Being at Earth University with a student capacity of 400, where these students have fostered a relationship across all grade levels, which is also integrated into their curriculum. From working together, eating together, playing together and as a result have built a close nit relationship with each other. “We are always together” one of their first year students said. All the students in the various classes pretty much know each other, and even more interesting can identify who the seniors are. This is important because of the responsibility that seniors are given when working in the farm. They become the managers of specific projects, yet maintaining equality within each student on the farm. Each student in the university are selected from all the candidates because they have demonstrated the characteristics of a leader in their individual communities. So amongst other leaders you learn to work together, despite different ideas, and backgrounds. And when you become a senior you serve almost as a teacher assistant to help assist and manage the younger students in particular projects on the farm.
The dynamic of Earth University is that each instructor seem to think of themselves more as facilitators, and not as instructors. The difference is that one learns alongside the students, and allows the students to bring forth ideas that can be implemented in their project and the overall curriculum, and the other teaches, and listens. “Things are not ran by the book,” a student at Chatham University Food Studies program mentioned. They are able to adapt things as they see fit. It really does give more emphasis to the idea of the Earth University program, that every aspect of the university is a living laboratory. Within this established and pretty sound community here at Earth University, is another community visiting: Chatham University.
Lindsey Saletta, an everygirl blog columnists says that community is important when it comes to the survival or the success of a company, organization, a group of people, and a department. “Our economy cannot thrive without collaboration, without the wellspring of ideas and improvements and revolutions that come from communities of people in boardrooms, in coffee shops, and in kitchens across the country and across the world.” It is also important to note that, the organizations, communities, and social groups that make history, don’t do it as individuals, but as a community. A community that I have recognized at Earth University. The cohort that came to Earth University from Chatham University, also a small part of a larger community (the Falk school of Sustainability), also recognized the sense of community here at Earth. We met and discussed what we learned and observed during the day, and we couldn’t help but mention how the ability to lead and manage projects is incorporated into their curriculum. We realized how much we lacked that idea, or mentorship as a school or a department, and started to brainstorm ways that we can help improve or implement that in our university. We realized that the changes or improvements being made in our university from going coed, to moving our sustainability program to the Eden Hall campus (our Sustainability campus), meant that certain infrastructures were already being put in place, and that can help us begin to foster that community that will help grow, and improve our university as a whole. It will not be a replica of Earth University, but it will be the beginning of something significant for our university.
I will end with this, “Remember that a community is not a clique, it is an organism that must evolve to survive, taking in new members, new friends, with new skills and interests and philosophies.”
Feyisola Alabi
MBA & MSUS Student
earthtochatham 