Today past and current Environmental Stewardship team (ESC) members gathered in the Community Garden to celebrate this year’s accomplishments, reminisce about fun times we’ve had together, eat local food, and reflect on what the work and team has meant to each of us.
In a tradition started this year, graduates from 2022 and 2023 ESC teams planted Arikara Yellows Beans. This planting acts as a symbol of the gifts each of our graduates, Alexa, Alyssa, Elan, Gigi, Grace, Mercy, and Zoe, have given to the work of advancing environmental sustainability at Augsburg and in our neighborhood. Although most may not see the results of the work they have started and propelled along, their legacies will be felt in small and profound ways by future Auggies, ESC members, and neighbors. These seeds, as their past work, will be stewarded by current and new ESC members. The dry beans will be cared for this summer, harvested in the fall, dried, and used to feed the community. Some seeds will be saved for the 2024 ESC graduates to plant anew. The cycle will continue and with each planting the soil will continue to be nourished as will the work of environmental sustainability be advanced. This is how changes happens – with joy, community, and the sharing of gifts.
Thank you Alexa Carrera, Alyssa Parkhurst, Annabella Castillo, Elan Quezada Hoffman, Elijah Abdullah, Gigi Huerta Herrera, Grace Muchahary, Malachi Owens, Mercy Zou Taithul, Summer Bordon, Wren Doyle, Yousra Tinsley, and Zoe Barany. Your collective leadership, equity-mindedness, authentic teamwork, wisdom, and organizing power has moved environmental sustainability work forward in profound and meaningful ways. The garden is continuing to be more connected to campus and advancing food sovereignty for its gardeners. The ShareShop has become a welcoming resource for many Auggies, a way to rethink waste diversion, and a catalyst for mutual aid on campus. Although renewable energy is still on the horizon, the steps to get there have become clearer and excitement is building. Thank you to each of you for your leadership, stewardship, and collective action.
What are the politics of nature? Who owns it, where is it, and what role does it play in our lives? Does it need to be tamed? Are we ourselves natural? Erin Sharkey and Michael Kleber-Diggs will discuss, A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars, a collection of personal and lyric essays in conversation with archival objects of Black history and memory. The collection explores stories spanning hundreds of years and thousands of miles, traveling from roots to space–finding rich Blackness everywhere. Together we will consider the significance of nature in our lives and on the role of nature in the lives of Black folks.
Augsburg’s Environmental Action Committee, Pan-Afrikan Student Services, and MFA Department, along with our friends at the Upper Midwest Association for Campus Sustainability (UMACS), invite the Augsburg community and partners to an evening of exploration into the intersections between People and Planet: Intersectional Environmentalism.
Erin Sharkey Bio: Erin Sharkey (she/her/hers) is a writer, arts and abolition organizer, cultural worker, and film producer based in Minneapolis. She is the cofounder, with Junauda Petrus, of an experimental arts collective called Free Black Dirt and is the producer of film projects including Sweetness of Wild, an episodic web film project, and Small Business Revolution (Hulu), which explored challenges and opportunities for Black-owned businesses in the Twin Cities in the summer of 2021. Sharkey has received fellowships and residencies from the Loft Mentor Series, VONA/Voices, the Givens Foundation, Coffee House Press, the Bell Museum of Natural History, and the Jerome Foundation. In 2021, Sharkey was awarded the Black Seed Fellowship from Black Visions and the Headwaters Foundation. She has an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University and teaches with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.
Michael Kleber-Diggs Bio: Michael Kleber-Diggs (KLEE-burr digs) (he/him/his) is 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow and a poet, essayist, literary critic, and arts educator. His debut poetry collection, Worldly Things (Milkweed Editions 2021), won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, the 2022 Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award in Poetry, the 2022 Balcones Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2022 Minnesota Book Award. Michael’s essay, “There Was a Tremendous Softness,” appears in A Darker Wilderness:Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars, edited by Erin Sharkey (Milkweed Editions, 2023). His poems and essays appear in numerous journals and anthologies and he teaches Creative Writing in Augsburg University’s low-res MFA program. Michael is married to Karen Kleber-Diggs, a tropical horticulturist and orchid specialist. Karen and Michael have a daughter who is pursuing a BFA in Dance Performance at SUNY Purchase.
