Innovation is needed to build capacity for food justice in urban food apartheid areas. Home gardening programs have the potential to achieve such goals. Chicago Grows Food created the Grow Your Groceries Home Garden intervention in 2022 to improve access to produce in food insecure communities. A mixed-methods, longitudinal investigation was conducted to determine how the program affected food access, cost savings, gardening skills, health, and socioemotional outcomes. Participants (N=46) were surveyed pre- and post-program over two annual cycles. Focus group participants (N=9) provided enriching context and detail. While results on improved gardening confidence over time emerged non-significant, the mixed-methods findings were positive. Participants reported increased food access, cost savings, healthier eating, stress reduction, and strengthened relational bonds, showcasing wide-ranging impacts on food security and well-being. Urban agriculture organizations may use this intervention as a model for home-based gardening programs, thus paving a path for localized food justice efforts.

PurposeThe article offers a study of the central food marketplace in Santiago, Dominican Republic. The purpose of the study is to explore how changes in the marketplace reflect transformation of urban food systems resulting from neoliberal restructuring during the final decades of the twentieth century.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on long-term qualitative research conducted during the late 1990s and early 2000s, including ethnographic and survey methods, the article illustrates how central urban marketplaces offer a window into transitions in both international and domestic food economies.FindingsResearch findings illustrate that the marketplace in Santiago operated in a state of economic hybridity, intermixing long established regionally produced domestic crops such as yuca, plantains and pigeon peas deeply rooted in Dominican agrarian culture with products dervived from liberalization of the Dominican economy such as imported rice, beans and eventually numerous Dominican food staples.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is limited by the scope of analysis which is one urban marketplace. More sites for researching marketplaces could be added for more comparative analysis.Practical implicationsThe research findings have implications for how governments define social and economic policy that impacts domestic food producers and intermediary brokers that aggregate and debulk food to feed cities.Originality/valueThe scholarship raises questions about how the social and economic organization of urban marketplaces in the Dominican Republic and elsewhere reflect historical transitions in local, national and global economies.

Urban areas around the world are increasingly turning to green infrastructure to promote resilience to climate change. Core traits of resilient systems have emerged from diverse disciplines. Here, we draw from existing literature on these core traits to elaborate an explicitly social-ecological systems (SES) and resilience trait-based framework for operationalizing urban resilience through green infrastructure. We identify social and ecological dimensions of core resilience traits, cover methodological aspects of creating SES- and resilience-based spatial inventories of urban green infrastructure, and discuss how this framework helps to promote systems-based planning. We demonstrate the application of the framework to several real world cases and identify fruitful research directions.

COVID-19 exacerbated existing disparities in food security in Chicago. Home gardening can improve food security but there are often barriers to participation and the benefits are understudied. Chicago Grows Food (CGF) formed in 2020 to address food insecurity during COVID-19, and created the Grow Your Groceries (GYG) program to provide home gardening kits to families at risk of food insecurity in Chicago. A participatory program evaluation was conducted to better understand the experiences of and benefits to individuals participating in GYG. Program participants shared feedback via focus groups (n = 6) and surveys (n = 72). Qualitative data were analyzed using an iterative coding process. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Most participants reported confidence in using a grow kit to grow food, increased healthy food consumption, easier access to healthy food, and high likelihood of growing food again. Additionally, participants described increased connections within their communities, increased interaction with their family, and personal growth as benefits of the program. These results demonstrate the benefits of a novel home gardening program that uses fabric grow bags to address food insecurity. A larger scale program evaluation is necessary to better understand the impacts of participating in this home gardening program.

In this chapter the authors describe the development of an interdisciplinary graduate program focusing on sustainable urban development at Chicago's DePaul University. Locating the curriculum both in the administrative institutional context and the historical geography of a racially and economically segregated urban area, the authors discuss the process of program formation and adjustment over its first five years of operation, 2013-2018. The chapter highlights some of the challenges encountered by program faculty, from internal curricular competition to external classification of the program under federal educational designation, and notes some of the interdisciplinary innovations, such as requiring courses in Geographic Information Systems to aid spatial data analysis and visualizations. In the second part of the chapter, to assess the impact of the graduate program on students, the authors review and draw from reflection essays written by students who, while completing their studies, pursued internships with nonprofit organizations in Chicago. The chapter concludes by discussing the employment status of recent alumni to suggest how these former students are pursuing jobs that may come to impact sustainability policy and practice. The authors maintain it is necessary to push the understanding of "sustainability" beyond solely environmental concerns to incorporate understandings of how economic development and community engagement must be included to deliver a sustainable city. The interdisciplinary curriculum described challenges students to become leaders in local efforts to make urban areas not only more environmentally sustainable, but also more economically and socially sustainable for all residents.

