PODCAST: Promoting Food Literacy Through On-Campus Agriculture, Part A

About the Episode

The first of two episodes discussing food literacy in the context of community gardening and agriculture projects, including talk about engaging gardeners of all ages, gardening as an educational and community-centering tool, gardening as a way to alleviate food insecurity, and links between agriculture, ecology, and spirituality. Featuring Co-director of Young Adult Spirituality with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, Jennifer Tacheny. 

Behind the Scenes

Feed That Nation is available on the following platforms: Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Breaker, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Castbox, Overcast, and Stitcher.

Podcast 4A was one of my favorites of the whole project. I was super jazzed about the topic, Promoting Food Literacy Through On-Campus Agriculture, and even more excited to interview my work supervisor and mentor, Jennifer Tacheny. Jennifer has worked as the co-director of Young Adult Spirituality for 14 years, and she’s been directing the Celeste’s Dream Community Garden during that time. Jennifer’s background is in sustainable agriculture, and she’s got a huge heart and passion for collaboration and connection in working on social justice issues.

I’ve learned so much from Jennifer and the other community gardeners with Celeste’s Dream. One of my favorite parts of our conversation in this episode was discussing how community garden spaces can be classrooms for people to come and learn and teach others. For me, it’s been fun to be both student and teacher; I end up doing a lot of educating when I’m leading projects with the St. Kate’s community garden, and I’m teaching a lot of the ideas I’ve learned while working with Celeste’s Dream. It’s been one of the best learning experiences I’ve had in my time in college, and I am looking forward to continuing to garden and learn in the future.

A couple of exciting events coming up for me: In the next 2 months, I’m presenting at 3 different conferences! Two of them are small conferences hosted by other private colleges in the metro area, and the 3rd is the Midwest Campus Compact Conference. We actually had to write and submit a presentation proposal for this one. A month later, we were informed that our presentation had been chosen! This is a large conference that will bring together educators, administrators, students, and stakeholders from all over the Midwest, and I’m absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to present about our work with food insecurity at St. Kate’s with my mentors.