GARDEN AT STETSER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

At Stetser Elementary in Chester, PA, three Widener professors, Dr. Bruce Grant, Dr. Itzick Vatnick, and Professor Ruth Cary, built and grew a garden for the students and faculty. Dr. Bruce Grant and Dr. Itzick Vatnick are biology professors, while Professor Ruth Cary is an English professor at the university. Their main purpose for the garden at Stetser Elementary is to teach the 5th grade students about horticulture, health, and science. An example of what the two professors, Dr. Bruce Grant and Professor Ruth Cary, teach to the students are nutrition and healthy options for their diet. Additionally, there is a major emphasis for the kids to learn about ecology, the study of relationships between living organisms. These kids can learn the interactions between the insects and the crops and how essential the roles are for each of the different organisms. The professors building a garden for the students at the elementary school has allowed the students to escape from the classrooms and establish and find different skills outside of the typical curriculum.  
The crops that the professors have grown at Stetser Elementary include a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and plants. For instance, the crops that have been planted at the elementary school are eggplant, peppers, different kinds of tomatoes, different varieties of mint, corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, strawberries, and more. They allow the students to take the fresh crops home to eat. The garden provides the students with an opportunity to eat freshly grown foods, instead of processed or frozen foods. Moreover, Dr. Bruce Grant and Professor Ruth Cary use the potatoes when they have fully grown and make them into homemade French fries for the students.  
The three Widener professors that began this project collaborated with the former principal of Stetser Elementary, Janet Baldwin, in 2015 who had begun developing a garden before the Widener collaboration. In fact, the students of Stetser were invited to visit Michelle Obama’s White House Garden. In 2018, Janet Baldwin retired, and Dr. Levada Greene became principal of Stetser Elementary. During the Widener and Stetser collaboration, the garden has nearly doubled and there are a variety of vegetables, fruits, and plants being planted. The Widener professors support the garden by offering service-learning courses at Stetser Elementary that focus on the garden. 
A future collaborative project at Stetser Elementary is to build an outdoor classroom for the students, so they can learn about horticulture, health, and science. Additionally, Dr. Grant would like to expand the garden, but the garden needs the proper infrastructure. He stated that he would like to expand the garden from the elementary school to Widener’s Physical or Occupational Therapy School. By doing this he believes that students at Stetser and Widener can have a variety of healthy foods and exchange healthy recipes to cook the foods that are at the garden. By expanding the garden, Dr. Grant believes that there could be a formation of a community between the elementary school and the university. Additionally, if the garden gets to be that large, Dr. Grant stated that they would need to hire people to manage the garden. In order for students to get involved in the Stetser Garden, they should join the biology club or enroll in a service-learning class taught by Dr. Grant (BIO 172) or Prof. Cary (ENGL 101/102).