Now here's a class students really dig

Honors English classes rarely include gardening as a course assignment.

Planting peas and squash, after all, doesn't usually further college-level analysis of literature and poetry unless, of course, students also review pieces on the environment.

"Seed, soil and the soul," a new course this past spring at the College of DuPage, required its students get their hands dirty building a garden that will feed needier county residents all summer. The course merged honors English and environmental science into a single 10-week class.

Students might read books about migrant workers, the dangers of fast food or harmful effects to the soil from pollution. Then they hit the garden to see how things they've read about translate into real life.

Even with those formal lessons long gone, students are sticking around over the summer to care for the all-organic vegetable garden they built on the southwest corner of Lambert Road and Fawell Boulevard. As vegetables mature, the students harvest them for delivery to People's Resource Center in Wheaton, a drop-off point for the Plant a Row for the Hungry campaign.

The project helps "demonstrate to students real-life applications of things we talk about," Shamili Sandiford said.

Studying food and environmental issues can be overwhelming and depressing, and a trip to the People's Resource Center confirmed for students that hunger and poverty does exist in the area.

Building a garden for someone else's benefit, though, take all that information and converts it to be more positive.

"It gives us something we can personally and professionally be empowered to do to make a changes," Sandiford said.

The professors came up with the idea for the course and the garden after a conference where university instructors talked about how they used gardening to enhance coursework.

Sandiford and Deborah Adelman, an English professor, adopted the idea, turning it into a new course and getting the administration's blessing to turn over sod and build a garden near the Glen Ellyn school's large bank of satellites.

They planted lettuce, bok choi, spinach, chard, tomatoes, eggplant and peppers, among other things, in the 100-square-foot plot. And so far, through the end of June, students already harvested and delivered 300 grocery bags of fresh vegetables, Adelman said.

What's most surprising about the project as a whole, she said, is the interest in working the garden that's been expressed by people not associated with the class. Other faculty members have asked if they might help, and they've also suggested that their children's Scout troops get the chance to garden, as well.

"It's fitting in," Sandiford said, "with the spirit of the community college."