The United States currently has over one million restaurants, making food service one of the largest workforces and industry sectors in the nation's economy. Historically, concern for the health of early restaurant workers was tied largely to the hygiene of the food and thus the wellbeing of the customer rather than the individuals preparing the food. The landscape of occupational illness and injury that resulted is fraught with some of the starkest health disparities in wages, discrimination, benefits, injuries, and illness seen among US laborers. These disparities have consistently been associated with social class and economic position. Conditions identified during the early years of restaurant work, before the introduction of occupational safety and health protections, persist today largely due to tipped wages, dependence on customer discretion, and the management structure. Research and intervention efforts to control occupational health hazards should be directed toward the socioeconomic and structural roots of health problems among food service workers in the United States. Such efforts have important implications for enhancing worker protections, improving wages, and restructuring working conditions for restaurant and food service workers. They also suggest opportunities for occupational health practitioners and researchers to contribute to system-level change analysis to address centuries-old occupational health challenges still facing one of the largest sectors of workers in the country.

This 2018 CUMU Annual Conference issue of Metropolitan Universities journal (MUJ) highlights efforts by universities and scholars seeking to engage directly with issues of equity in cities. Reflecting on the conference theme, Partnering for Equity, the City of Chicago offered arguably one of the most sobering and rich contexts for discussing the role of higher education in promoting equity. A 2017 study found the cost of lost income to Chicago’s regional economy due to racial segregation exceeded $4 billion (Urban Institute, 2017, pg. IX). This same study noted an estimated 83,000 college degrees never attained because of racial segregation (Urban Institute, 2017, pg. 40). Chicago, like many urban areas, presents the most pressing opportunities and challenges for uncovering and addressing issues of equity. As reflected in the conference presentations and speeches, one of the most important changes in higher education is the growing recognition that social change begins on and around the campus. Paulo Freire posited this view nearly 40 years ago in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, naming education a political act. To fully realize this transformative power of higher education, universities must partner across institutions and sectors to reveal and address critical issues of equity. This is the focus of the work shared at the 2018 CUMU Annual Conference.

Geographers have increasingly adopted community-based learning and research into their teaching and scholarly activities since Bunge and Harvey called for an applied public geography that is both useful and challenges societal inequalities. With few exceptions, however, there has been little discussion of methods for measuring this work. Many published assessments focus on the impacts of projects on students but overlook the impacts on community partners. Impacts on faculty and the larger university community are also often ignored. This article discusses literature on the evaluation of community-university research and service learning from a critical perspective. A discussion of service learning and community-based research (CBR) projects at two Chicago universities, DePaul and Chicago State, is presented. In both cases challenges were encountered to achieve full evaluation of projects, yet both included an evaluation of university and community partners that allowed for assessment of the projects' value to all partners.

The article highlights recent food policies in Chicago with the goal of exploring how higher education institutions can contribute to development of sustainable food resources for residents of North American cities. Thousands of Chicago residents face daily challenges accessing fresh food due to income constraints and/or lack of proximity to food retailers. Concomitantly, the city’s high dependency on imported food, often from thousands of miles away, is countered by growing interest in local production in community gardens and urban farms. The article outlines efforts at redeveloping Chicago into a thriving producer of fresh food through advocacy, policy making, and planning; and curriculum and community engagement efforts at Chicago area universities and colleges that exemplifies higher education’s role in creating a just and ecologically sustainable urban food system. The examples illustrate the importance of multi-institutional collaboration, often driven by community-based advocacy groups that facilitate local food research, technical assistance, and policy initiatives with support from universities and colleges. The article therefore highlights the supportive role urban higher education institutions can play in building food systems that support the local food economy, contribute to improving the natural environment, and expand access to nutritious fresh food for those with the least wherewithal.

This case study on Discover DePaul represents an initial step in responding to the question, How can we use science and education to help revitalize low-income communities, involve and mentor underrepresented students in scientific research in their communities, equip undergraduates with the skills to work with and learn from community partners, and use results to help inform environmental policy at the municipal level? The project was implemented as a 3-week summer science immersion for high school students with a goal of assessing urban soil quality in underserved communities, using soil quality assessment as a portal into scientific exploration by youth in these communities. The itinerary balanced science learning, use of scientific knowledge to answer local questions of interest, and an introductory college experience. Postsurvey results highlight multiple metrics of success with the majority of students self-reporting higher college-readiness and a gain or improvement in 18 of 20 employability skills.

