Chicago’s DePaul University is excited about urban agriculture

Digging In – urban agriculture grows vegetables – and community

By Kris Gallagher
DePaul Magazine
Getting Green
Winter 2012

Founded in 1898, DePaul University is the largest Catholic university in the nation and the largest private institution in Chicago, serving over 25000 students.

Excerpt:

DePaul is ideally positioned to lead such an initiative, Rosing says, based on a survey his students conducted on how North American universities support urban agriculture. DePaul already offers nearly all the necessary core disciplines. He ticks them off:

“We can teach students to analyze compost. We can do marketing and PR, we can do entrepreneurship, we can do nutrition by involving our nursing graduate students. We can definitely do website development–we have a website incubator program through the Steans Center and the College of Computing and Digital Media. We can do policy analysis. We can do horticultural plant science. We can definitely do urban planning through [DePaul’s] Chaddick Institute [for Metropolitan Development]. We can evaluate water through environmental science. We can definitely hold conferences, and we can convene people.”

That could put DePaul on the map as a national center for urban agriculture, says Willard. “Given our interest in social justice, the Vincentian mission, the students that are interested in it, the faculty that are interested in it, and with everything that’s going on in Chicago, this is the place to make it happen.”

Read the complete article here.