When Jules Reynolds first considered a Community-based Learning (CBL) class about local food systems, she had countless questions. From wondering how to compensate community partners for their instruction to wondering where to park the vans used to to transport students to a community partner site, the logistics of a CBL course were complicated.
“I had TAed a number of courses, but I’ve never TAed or taught a Community-based Learning course before, and so, I had so many questions just about the logistics of how to do Community-based Learning,” Reynolds says. “I really wanted to bring my students out to Brix Cider––bring them into the community that they were engaging with––but what are the logistics of that?”
Reynolds is a PhD candidate in geography and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a graduate academic liaison at the Morgridge Center for Public Service. She’s currently researching resilience in local food systems. After teaching her own CBL course about the subject, Reynolds created a toolkit to help guide other instructors looking to incorporate CBL into their teaching and research.
“The idea for the toolkit came from having to ask so many different people all of these little nitty gritty questions,” Reynolds says. “If I can just capture that information in what will hopefully be a living document, then the barrier might not be so high for other grad students to do this kind of teaching and build out this kind of course in the future.”
Reynold’s CBL course was offered as an environmental studies capstone course for juniors and seniors at the Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies at UW–Madison. The goal of the course was to bring students together and have them work within the goals of the Brix Project.
The Brix Project is an initiative to create closer connections within food systems by Brix Cider, a farm-to-table restaurant and cidery out of Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. Brix Cider is Reynolds’s primary community partner for her research, and she has been friends with the owners of Brix Cider for almost 10 years. By grounding her research with Brix in a deep, personal connection, Reynolds’s work on food systems seems much more meaningful and impactful, Reynolds says.
Throughout the students’ time in the CBL course, they created semester-long capstone projects, aiming to bring awareness and educate community members about local food systems. By having students engage with her research, the CBL course helped shape Reynolds’s work by bringing her to think deeply about her research and its goals.
“You have to be able to understand a topic thoroughly in order to teach intelligently to other people,” Reynolds says. “And so I had to think critically, what do I mean when I say food system resilience?”
While some students had extensive experience with their local food systems, others had never engaged with the subject before, Reynolds explains. With these varying perspectives, students found new angles to food resilience and explored them in their capstone projects.
For example, one group created a timeline of Wisconsin’s food system, including the colonization of Wisconsin, the forced removal of indigenous people and other policies that influence the state’s food systems through time, a perspective Reynolds now plans to include in her research.
“We had this wide range of students who brought a wide range of perspectives and experiences and really thoughtful critiques and questions about these topics,” Reynolds says. “And so that was really incredible to get to learn from them.”
Reynolds developed her CBL course with the support of the Morgridge Center. Through the Morgridge Center, Reynolds found additional resources for her CBL course, such as a community engagement Canvas course for students and support from a Morgridge Center CBL Intern. Reynolds also received a CBL grant through the center, which she used to fund a field trip to Brix Cider for her students and compensate her community partners for their time helping instruct the class.
“[A CBL course] presents such a powerful opportunity to learn outside of the classroom,” Reynolds says. “And, hopefully, also to understand how the work that you’re doing as a student can actually make an impact in the larger community, beyond the classroom and on campus.”
Visit Reynolds’s toolkit to learn how to design a CBL course, apply for CBL grants and find further resources for CBL courses. The Morgridge Center supports CBL by providing informational resources, CBL grants, transportation resources and more. Find more information on our Community-based Learning page.