UTD Plants New Seeds for Helping To Feed Community with Eco Hub

On a campus known for cultivating a love for science, engineering, the arts and business, University of Texas at Dallas students are digging into a different kind of cultivation — a student-run farm that will eventually help feed students and community members who are food insecure.

The centerpiece of the UTD Eco Hub is a newly planted 20,000-square-foot farm. The Eco Hub, which will also include a soon-to-come honeybee apiary, green space and picnic tables, is next to the new city of Richardson water tower on Synergy Park Boulevard across from Point North Park.

“This will be a student-focused project from beginning to end,” said Gary Cocke, director of sustainability and energy conservation. “It’s great having this facility where we can gather students who care about these topics and see what they can do with it.”

Approximately 65 students have volunteered to care for the farm. They kicked off their involvement recently by planting a variety of crops that they will water, monitor and, eventually, harvest. The winter crops include lettuce, chard, kale, carrots, beets and turnips.

For several years UT Dallas has provided a community garden near the University Village student apartments, where members of the campus community have had the opportunity to garden — primarily for their personal enjoyment and food needs.

The farm will be different in that the harvested crops will be donated primarily to the Comet Cupboard food pantry, as well as to the North Texas Food Bank.

“It’s students directly helping other students,” said Caroline Lonneman, a geosciences senior who is also student director of the Eco Hub. “You’re growing the food, and then you’re providing it for other students on campus, which is nice.”

Lonneman said it’s important for the student volunteers to communicate well to ensure that their assigned sections are cared for, to coordinate crop rotation strategies with other sections, and to ensure that knowledge is shared with future volunteers.

“The real value in this project comes when these student volunteers find their voice and learn how to apply their talents to benefit the community.”

Gary Cocke, director of sustainability and energy conservation at UT Dallas

“We’ve set up what we hope is a pretty good communication framework. We have all the relevant channels, but we also are keeping some pretty extensive notes so that other people will be able to learn from what we did,” Lonneman said.

Cocke said the students have different interests and different majors, and are at different levels in their studies. Because of that, program leaders are setting aside part of each workday to share knowledge with one another.

“That’s where we’re going to get a lot of the ideas for how the Eco Hub will evolve over time,” he said.

While the crops are growing and being nurtured at the farm this fall, student volunteers will move and expand a honeybee apiary. Hives from a micro-apiary — currently at the Monarch waystation on the southwest corner of campus — will be moved to the Eco Hub and expanded. The apiary near North Loop Road and Facilities Way will remain. At both sites, students will learn how to help maintain hives, as well as how to harvest, bottle and sell honey.

Cocke hopes the Eco Hub project will provide students with a deeper understanding of food insecurity, particularly how it affects students at UT Dallas.

“If you look around the average class at UTD, many students struggle with food insecurity, and it’s often something that they don’t discuss,” he said. “There’s not going to be a single, simple solution to it. It takes a community of people who care and a community of people with diverse perspectives on the topic, all pitching in.

“The real value in this project comes when these student volunteers find their voice and learn how to apply their talents to benefit the community.”