Hands-on Equals Minds-on: Reflections on Student Impacts and Keys to Success of Community Gardening Service Learning Activities in Agroecology Courses.

Engaging students in community gardening service learning opportunities as a strategic hands-on component of agricultural courses can greatly enhance student awareness of community food security and local agriculture, develop civic engagement skills and can increase the likelihood that students will pursue future learning in agriculture and volunteer with food related community organizations. I will present information on innovative approaches to incorporating service learning in courses and multiple methods to assess student learning from an Introduction to Agroecology course taught both face to face and online at North Carolina State University (NCSU) from 2009 through 2013.  In these courses, students took part in short -term service projects where they worked with the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle and community members in community gardens focused on solutions to improving food security.  From these experiences, I will share successful strategies of incorporating community gardening activities in agricultural courses, especially those that are mid to larger sized and that include traditional and non-traditional agricultural students. I will also discuss multiple methods of assessing the impacts of service learning and community engagement on students including surveys, reflective writing, and focus groups and highlight some of the qualitative and quantitative student impacts found in the Agroecology courses. Participants will walk away with a great deal of information they can use to develop and assess their own service learning activities with a focus on community gardening.