This presentation will focus on The CGCC Food Waste Recycling Project, an ongoing campus-wide collaborative project that offers deep, cross-disciplinary, experiential student learning via an innovative solution for CGCC’s food and green waste. With the support of campus facilities, this program has established a receptacle system that facilitates separation of food waste generated on campus. A collaborative group of biology and engineering students, with guidance from faculty, have designed a unique organic waste digester machine that will recycle food and green waste into a nutrient-rich liquid fertilizer, which will be used to maintain campus grounds. During this time, students will be studying the effects of this liquid fertilizer on plant life. The long-term goal is for this model to be used throughout the Maricopa Community College District and for this fertilizer to be disseminated to our surrounding agricultural community with city partnerships established by students. Through collaborative biology, art, English, and communications projects, students have begun a marketing campaign that promotes a “sustainability mindset” by changing the behavior of how our campus community handles their waste through increasing awareness of what happens to our food after we dispose of it. In this discussion, we will examine how CGCC students play an integral role throughout this project, which offers a unique opportunity to practice translational science, bringing innovative ideas to the public while fostering critical thinking and confidence in their innovative potential. 

For members: watch on demand   For members: archived webinars on demand   Upcoming webinars

Presenters

Mickey Marsee, Faculty, English, Chandler-Gilbert Community College Mickey Marsee has twenty-five years of experience in teaching composition, professional writing, and comparative studies, focusing on monster fiction and film, medical writing, science and environmental studies. After 23 years at the University of New Mexico-Los Alamos as an Associate Professor, Assessment Coordinator, First-Year Experience Coordinator, and Chair of English and Humanities, in 2018, Mickey joined Chandler-Gilbert Community College’s Department of Composition as Residential Faculty. Her focus on using integrative teaching strategies, particularly experiential and service- learning, and theme-driven coursework, led her to participate in the campus’s newest challenge: The Food Waste Recycling Project. Currently, Dr. Marsee is developing composition curriculum that engages students in critical thinking and developing writing skills through the lens of food sustainability issues on campus, in their community, and in a global context.

Miriam Kleinman, Faculty, Biology, Chandler-Gilbert Community College Dr. Miriam Kleinman is an adjunct faculty member of CGCC’s Biology Department and the owner of a local biotechnology company. She applies her entrepreneurial spirit to her students by encouraging them to be innovators. In 2017, she challenged her students to create innovative sustainable solutions to present at the Sustainability Day event and the Food Waste Recycling Project was born. The project creates experiential learning opportunities as students tackle the socio-economic problem of food waste.