This event is part of Earth Month 2023. Visit the site to learn more about other events happening during the month of April to celebrate and engage in Environmental Stewardship at Augsburg.
Come rekindle community, self-heal, and reconnect with the Earth through celebrations during Earth Month. These campus-wide, cross-department collaborative events will allow Augsburg students, staff, and faculty further connection to green spaces on campus, engagement with educational experiences by all forms of teachers, and the opportunity to build solidarity with social justice work bonded by intersectionality. Together in community, engage with local writers Erin Sharkey & Michael Kleber-Diggs in celebration of A Darker Wilderness, share in the art of resistance, bike/walk/roll to campus, eat/buy local, love water, share your voice at the State Capitol, and finish the month with a community bonfire into the sunset.
Make a contribution! During April’s Earth Month (and year-round), the ShareShop is accepting donations of gently-used items! These items will be redistributed back to students in the fall. As you move out of your residence hall or do some spring cleaning, drop off your donations with a student leader at Science Hall 8. Checkout the ShareShop website for accepted items and expanded hours during MoveOut.
Support & Accessibility for All Earth Month Events
We want everyone to feel welcome and able to fully participate in all Earth Month festivities. If you are in need of any disability-related accommodations to fully participate in these events, please contact University Events at events@augsburg.edu or 612-330-1104. Remember to have the name, date, and time of the event(s) with you when contacting their office. Please allow for sufficient time to arrange the accommodation(s).
All virtual events will be hosted over the Zoom platform. For the Zoom links, meeting ids, and passwords for virtual events, please refer to the event description on this document. If you are affiliated with Augsburg University, please review these Zoom Articles to ensure that you are able to connect. If you are not affiliated with Augsburg University, you are welcome to participate in all of these events. For Zoom tech support, please refer to the Zoom website’s Resources tab.
If for any reason you are having trouble attending an event, please email the specific event’s contact and/or Augsburg University’s Sustainability Officer, Monica McDaniel at mcdaniem@augsburg.edu. We hope you enjoy Earth Month!!
As our Minnesota winter drags on expectedly, many of us are impatiently awaiting spring and warmer weather. As the days get longer, I know garden season is approaching, but the season always arrives unexpectedly even if I have been anticipating green shoots and the smell of fresh soil for months.
This week, Augsburg community gardener, Edward Sheehy, was also feeling the anticipation of spring so he took a visit to the garden plot he stewards on campus. He shared these words and image with me and has given his blessing for me to pass them along to the broader Augsburg community. I hope they give you pause, like they did for me, with a reminder to slow down, take in your surroundings, and live in the moment, even when that moment is still covered in snow. Good things are happening. This is what I love about the community created around the garden; gardeners share so much of themselves with us and one another. Enjoy.
Augsburg University garden on this day of March 6, 2023
by Edward Sheehy, Augsburg Community Gardener
sage and tarragon poke up their heads
while the arms of the giant cottonwood
reach out
to all who gather here
Picture of the Augsburg garden cottonwood tree in winter, Photo credit to Edward Sheehy
Last night, Governor Walz signed the 100% Clean Energy by 2040 bill into law. It requires Minnesota utilities to provide 100% carbon-free electricity to customers by 2040 taking great steps to combat climate change and expand clean energy jobs in the state. This is an exciting moment for Minnesota in furthering its climate action goals and has great potential to expedite Augsburg’s climate mitigation efforts.
In 2007, Augsburg University became a charter signatory to the Second Nature President’s Climate Leadership Commitment to actively reduce its carbon footprint and set goals to become carbon neutral. Over the years, the Augsburg community has advanced these goals and been a quiet leader in this work, particularly in regards to electricity generation and consumption. In 2018, Augsburg began to purchase solar offsets for its energy consumption, helping its utility company Xcel Energy further prioritize carbon-free electricity sources. More recently, Augsburg has also worked to lower its electricity consumption through the campus-wide installation of LED light bulbs. Students understand the urgency, so through Day Student Government climate resolutions, they have championed and lobbied for Augsburg to generate its own renewable energy through the installation of solar panels onsite.
