Senior environmental studies major Nell Carpenter is holding court, in a friendly, peer-to-peer kind of way, with eight fellow students in her PSS 212, Advanced Agroecology class.
Senior environmental studies major Nell Carpenter is holding court, in a friendly, peer-to-peer kind of way, with eight fellow students in her PSS 212, Advanced Agroecology class at Bread and Butter Farm in Shelburne, where the group will be taking soil samples as part of a weekly on-farm lab that's a feature of the course.
Clipboard in hand, Carpenter lays out the plan for the day. “We’ll be bagging three cups for every two-acre sample site, as well as taking penetrometer readings everywhere that you do a core, a six-inch core, as well as moisture meter readings,” she says.
The students hang on her words.
Carpenter’s impressive command, and her fellow students’ attentiveness, didn’t just happen. They’re the product of a carefully thought-through redesign of PSS 212 prompted by the Engaged Practices Innovations (EPI) Grants program, an innovative University of Vermont initiative that is systematically making student learning at the university deeper, more impactful – and often more fun.
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Image via University of Vermont.
