Saturday, November 13, 2010
ASU Masterplan
ASU Masterplan There is, you'll see, a proposed plan of the Northwest corner of campus. Bleh. Doesn't look like a garden is in the masterplan. Let's see what we can do here....
Friday, November 12, 2010
Week Four: Calendar Snap Shot
Last week we met with Lara, really good. Today I met with Ellen and we have a meeting with Jehnifer next week. Grabbed the ASU ownership plan this morning.
Similarities between Ellen and Lara
Both women agreed and seems to intimately connect with our teams argument that community is at the core sustainability. Both seems to understand more than I expected that my greatest feeling of community that I've ever experienced was at a farm.
Interestingly, both of them mentioned (in slightly different terms) that there is something rewarding and therapeutic about getting your hands dirty. Ellen suggested that if you could get people to feel that reward, then you'd have gardener on board for life. And while Ellen said she had been gardening since she was a girl, Lara admitted she only started 3 years ago when she abruptly started a green house in her back yard. Lara explained the experience of touching the earth as a "clean, untouched" moment. She attributes dirt as the earth's purest form (my words, not hers). Ellen explained that when she had rough days at work, she goes straight home to her garden.
Its an interesting observations: the feelings of connecting with the earth. How can we incorporate those?!
Another intestesting connection between the two women: Ellen aruged that our major challenge in getting a garden on the main Tempe campus was convincing the upper management that its a marketable benefit to the "business". Lara explained that the whole reason she started her garden was because she knew it was something that would bring more poeple to downtown Tempe. In other words, her whole motivation for starting a garden was because she thought it was marketable. Maybe the Tempe garden is the perfect case study to president to president Crow. I believe a follow up email with Lara is in the works!
Interestingly, both of them mentioned (in slightly different terms) that there is something rewarding and therapeutic about getting your hands dirty. Ellen suggested that if you could get people to feel that reward, then you'd have gardener on board for life. And while Ellen said she had been gardening since she was a girl, Lara admitted she only started 3 years ago when she abruptly started a green house in her back yard. Lara explained the experience of touching the earth as a "clean, untouched" moment. She attributes dirt as the earth's purest form (my words, not hers). Ellen explained that when she had rough days at work, she goes straight home to her garden.
Its an interesting observations: the feelings of connecting with the earth. How can we incorporate those?!
Another intestesting connection between the two women: Ellen aruged that our major challenge in getting a garden on the main Tempe campus was convincing the upper management that its a marketable benefit to the "business". Lara explained that the whole reason she started her garden was because she knew it was something that would bring more poeple to downtown Tempe. In other words, her whole motivation for starting a garden was because she thought it was marketable. Maybe the Tempe garden is the perfect case study to president to president Crow. I believe a follow up email with Lara is in the works!
Meeting with Lara Skutt
This happened last Friday, so I'm little off with the blog post, but alas...here's the info....
Lara is a great human being. Put our project aside, she seems like an all around good person. By the end she was suggesting we get drinks sometime - the three of us - cause she liked us too!
Lara is not the activist though that we thought she was. She is a business woman. She is the deputy director of the Downtown Tempe Community, Inc. - a non profit organization designed to get people to downtown Tempe. Foot traffic for her is the major goal! She is funded by the city, but is not employed by the city (sweet gig).
Lara exposed for us the real tangable challenges associated with starting a "community" garden. On the list of things you need, she recalls, the biggest priority is time. Ek. It took her 10 months to get that garden going and the first three of those months were without construction. She remembers having begun to advertise the future garden and then months later getting questions like "where is this thing?" Next is funding; it many not look like that garden was expensive but she believes the invested value right now is over $60,000. None of that by the way, did she have. She had a budget of $2,000 (so not none - just not 58,000 of it). She was shocked though by the donations people would give - soil, tools, lumber, time. She recounted a story about going to home depot to get the supplies to build the beds. She hand't done it before and begun consulting with the HD employees. They told her she had it all wrong, and by the end of the conversation she got the store manager to donate the PAID time of three of his on staff employees to go to the site for the afternoon and help build the beds. Next: invested folks. She recounted that many of her volunteers started out gung-hoe about starting helping in the garden but then after the first few hours of help, walked away - indefinitely. Good support is at the core of her success - one woman has with any thanks essentially taken over the garden.
(These are all things Kiesha and I DON"T have. Yet...? Yikes.)
Lara completely believed in our argument about community. She says that her team at the garden is her "little family." They yell at each other sometimes - some need more acknowledgement then others. But they also hang out together at each others' houses. They've taught children in the garden together, built the garden from scratch together, organized garden dinners together....
Barriers: She explained that financing is the biggest issue. She suggested we read The $64 Tomato which at its core explains her issue: when the garden costs over $60000 to start, the average cost of a tomato is ridiculously high when trying to get your money back - in the $60 range...? Another issue she's faced is the issue of ownership in her team. One ASU SOS student on board was responsible for a lot of the gardens' design and he brought this up a few times to suggest that he should have a larger role in the decision making process. She had to remind him that its a group project - not his project.