Although we as a community are advancing clean energy usage and lowering our energy consumption, Augsburg’s carbon neutrality goals cannot be achieved in isolation nor on our own. Utility companies like Xcel Energy, play a vital role in Augsburg’s and Minnesota’s shift to carbon-free energy sources. We at Augsburg, especially our students, know this. Many on the Environmental Stewardship team have been champions for climate legislation through marches at the State Capitol, discussions with elected officials like Attorney General Keith Ellison, and community organizing work with community-based groups like ISAIAH’s Young Adult Coalition. Last week, senior and Environmental Studies major, Zoe Barany, was a co-author for this Commentary piece in the Minnesota Spokesman Recorder where she and peers from universities across the state advocated for the very 100% Clean Energy legislation that Governor Walz signed into law yesterday evening.
In 2021, 51% of Xcel Energy’s electricity generation came from fossil fuels, like coal and natural gas. With this legislation, 100% of Xcel’s electricity, and thus Augsburg’s electricity, will be generated from carbon-free sources like wind and solar! As our state sees less and less ice on its lakes and more rain in January, this is exciting news for our state and thus our university. These climate mitigation changes can’t come fast enough!
Come rekindle community, self-heal, and reconnect with the Earth through celebrations during Earth Month. These Environmental Action Committee-supported events will allow you further connection to green spaces on campus, engagement with educational experiences by all forms of teachers, exploration of inclusive career paths, and the opportunity to build solidarity with social justice work bonded by intersectionality. Together in community, learn from Indigenous cultures, be rewarded with rest and find its productivity, learn city biking techniques, have a ball with slow fashion, eat local, and then finish the month with a community bonfire into the sunset.
Mii omaa akiing endaayang – The Earth is our Home
For more information: Event details, descriptions, registration links, and virtual Zoom links can be found on this document. Follow @sustainable_augsburgu on Instagram for updates.
Make a contribution! During April’s Earth Month, the ShareShop is accepting donations of gently-used items! These items will be redistributed back to students in the fall or donated to the Sisterhood Boutique. As you move out of your residence hall or do some spring cleaning, drop off your donations with a student leader at Science Hall 8 or place them in a green cart in your residence hall. Checkout the ShareShop website for accepted items and expanded hours.
Support & Accessibility for All Earth Month Events
We want everyone to feel welcome and able to fully participate in all Earth Month festivities. If you are in need of any disability-related accommodations to fully participate in these events, please contact University Events at events@augsburg.edu or 612-330-1104. Remember to have the name, date, and time of the event(s) with you when contacting their office. Please allow for sufficient time to arrange the accommodation(s).
All virtual events will be hosted over the Zoom platform. For the Zoom links, meeting ids, and passwords for virtual events, please refer to the event description on this document. If you are affiliated with Augsburg University, please review these Zoom Articles to ensure that you are able to connect. If you are not affiliated with Augsburg University, you are welcome to participate in all of these events. For Zoom tech support, please refer to the Zoom website’s Resources tab.
If for any reason you are having trouble attending an event, please email the specific event’s contact and/or Augsburg University’s Sustainability Officer, Monica McDaniel at mcdaniem@augsburg.edu. We hope you enjoy Earth Month!!
ESC’s Communication Team includes Gigi, Grace, and Mercy. The team keeps students and staff up to date on ESC events and projects through our main social media platform, Instagram. Currently, our team is working on introducing ESC’s individuals through a quick Instagram reel. Our main objective is to showcase ESC’s work on environmental stewardship by highlighting important events and activities within each project.
We believe that by showcasing our progress through social media, we can better influence other institutions and people to continue to be sustainable by sharing information and making viewers aware that sustainability is a way of life rather than a trend. For example, the Communications Team has various videos and posts that show what you can compost and recycle, what is fast fashion, where you can get your Auggie pass, how to upcycle, what some local and sustainable food looks like, etc.
Follow us on Instagram!
Our most viewed and liked content was made by Gigi. The video was intended to inform viewers of an alternative way to wrap gifts for the holidays by reducing, reusing and recycling paper bags. Check it out in the link provided below. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram @Sustainable_AugsburgU
This academic year our amazing team of Environmental Stewardship Coordinators have been hard at work on a dynamic set of projects that are making immediate and long-term impacts on how our university and neighborhood responds, collaborates, and leads amidst our intersecting challenges of an ongoing pandemic, systemic social injustices, economic disparity, and climate crisis.
