Chatham University
IN-1: Innovation 1

In July 2013, Chatham University announced a new exclusive partnership with EARTH University, an innovative international institution located in the heart of a tropical rainforest in Costa Rica. Chatham University's Falk School of Sustainability (Falk School) has designed one-year Master of Sustainability (MSUS) and Master of Arts in Food Studies (MAFS) programs exclusively for EARTH University graduates. Chatham and EARTH University share foundational principles: ethical values, entrepreneurialism, and a commitment to addressing environmental, social, and economic issues. EARTH doesn’t offer a Master’s degree, but the intensity of their undergraduate program – 200 credits instead of the 120 common in the U.S. – means that EARTH students finish with the equivalent of a year of graduate education under their belts. During the first two weeks of August 2015, Chatham offered undergraduate and graduate students from the Falk School of Sustainability a two-week field experience course, FST 602: Global Agriculture, at EARTH University taught by Professors Nadine Lehrer and John Taylor. The following list is the outline of the course learning objectives: -Address both historically-specific and globally socio-political questions surrounding tropical agriculture, ecosystem services, sustainability, food production, and international development -Examine the opportunities and challenges to sustainable development, environmental conservation, and agricultural production in Costa Rica -Analyze the implications of and the relationships between the typically bifurcated agricultural system (commodity export production on one hand and smallholder subsistence oriented farming on the other) of much of Latin American and the global South more broadly -Develop a comparative understanding of agricultural production in a tropical ecosystem

In Fall 2014, EARTH student Arely Quirós Alpízar came to the Falk School for an internship, working closely with Allen Matthews, Director of Sustainable Agriculture. Arely worked on the farms at Eden Hall, showing colleagues how to trap microbes that digest biodegradable substances and hasten their reproduction. For the first two weeks of August 2015, nine Chatham students and two faculty members visited EARTH University for the first-ever Global Agriculture Class. The students and faculty contributed blog posts during their class time, which can be found here: https://earthtochatham.wordpress.com/