This study explores the role of community service (CSL) in promoting undergraduate persistence relative to other experiences students have in college, their entering characteristics, and institutional features. By following the 2009 freshmen cohort at three Midwestern universities over three years, this study finds that students 'experiences while in college (CSL, full-time enrollment, and GPA) have a stronger effect on the likelihood of reenrollment than students 'entering characteristics (age, gender, and race). Our separate analyses for each institution allow us to consider how the differences between the three universities (student body composition, retention rate, CSL program) might lead CSL courses to play a particularly critical role in student persistence in certain types of universities. ********** As colleges and universities work to increase the percentage of their student populations that complete degrees, some types of institutions face greater obstacles than others. In general, colleges where most students live on campus and enroll full-time achieve higher retention rates than do colleges where most students live and work off-campus and attend part-time. Students at private universities, especially those that are more selective, are more likely to complete their degree than students at public universities (Astin & Oseguera, 2012). Such differences are mostly beyond the control of university administrators and faculty; however, methods that may promote student engagement and reinforce identification with the university--such as community service (CSL)--might help public commuter universities increase their retention rates (Kuh, 2012). This study draws upon the design of Astin and Oseguera's (2012) ambitious analysis of 262 colleges and universities to provide information for those seeking to predict and promote the retention of students. The large number of variables in that analysis included (a) pre college characteristics; (b) environmental contingencies of attendance; and (c) characteristics of the institution attended. In this study, we compare and follow the freshmen cohorts of three Midwestern universities for three years to determine whether enrollment in CSL promotes student persistence in some types of institutions compared to others, and also whether this impact differs in accordance with students' characteristics at college entry and their different experiences in college. Our theoretical framework for this research is Tinto's theory (1993) which identifies four categories of predictors of persistence: academic integration, social integration, financial pressures, and psychological differences. Social integration is particularly important at four-year universities and colleges with large percentages of full-time students living on campus and enjoying a rich campus life. In contrast, academic integration is more critical to the success of individuals enrolled in institutions with large percentages of part-time students who live and work off campus (Braxton, Hirschy, & McClendon, 2004). Because of external pressures on such students there is a tendency to come to campus for class and then rush to meet other responsibilities, leaving little opportunity for building a sense of community on campus. Our supposition is that students' engagement in CSL increases both academic and social integration, leading to greater commitment to the institution, and more likely completion of their degree (Braxton et al., 2004; Tinto, 2012). Recent studies explored whether active learning methods such as CSL enhance the engagement of all students in their courses (Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, Whitt, & Associates, 2010) and whether such engagement increases their retention, with encouraging indications that it may (Bringle, Hatcher, & Muthiah, 2010; Lockeman & Peleo, 2013). This study considers whether the effect of CSL is particularly critical in institutions with higher proportions of commuter, part-time students for whom academic integration promotes persistence. …

The essay briefly outlines the history of community engagement at DePaul University in order to explore how and why universities and colleges are increasingly adopting data collections systems for tracking community engagement. I explore the question of why there is a growing interest in tracking engagement within the academy and suggest that dominant meanings attached to tracking behavior (e.g., recognition, marketing, budget legitimation) overshadow more critical and political rationales for documenting engagement, such as those that emerge out of aspiration to understand how higher education can play a role in promoting social justice and transforming communities. I argue that the latter requires a critical, self-reflexive, ethnographic approach to tracking that illuminates not only positive outcomes of engagement but also the inevitable challenges or failures of engagement that can limit student learning, faculty scholarship, and, perhaps most importantly, community benefit.

Service learning offers a pedagogy by which adult students are guided toward understanding their potential for leadership in civic life and community development, strengthening the impact that universities have in communities. In this study, qualitative data is analyzed to determine how adult students perceive their service-learning experiences and what the university could do to involve them more in the future. Respondents provide some evidence that they value opportunities to give back to communities where they have a connection; appreciate hands-on learning that is integrated with classroom learning; benefit from placement experiences that build upon prior knowledge and skills; and prefer greater choice in the selection of their service-learning placement. As the number of adult students entering higher education continues to rise and their retention remains a challenge, understanding how these students are engaged by service learning becomes an important area of exploration for post-secondary institutions.