The team of 12 Environmental Stewardship Coordinators are students of differing years at Augsburg and with majors in different departments. Alexa, Alyssa, Annabella, Elan, Elijah, Gigi, Grace, Malachi, Mercy, Nyasa, Reggie, and Zoe all come to our shared work through their identities, expertises, and experiences that shape how we as a team want to make change and impact around issues of environmental sustainability. Our team identifies issues and projects on which we want to work through the lens of the Wellness Model for Sustainability (thank you Bemidji State). The work of our small project groups align with the goals set forth by the Environmental Stewardship Committee of the University Council: Culture & Ownership, Facilities & Operations, Scholarship & Curriculum, and Climate Action.
Wellness Model for Sustainability
Our work in 8 project areas, yes 8, is vast, dynamic, and a whole lot of fun! Scroll down for some brief overviews and links to more information.
The Share Shopteam is addressing issues on fast fashion and student access to free clothes & dorm items. Stop by Science 8b or our Pop-Up Collaboration with Campus Kitchen in the Strommen Center!
Share Shop Hours
Augsburg Local and its Salad Projectare advancing institutional goals around local purchasing from BIPOC and women/femme/trans/queer vendors, farmers, and business owners. We’ll be rolling out the next round of student-designed, locally-sourced creations this semester. The Fall Harvest Salad was a HIT!
Fall Harvest Salad
The Community Garden team is excited for warmer weather and to get back in the soil! Last year’s student plot produced an abundance of tomatoes and peppers, but I’m most excited for the raspberries, which should be in their second-year glory this coming season. This spring we’ll have ways for the broader Augsburg community to volunteer with the team, join the waiting list for a plot of one’s own to steward, and what we’ll be growing in the student/communal plots this season.
Harvest from the garden student plots!
Sustainability Operations is our newest project team and they have identified the need to improve waste sorting and energy use on campus so that our Augsburg community can do its part in the mitigation of climate change. Information has been rolling out on our Instagram channel as well as on digital screens around campus; events coming soon in partnership with the Environmental Action Committee!
What’s Compostable!
This year our Communications team launched our Instagram channel @sustainable_augsburgu and has been stewarding its content to keep all informed about our work and important happenings around issues of sustainability both on and off campus. Be sure to follow, like, and share!
The Climate Action Team has been engaging students, staff, and faculty to build support and actions towards Augsburg’s Climate Commitment and Augsburg Day Student Government’s 2030 Carbon Neutrality and Solar and Carbon Neutrality Resolutions. The results of this organizing work has led to creative collaborations with courses in Environmental Studies and Art & Design as well as partnerships with facilities and ADSG’s Environmental Action Committee to implement solid actions towards our collective goals: Permeable walkways, Native perennial plantings, additions of water-bottle filling stations, Community Garden visioning, and the exploration of on-campus solar.
A few students are also working on Research exploring avenues and areas for new work as well as ways for us to engage in broader conversations around climate justice through our Organizing Cohort in partnership with LEAD Fellows and ISAIAH.
Over the course of this spring semester, stay tuned here to the Sabo Center blog for in-depth highlights of the work on these projects. Our Instagram channel is also currently featuring 2 ESC members a week, so follow us to find out more about the team, our work, and the latest happenings! If you have ideas of actions our team could take and/or want to get involved in the work, please email environmentalstewardship@augsburg.edu.
The Augsburg Local Salad Team and Dining Services are excited to share delicious student-designed, locally-sourced salads with the Augsburg community!
Salads will be available at The Commons and Kafeega November 9th, 16th, and 17th + during Late Night Breakfast and at Kafeega only on November 13th 12-1pm (+ more dates to come).
Tenzin Rabga (’23)
The Fall Harvest Salad being featured this season by Dining Services highlights the best of this time of year. A quinoa base is tossed with kale and spinach, chopped Minnesota apples, and roasted sweet potatoes, which are garnished with fried parsnips and pepitas (pumpkin seeds) and then finished with a sweet + spicy dressing. Tenzin Rabga and Malachi Owens are the creatives behind this particular salad and intentionally thought through their seasonal produce choices, sweet-spicy flavor combinations, and inviting crunch that all come together nicely for a satisfying meal. “When making this salad, there were many things I considered, not just my cultural connection because I also wanted my salad to be very inclusive and open to people’s cravings in winter: sweet, hearty, and slightly spicy.” -Tenzin Rabga
The Fall Harvest Salad not only satisfies as a fresh, seasonal meal, but it also uplifts the best of Augsburg and its community. As an anchor institution, Augsburg is committed to contributing to the health, safety, and vitality of the community of which we are a part. In 2020, the Sabo Center for Citizenship and Democracy launched the Augsburg Local campaign to mobilize institutional resources in ways that build strong, mutually beneficial community partnerships and respond to community needs and opportunities. By leveraging Augsburg’s economic resources in the form of purchasing and investment dollars, we can build a stronger, more sustainable local economy in a variety of ways.
