Breaking Ground on the University Garden: Service-learning and Action Research

• Main Author: Davis, Bryce Collin
• Format: Others
• Published: Digital Commons at Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School 2014
• Subjects: action research; gardening; higher education; service-learning; Education; Educational Leadership; Higher Education
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/etd/204; https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1254&context=etd

The purpose of this dissertation was to document, analyze, understand, and describe how the environmental virtue ethics of undergraduate students were impacted after participating in a service-learning project designed to establish a new university garden. This service-learning project occurred during the fall semester of 2011, on the campus of Lighthouse University, a mid-size Catholic college campus that is located in an urban area of Southern California. The service-learning component was embedded within one environmental ethics course. Over the course of one sixteen-week academic semester, thirty undergraduates, between the ages of 18-23, each volunteered ten hours in this new on-campus garden. In addition to the student volunteer work, one of the complimentary course components required students to attend a speaking engagement hosted by Dr. Vandana Shiva, a world-renowned environmentalist. The action researcher, served as the catalyst, recorder, and facilitator of this service-learning project. In these roles, the action researcher mobilized members of the university, volunteers from the broader community, and local master gardeners to work side by side with the undergraduate students in the garden. After a qualitative analysis was conducted through the procedures of action research, local recommendations were generated in order to assist future garden-based curricular and co-curricular activities.