Institutionalizing Service-Learning to Address Urban Campus Food Justice

A First-Year Seminar course was designed using high-impact practices supporting food justice at a university serving mainly urban, minority, Hispanic, and first-generation students. The course was initially taught using participatory experiential learning but without service-learning. After an urban farm was added to campus to support the institutionalization of a garden-based service-learning program, the course was redesigned to add a service-learning component. Students were required to work at the farm composting, cultivating, and harvesting food for distribution to fellow food-insecure students for a minimum of ten hours throughout the semester. Service-learning students, as opposed to participatory experiential learning students, reported overall greater satisfaction with the course and its activities, had a 3% higher grade point average and a 9% lower drop, fail, and withdrawal rate. Service-learning students expressed a connection to campus community, a sense of feeling cared for, greater awareness of food justice issues and the ability to work toward community-based solutions and grow their critical consciousness. The added service-learning component significantly improved course outcomes and provided much needed assistance in the development of a new garden-based program.