Part of the mission of Roosevelt University is to encourage community partnerships in the Chicago metropolitan area. Here in the Sustainability Studies Program, opportunities to better Chicagoans’ environment are substantial; one way in which this has been done this summer is through adjunct Professor Maris Cooke’s SUST 230 Food seminar, which works to cultivate local agriculture at the Chicago Avenue Gardens near Cabrini-Green.
Cooke’s teaching in the Evelyn T. Stone College of Professional Studies has involved food issues for several years. Several versions of her PLS 391 Seminar in Natural Sciences have focused on how food issues relate to urban environmental deterioration and poverty. Cooke learned about the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago’s Mission Outreach Program, which began the conversion of an outdoor basketball court to a community garden in 2002. The garden is located on a property the church owns next to the Cabrini Green Public Housing Project. The garden provides church members and residents of Cabrini Green with gardening plots on which to grow a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. The church, with their community partners, provide educational programs and monthly cookouts for adults and children at the garden.
The garden is currently in a transformational period as the Cabrini Green Public Housing projects are being torn down. However,with the Cabrini Row Houses and nearby North Town Village, the garden has become a year round urban farm. As Cooke’s first offering of SUST 230 Food began this summer, the national organization Growing Power (founded by MacArthur Fellow Will Allen), has put high school students of the community at work tending to urban gardens. The relationship between Roosevelt and Growing Power extends back to 2008 when Professor Cooke received a McCormick Tribune Foundation Grant that enabled students in the PLS 391 – Seminar in the Natural Sciences class to participate in and help to fund the urban farm at Chicago Avenue near Cabrini Green. The Chicago Avenue Urban Farm belongs to the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago and is overseen by Natasha Holbert, the Mission Outreach Director for the church. Growing Power has been assisting with the farm over the past few years, and this year the collaboration of these groups had allowed for the transition of the Chicago Avenue garden to a year round urban farm along with a farmer’s market. Students in SUST 230 Food are helping with this summer’s conversion of the garden to a year-round farm, but Roosevelt’s relationship with the high school students of the area does not end there.
On July 20, 35 teens, young adults and volunteers involved in a work-study program at three Chicago based urban farms took an extensive tour of Roosevelt University. These young men and women are participants in a project supported by Growing Power to build ecologically sound urban farms that provide healthy and safe organic foods to local residents. Students involved in this project learn not only the basics of growing and harvesting these foods, but also how to market and distribute crops grown on the urban farms in a sustainable manner.
A mix of students entering their sophomore, junior, and senior years this autumn, the students got both a sense of what university admissions offices are looking for in a successful applicant as well as a sense of what opportunities await prospective Roosevelt University students, and beyond that, what opportunities await future Roosevelt University graduates.
Fittingly for a group of young people interested in food issues, the event began with lunch. Patrick Lupo of Roosevelt’s Advising Center arranged for a catered luncheon with a definite “green” theme: vegetarian sandwiches, a fresh mixed salad and fresh fruit.
During lunch, the students heard from both administrative heads and instructors in the Evelyn T. Stone College of Professional Studies. College Dean John Cicero (pictured below) discussed some of the merits of a 
Roosevelt education and how it related to concerns and issues in the students own lives. One link he touched upon due to the students’ participation with Growing Power was Roosevelt’s new Sustainability Studies program as a way for students to tap into their existing work in their future college studies. He then introduced Sustainability Studies “co-inventor” (in Dean Cicero’s words) Professor Carl Zimring, who is teaching SUST 210 The Sustainable Future this autumn.
Zimring elaborated on several of the program’s courses, linking the food issues the students already understand with issues relating to water quality, energy, and waste management. He then introduced adjunct Professor Maris Cooke (pictured below), who arranged the tour. 
Cooke’s expertise and relationship with the Chicago Avenue Garden project made this visit possible, and she spoke about the importance of the work the students are doing and how our courses delve further into the politics and science of our food systems.
After the initial remarks, the students toured the University Center that Roosevelt shares with other South Loop universities, and then went up to the top of the Auditorium building to see Lake Michigan from the main library (pictured at left). These tours were led by experienced Roosevelt students who gave their guests an idea of what to expect in university life, and how to approach financial aid to offset the costs of tuition, room, and board.
Finally, the students heard from Roosevelt 
President Chuck Middleton (pictured at right) on the value of higher education in general and a Roosevelt degree in particular. The teens were then provided “goody bags” and information folders – generously donated by the college for the tour. The students returned to their homes with a better understanding of what it takes to get into college, and some of the opportunities that open up to them with a Roosevelt University education. They already have an understanding of several of the food systems issues that we emphasize in SUST 230 Food; perhaps in years to come, some will become Sustainability majors and channel their expertise into careers that will combat environmental ills and poverty in their neighborhoods. For a very successful tour, Cooke speaks for the program when she says “We are most grateful to Growing Power and Natasha Holbert for their interest in providing these young men and women a college tour, as well as their extraordinary efforts to provide jobs and training at the urban farms.”
If you are interested, or know someone who is interested in learning more about a Roosevelt education incorporating Sustainability Studies, please visit our Sustainability Studies website, call 1-877-277-5978 (1-877-APPLY RU) or email applyRU@roosevelt.edu.
