CEA Retrospective Essay 

 

My experience with the CEA program furthered my education on community engagement, apart from what I would learn through my internship. My key responsibility during this program was to work as an Urban Garden Manager for the Office of Sustainability and maintain IUPUI’s two organic gardens. Through working for the Office of Sustainability, I became more aware of how IUPUI’s campus is impacting the surrounding environment and how that in turn affects my future. Additionally, I learned what IUPUI is currently doing to become a more sustainable campus and how I personally as a student can contribute to that goal. Specifically, my internship focuses on merging urban food production and sustainable agricultural practices to give Indianapolis residents better access to locally sourced food. Overall, through this internship, I am able to help serve my community by educating the public about organic urban farming practices, creating a community space where all IUPUI students feel welcome, and providing fresh local produce to IUPUI students, staff, and faculty. 

​

The reason that I chose to apply for this position is that sustainability has always been a very important topic to me and something that I have been interested in learning more about. I knew that my classes, as a history major, and my future career would not likely be focused on sustainability so I wanted to incorporate that aspect into my extracurricular activities during my college career. The only experience I had previous to this internship was gardening with my grandmother at home. We had a small garden behind the house as well as many flower beds out front that I would help take care of with my grandma. Through this, I grew up loving working outdoors and appreciating the hard work that goes into gardens. This internship was the perfect combination of my interest in sustainability and my love for gardening. 

​

IUPUI has a very diverse community, which is one of the main reasons why I love being a student there. Naturally, through this internship I got to meet people from different backgrounds, both academically and culturally. I was really able to connect with people who were very different from me, through the shared experience of gardening. Every week we had volunteer hours, and we would meet a wide variety of students and staff. I got to learn about how certain vegetables were traditionally used in other countries' cooking while also getting a better understanding of all the programs that are offered at IUPUI. I think that this experience is something that will stick with me for the rest of my life, and it gave me a lot of opportunities to explore how I can better connect with the people in my community. 

​

I think that my internship was able to utilize my strengths and my natural interests. I have very strong organizational skills and made spreadsheets to keep track of all the produce that was collected and to plan what should be planted next year. This was also helpful when making sure tasks were completed in a timely manner, especially when we had volunteers. I also just really enjoy learning about different agricultural practices and this internship allowed me to dive into some of my interests and try out different growing practices. The biggest challenge that I faced during this experience was managing the physical requirements of the job. Last summer was particularly hot, and working just a couple hours in the garden was very draining. I had to be very flexible with my schedule and I would work for shorter periods of time, more frequently. I was also having trouble with getting bug bites while in the garden. This was something that I was able to talk about with my boss and coworkers. They helped me try to find solutions which made the situation a lot easier to deal with.