Category Archives: CUE Projects

Gathering Baseline Data for National Science Foundation Project

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Debbie Nichols and Katie Waskom are part of the team gathering baseline data for the NSF project.

Debbie Nichols and Katie Waskom are part of the team gathering baseline data for the NSF project.

by Molly Trueblood

In case you haven’t heard, Butler CUE received a grant from the National Science Foundation last fall to create an outdoor science museum exhibit about Indianapolis’ waterways. This innovative project will use interactive art forms to convey science topics to museum visitors.

We’re well on our way to designing and implementing the first installations and performances next summer, and one component of our project includes “gathering baseline data” on what communities already know about the science of the waterways.

To gather this information, we’re conducting surveys at each site, having conversations with neighbors about places in their neighborhoods, and executing a long-term focus study with families. Though different from your typical university science study, it has been a great way to learn more about how social sciences study human behavior and change.

I’ve been lucky this summer to work with four interns on this portion of the project. David Ediger, Katie Waskom, Julia Wilson and Kevin Rex have all gone above and beyond in helping to administer and manage the survey process. I’m also pleased that they’ve been able to get out in the community, learn more about social science research, and help with the data crunching.

We have some great partners in this research as well – Johnny Fraser from New Knowledge Organization is our coach and champion.  Debbie Nichols, Jessica Murphy and Gabe Filippelli from IUPUI are also integral to our efforts. They organize our times out in the field, and analyze the data we gather. We are also becoming fast friends, as four hours together lends to many interesting conversations. I’m really proud to be part of a university partnership such as this.

One of the parts I most enjoy about this project is getting out to visit with neighborhood folks. Even when administering surveys, neighbors share their experiences, values and priorities of their communities. We get to learn about the places where we live and work, in partnership with neighbors. It’s a pretty rewarding part of the job, if you ask me.

Stay tuned for some exciting developments about this project in the coming months!

Molly Truebood is community organizer with the Center for Urban Ecology working on a project funded by the National Science Foundation. 

The Future is Bright for Food System Change

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By Nic Mink

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Late at night, when I’m the last one left at the CUE office (heck, I’m the last one left in Gallahue Hall!), I crank music on Spotify. Loud, cheesy music. The type of music you sing along to by yourself, late at night, in the basement of an academic building, bathed in the blue hue of fluorescent bulbs and surrounded by piles of half-graded papers.

Tonight, the Five Stairsteps are in heavy rotation. They’re the group behind the funk-it-out, soul bending 1970 classic, “Ooh Child.”  Its political message is now largely lost, but its lyrics still resonate with people who recognize the tremendous opportunities that the future holds.

“Ooh child, things are gonna get easier. Ooh child, things’ll get brighter”

For food and food system change, the future is bright indeed! Citizens, entrepreneurs, policy makers, farmers, chefs—all of those people who make up the “food system”—are collaborating like never before to bring healthier food into communities and to create more just and equitable food systems. In the process, food is quickly becoming a catalyst for meaningful and lasting transformation in American society.

Look around and you’ll notice the way that people grow food and eat food is transforming, quite radically, right before our eyes. Eating locally and organically are no longer just buzzwords, but are now commonplace activities for many Americans. The number of community gardens and farms in urban areas are exploding. National policy makers are reinforcing this change through large-scale public investments. In the most recent Farm Bill, for instance, seed money for farmers’ market and local food promotion quintupled.

Locally, citizens in Indianapolis just launched the Indy Food Council, an organization that looks to build community around food and advance food system ideas and initiatives at a city-wide level. The City-County Council recently passed a Healthy Food Resolution that commits the city’s resources to building a better food system. Organizations like Growing Places Indy, Fall Creek Gardens, Indy Urban Acres, and Distelrath Farm—to name just a few—are growing both food and community here in Indianapolis.

These developments represent a groundswell and a seismic shift, but brighter, still, we must become.

Nicolaas Mink, PhD is the urban sustainable foods fellow at the Center for Urban Ecology.