Lara was an inspiration, but an intimidating inspiration. She isn't some hippy student trying to make the world a better place; she has a financial goal to make downtown Tempe more approachable. The amount of work that she explained went into her project is daunting.
At least we know....
Lara is a great human being. Put our project aside, she seems like an all around good person. By the end she was suggesting we get drinks sometime - the three of us - cause she liked us too!
Lara is not the activist though that we thought she was. She is a business woman. She is the deputy director of the Downtown Tempe Community, Inc. - a non profit organization designed to get people to downtown Tempe. Foot traffic for her is the major goal! She is funded by the city, but is not employed by the city (sweet gig).
Lara exposed for us the real tangable challenges associated with starting a "community" garden. On the list of things you need, she recalls, the biggest priority is time. Ek. It took her 10 months to get that garden going and the first three of those months were without construction. She remembers having begun to advertise the future garden and then months later getting questions like "where is this thing?" Next is funding; it many not look like that garden was expensive but she believes the invested value right now is over $60,000. None of that by the way, did she have. She had a budget of $2,000 (so not none - just not 58,000 of it). She was shocked though by the donations people would give - soil, tools, lumber, time. She recounted a story about going to home depot to get the supplies to build the beds. She hand't done it before and begun consulting with the HD employees. They told her she had it all wrong, and by the end of the conversation she got the store manager to donate the PAID time of three of his on staff employees to go to the site for the afternoon and help build the beds. Next: invested folks. She recounted that many of her volunteers started out gung-hoe about starting helping in the garden but then after the first few hours of help, walked away - indefinitely. Good support is at the core of her success - one woman has with any thanks essentially taken over the garden.
(These are all things Kiesha and I DON"T have. Yet...? Yikes.)
Lara completely believed in our argument about community. She says that her team at the garden is her "little family." They yell at each other sometimes - some need more acknowledgement then others. But they also hang out together at each others' houses. They've taught children in the garden together, built the garden from scratch together, organized garden dinners together....
Barriers: She explained that financing is the biggest issue. She suggested we read The $64 Tomato which at its core explains her issue: when the garden costs over $60000 to start, the average cost of a tomato is ridiculously high when trying to get your money back - in the $60 range...? Another issue she's faced is the issue of ownership in her team. One ASU SOS student on board was responsible for a lot of the gardens' design and he brought this up a few times to suggest that he should have a larger role in the decision making process. She had to remind him that its a group project - not his project.
Lara was an inspiration, but an intimidating inspiration. She isn't some hippy student trying to make the world a better place; she has a financial goal to make downtown Tempe more approachable. The amount of work that she explained went into her project is daunting.
At least we know....
Communication and Psychology Update
If there is one thing that we've learned from project thus far, its that communication is not an easy task. To this point, we've successfully reached out to many of the parties that we hoped to connect with, but we've also failed to get a response from many!
Our go to Psychology consultant hasn't responded to two seperate emails. One was lengthy, one was short and sweet asking her to point us to someone else. No go with either. Also, I've emailed the pychology department's general email address asking for some advice on with who I should talk to. No word back.
The CAD department also ignored my correspondence. I had to go to the office in person to get the material I was looking for.
In another instance, the woman in charge of the Tempe Campus garden and the garden club ignored my request to meet, but instead sent me a link to her website. (Let's keep this blog off the record: Ellen explained to me that she hasn't been seeing the success from said party that she has been expecting).
Some of the seemingly necessary stepping stones of correspondence have been big duds! Because of this, we've had to change our strategy some. We were hoping to do a behavior analysis with guidance from a psychology consultant, but we may not get that opportunity. So instead, we might try to set up a round table with the current poly tech garden folks. In the article I've attached, Psychologist, McKenzie suggests there are a few ways to determine behavioral barriers: "Foucs Groups, observations studies, and surveys." We did intend to do survey (we still may), but a focus group with the current Poly Tech kids might be more fruitful without the help of a psychologist on board. We're hoping to gauge the possiblity of that group with Jehnifer on Tuesday. McKenzie also suggests determining the differences between those people who participate in an activity and those who don't to understand barries. We believe we can accomplish this in such a focus group.
Be beyond bad communication and changing plans on the fly, much of our correspondence has been extremely successful. My conversation with Bonny Bentzin led me to Jehnifer and Ellen. Ellen today really gave us some new direction. Talking to Harvey led us to Lara Skutt who really helped us last week with a two hour convo (blog post to follow). And although we never got a response, talking with Aleks started us down our Psychology path.
McKenzie article (pg 5 is barriers...)
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B51oOLaUD-ScOTIzN2ZkOTgtNTU2Mi00ZmNkLWEwMTEtYTZmOGQ5M2ZhMmQ5&hl=en
Our go to Psychology consultant hasn't responded to two seperate emails. One was lengthy, one was short and sweet asking her to point us to someone else. No go with either. Also, I've emailed the pychology department's general email address asking for some advice on with who I should talk to. No word back.
