized for its contributions to the community.

Cal State Fullerton’s Urban Agriculture Community-based Research Experience (U-ACRE) community engagement program is one of five throughout the country to earn the Washington Center’s prestigious New York Life Higher Education Civic Engagement Award.

The award, which recognizes colleges and universities that build and maintain community partnerships to address public concerns, was presented at the National Press Club in September. As an award winner, U-ACRE earned $20,000 in scholarship funding to help their students participate in the Washington Center’s Academic Internship Program next year. Deputy Provost Dr. Shari McMahon accepted the award on behalf of the University, accompanied by Dawn Macy, Director of the Center for Internships & Community Engagement, which prepared CSUF's submission to the national competition.

“U-ACRE has managed to create and maintain many partnerships within the community that have provided our students the opportunity to conduct community-based research projects, as well as make a difference with regard to  obesity, diabetes and other food issues,” said Associate Vice President for Academic Programs Dr. Peter Nwosu. “To be chosen for this award – being one of only five throughout the country – is a tremendous honor for the students, faculty and staff who make U-ACRE the phenomenon it is.”

U-ACRE, supported the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hispanic-Serving Institutions Grants Program, provides 20 undergraduate and graduate students of all majors with hands-on, community-based research experience. Working with Ladera Vista Junior High School, Pathways of Hope transitional living center, Orange County Food Access Coalition, the Berkeley School, Monkey Business Café, the US Forest Service, and the Fullerton Arboretum, U-ACRE aims to address issues of hunger, food security and child nutrition.

U-ACRE also provides faculty with the opportunity to help students achieve their objectives. Dr. Joel Abraham from Biological Sciences, advises some of the students and co-teaches the research intensive class. Additional faculty advisers or participants in the research intensive class include: Dr. Jochen Schenk, also from the Biological Sciences Department; Dr. Denise Stanley from the Economics Department; Christina Smith from the Visual Arts Department; and Dr. John Carroll from the Geography Department.

“Collaboration in research is a big part of this program,” said Anthropology Professor Dr. Sara Johnson, U-ACRE’s project director. “Community-based research is not something you can teach in a classroom; it is something you need to go out and do.”

Students in the U-ACRE program learn to implement and evaluate sustainable urban agriculture projects – including community gardens at Ladera Vista Junior High School and Pathways of Hope – and research food choices through childhood to better understand dietary intake in the context of food insecurity.

The U-ACRE students teach seventh- and eighth-grade children at Ladera Vista how to plant and harvest vegetables, fruits, and grains, and inform them about the nutritional values of the foods. As part of these classes, U_ACRE students talk about water utilization and conservation, pollination, and soil productivity, They also use two institutional application vermi-composting units to reclaim organic waste (food waste from Ladera Vista student lunches) while producing worm castings for the garden.

“Getting to interact with young people and seeing their attitudes change about vegetables through gardening is really rewarding,” said U-ACRE participant Cynthia Chavez. “Every semester starts off challenging but is still fun. Even the students who do not seem interested in the beginning leave with more respect for where their food comes from. This semester there was a student who did not really want to be involved in garden tutorials … but he ended up asking for seeds so that he can start a garden at home. Moments like that make all the stress of juggling my own school work and instructing tutorials worth it.”

At Pathways of Hope, the students planted a garden and conduct research on food knowledge and choices in a food-insecure environment. 

As a member of the Orange County Food Access Coalition – which develops innovative strategies aimed at ending hunger and delivering nutrition to the under-served community – U-ACRE and its students analyze data and disseminate the information to the rest of the coalition, which includes food banks, the United Way, UC Irvine and other nutrition-focused nonprofit organizations.

U-ACRE students also get the opportunity to intern and participate in research projects at the Fullerton Arboretum, which utilizes urban architecture to train workers at Monkey Business Café, a non-profit restaurant that provides training for youth emancipated from the foster care system.

“Community engagement is a cornerstone of the University’s Strategic Plan,” said Interim Associate Dean of the College of the Arts Arnold Holland, who represented CSUF on The Washington Center's panel of awardees at the Association of American Colleges and Universities conference in January. “Each year almost one-third of Cal State Fullerton's students participate in community engagement. Last year alone, about 12,000 students performed more than 1.4 million hours of course-related or voluntary service. That's a tremendous amount of impact on our communities.”