Bug2School: Living Mulches for Sustainable School and Community Gardens

Academic Mentor | Carmen Blubaugh
Community Partner | C-U Farm2School

Project Description
Bug2School is a multi-generational co-learning alliance between university researchers, college students, teachers and school-age students. They perform coordinated, collaborative ecology experiments together using school gardens as a study system.  As they practice the scientific method together, we cultivate STEM skills, mentorship, healthy eating habits, and community. The project is in its third year of collaborative research in school/community gardens across Champaign-Urbana.

This year, the research examines how edible living mulches might smother weeds in urban garden beds while enhancing production capacity and protecting crops from insect pests.

Students grow and tend crops in community gardens, while collecting data on productivity, pests, and beneficial insects. They then translate the results of their experiments and make them accessible for our diverse audience of teachers, school-age students, and community members.

Role of the Community-Academic Scholar
The Community-Academic Scholar will engage regularly with community partners through Bug2School by participating in at least two weekly garden office hours. The scholar will complete service as needed in the garden—including weeding, watering, harvesting, and other activities collaboratively determined with community partners—and may support educational or outreach efforts related to the research or to community food access.

The scholar will work within an established, community-informed research framework centered on a living mulch experimental system developed in collaboration with community partners and Bug2School alumni. As part of a research team, the scholar will help identify novel research questions, conduct literature reviews, develop hypotheses, and contribute to the design of research protocols that are implemented by the team.

Approximately ten hours per week will be spent in the garden conducting hands-on service, maintaining experimental treatments, and collecting data alongside community partners. An additional ten hours per week will be dedicated to reading, writing, data entry, analysis, and synthesis. The remaining ten hours each week will be devoted to developing and completing an individual capstone project in collaboration with research mentors and community partners.