For example, over 75% of the produce and protein ingredients in the Fall Harvest Salad were purchased locally. This was one of the directives requested by the salads’ creators. The kale and sweet potatoes you’ll enjoy were supplied by The Good Acre, a Twin Cities food hub that partners with emerging farmers, many BIPOC, who grow a variety of crops, promoting biodiversity. Of course the apples were grown in Minnesota, since our state can boast of so many varieties from sweet to tart, crisp to ones perfect for pie – and salads! These apples were supplied by Minnesota-based distributor, Bix, which has a special selection of locally-grown products. The parsnips, coming to you in the form of a chip garnish, were sourced from the Wisconsin Growers’ Cooperative via our neighborhood grocery store, the Seward Coop. And even the honey and Hope Creamery butter were Minnesota produced! Ames Farm honey is single source, meaning that it can be traced back to a hive and floral source, “making it unique to a specific time and place in Minnesota.” You can’t get more local than that!
The Salad Project was born out of Augsburg Local’s co-creative work with students who wanted to drive this transformational social change initiative. Thanks to an Institutional Innovation Grant from the Office of the University President, the Salad Team has been working tirelessly with Dining Services since the beginning of the summer to create salad recipes that satisfy a set of goals oftentimes at odds with one another:
Salads that taste good and students will want to eat.
Salads that feature ingredients seasonal to Minnesota and can be locally-sourced.
Salads that reflect the tastes, cultures, and identities of their creators.
Salads that are cost-effective for Dining Services to produce and the Augsburg community to purchase.
Thankfully the team had support from the local nonprofit, Roots for the Hometeam and youth from Pillsbury United’s Waite House. They and other high school youth in Twin Cities garden programs sell their student-developed, locally-sourced salads at Twins’ games (and beyond!). The Salad Project Team also relied heavily on the expertise and support of Augsburg’s Dining Services staff to fine-tune their recipes, think creatively about flavor profiles, and partner in the tedious work of serving these salads at-scale in The Commons and Kafeega. These lessons from our partners fed our fun, interactive research and development sessions in Augsburg’s own Food Lab (Hagfors 108). In these sessions, we worked in small teams, divided based on season, to explore flavors, experiment with ingredients, and learn about food preparation techniques.
Grace Koch Muchahary (’23)
Here’s Grace Koch Muchahary’s take on the process: “We practiced in teams to get all the details and be confident about our salad ingredients before we presented them to the chefs from Augsburg’s Dining services. We were really happy to get an opportunity to present our summer and winter salads. It was a really good experience to make our own recipes and share them with others – and now with the entire Augsburg community! We had the challenge to reach each of our goals, but having the salad-making sessions before this final day helped a lot to see the process. It was really fun to work closely with the project team members and to support one another.”
In this climate of political polarization, people with differing perspectives and opinions struggle to engage in productive conversation. We tend to be quick to defend or demonize, deepening the divide that exists in the American people. Even when we want to reach out to those with different perspectives, we often don’t know how.
May 7, 2018, 1:30-3:30 p.m. | Marshall Room, Christensen Center
This workshop offers a sampling of two different strategies to engage more productively. The first hour will be devoted to learning some of the skills developed by Better Angels for listening and speaking in difficult conversations. In the second hour we’ll put those skills into practice with a deliberative dialogue on How to Prevent Mass Shootings in the United States.
As participants in this workshop you will be the first to be invited to a full-day seminar on these themes and practices will be offered on November 3, 2018.
work, will be stewarded by current and new ESC members. The dry beans will be cared for this summer, harvested in the fall, dried, and used to feed the community. Some seeds will be saved for the 2024 ESC graduates to plant anew. The cycle will continue and with each planting the soil will continue to be nourished as will the work of environmental sustainability be advanced. This is how changes happens – with joy, community, and the sharing of gifts.
Michael Kleber-Diggs Bio: 
This year our Communications team launched our Instagram channel 