The CAD department also ignored my correspondence. I had to go to the office in person to get the material I was looking for.
In another instance, the woman in charge of the Tempe Campus garden and the garden club ignored my request to meet, but instead sent me a link to her website. (Let's keep this blog off the record: Ellen explained to me that she hasn't been seeing the success from said party that she has been expecting).
Some of the seemingly necessary stepping stones of correspondence have been big duds! Because of this, we've had to change our strategy some. We were hoping to do a behavior analysis with guidance from a psychology consultant, but we may not get that opportunity. So instead, we might try to set up a round table with the current poly tech garden folks. In the article I've attached, Psychologist, McKenzie suggests there are a few ways to determine behavioral barriers: "Foucs Groups, observations studies, and surveys." We did intend to do survey (we still may), but a focus group with the current Poly Tech kids might be more fruitful without the help of a psychologist on board. We're hoping to gauge the possiblity of that group with Jehnifer on Tuesday. McKenzie also suggests determining the differences between those people who participate in an activity and those who don't to understand barries. We believe we can accomplish this in such a focus group.
Be beyond bad communication and changing plans on the fly, much of our correspondence has been extremely successful. My conversation with Bonny Bentzin led me to Jehnifer and Ellen. Ellen today really gave us some new direction. Talking to Harvey led us to Lara Skutt who really helped us last week with a two hour convo (blog post to follow). And although we never got a response, talking with Aleks started us down our Psychology path.
McKenzie article (pg 5 is barriers...)
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B51oOLaUD-ScOTIzN2ZkOTgtNTU2Mi00ZmNkLWEwMTEtYTZmOGQ5M2ZhMmQ5&hl=en
Meeting with Ellen Newell
Ellen is the Associate Director of Facilities Management. I met with her today for an hour or so (K is still under the weather) and she exposed some new developments....
1. I knew before walking into this meeting that the current Tempe Campus garden was hidden behind a wall. Ellen explained to me that this was because the campus needs to have a certain marketable appearance and gardens don't fit into that image. Not only that, but the current club isn't helping its own cause - the current garden is looking a little disorganized...not a good way to get the administration on board with a more public version.
2. The Poly Tech campus has a larger more appealing garden. There, Ellen explained, there is a paid position to upkeep the garden. She believes the campus' satilitte nature and Jehnifer's (the caretaker of sorts) success is the reason why that garden is out in the open.
3. Kiesha and I agree that the garden needs to be in the major part of campus. Our argument don't forget is about community - the garden is the forefront of our motivations. To successfully get the garden in that major piece of campus (and not on a plot more isolated like across University for ex.) we will need to confront the President and Provost. Its not a cutsie little student activity we'd be asking for space for, Ellen explained. She pointed out our up hill challenge: we need to prove to the managing administration that an on campus garden won't be an eye sore but will be a marketing tool. MARKETING TOOL!! This is a totally new challenge.
4. Because the campus garden would have to be carefully maintained, I suggested and Ellen agreed, that there would have to be a paid position on campus to keep an eye on the garden. It can't fall into disrepair like the current garden has. This blows the scale of our project way up. We have to prove with some data that a community is not only possible, but marketable. EK!
5. We've got a meeting this coming Tuesday with Jehnifer - the person in charge of the Poly Tech garden. I'm interested to see in what she has to say.
1. I knew before walking into this meeting that the current Tempe Campus garden was hidden behind a wall. Ellen explained to me that this was because the campus needs to have a certain marketable appearance and gardens don't fit into that image. Not only that, but the current club isn't helping its own cause - the current garden is looking a little disorganized...not a good way to get the administration on board with a more public version.
2. The Poly Tech campus has a larger more appealing garden. There, Ellen explained, there is a paid position to upkeep the garden. She believes the campus' satilitte nature and Jehnifer's (the caretaker of sorts) success is the reason why that garden is out in the open.
3. Kiesha and I agree that the garden needs to be in the major part of campus. Our argument don't forget is about community - the garden is the forefront of our motivations. To successfully get the garden in that major piece of campus (and not on a plot more isolated like across University for ex.) we will need to confront the President and Provost. Its not a cutsie little student activity we'd be asking for space for, Ellen explained. She pointed out our up hill challenge: we need to prove to the managing administration that an on campus garden won't be an eye sore but will be a marketing tool. MARKETING TOOL!! This is a totally new challenge.
4. Because the campus garden would have to be carefully maintained, I suggested and Ellen agreed, that there would have to be a paid position on campus to keep an eye on the garden. It can't fall into disrepair like the current garden has. This blows the scale of our project way up. We have to prove with some data that a community is not only possible, but marketable. EK!
5. We've got a meeting this coming Tuesday with Jehnifer - the person in charge of the Poly Tech garden. I'm interested to see in what she has to say.
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