John and Joan Casey Sustainabilty Grant 2014-15
During the 2014-2015 school year, Lisa Barnett and Brooke Marmolejo, were the two students who received the John and Joan Casey sustainability grant. During this year, they decided to work on creating a composting demonstration site for students and community members to look at, learn, and create their own at home composting site. It was built at the community garden on the Bend campus.
Additionally, Lisa and Brooke created four workshops to bring in students as well as community members to teach how to create a vermicomposting bin at home, including giving away worms and raffling off a bin already built. The four workshops were; build a worm bin, dos and donts for your worm bin, harvesting your soil (worm castings) and putting your bin to rest for the winter. The demonstration site includes three composting sites: a worm bin, a trench system and a 3-teir system. The students are working closely with the engineering department at OSU Cascades to have a group of engineering students build another bin; this will be used as a capstone/senior project.
The garden had its grand opening and it was a zero waste event, sponsored in part by the environmental center and The John and Joan Casey sustainability grant. The Sustainability grant has made it possible to bring awareness to the campus as well as community about how important it is to compost and be sustainable.