Abstract
Through interactions with the recently formed Cooperative of the Institute of Urban Agriculture and Nutrition (CIUAN), a catalyst initiative co-governed by community organizations and academia to engage in mutually beneficial research and teaching projects, Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is supporting community efforts to bring healthy food to urban environments. This paper will discuss an innovative model, Sustainable Research and Economic Developmenet model, to involve undergraduate students in interdisciplinary community-based research exploring pathways for urban agriculture and urban farmers markets to turn blighted properties into gardens, or rice paddies, as part of a larger metropolitan community economic development effort.
Highlights
The October 2016 Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities (CUMU) meeting in Washington D.C. had the theme of Charting the Future of Metropolitan Universities
The new Sustainable Research and Economic Development (SRED) model incorporates: (a) undergraduate student-centric research; (b) community-based projects designed with urban community partners: (c) interdisciplinary interactions such as biology, economics, and engineering within the university; and (d) the potential for community development and revitalization
The three pillars of the SRED model, using an urban agriculture framework, were presented at the 2016 CUMU meeting on charting the future of metropolitan universities.Incorporating feedback from the presentation, they are described in greater detail in this paper
Summary
The October 2016 Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities (CUMU) meeting in Washington D.C. had the theme of Charting the Future of Metropolitan Universities. As a faculty member in the Department of Biological Sciences at Marquette University, a private urban and Jesuit University in the heart of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the author attended the conference for the first time and presented a seminar with the same title as this paper. It outlined a sustainable research and business model, using communitybased participatory methods, involving urban agriculture organizations in the vicinity of our university Beyond being a replicable model that could be adopted at any urban or metropolitan university embedded in a community practicing urban agriculture, a desired outcome from this approach is to break down silos within the institutions of higher
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