CUMU Conference 2019

What happens when students, faculty, and community engage together to address the food concerns of local neighbors? Learn how university-neighborhood-nonprofit collaboration has been designed to strengthen neighbors, create relationships, and build communities that thrive together. In the 2019 spring semester, students, faculty and community leaders worked to create a design concept for a “Little Library” with a green twist: provide gardeners a way to share their surplus with others in need. Just a few miles down the road and across the highway, another group of students, faculty and neighbors worked together to develop community nutrition classes, while back on campus a group of students worked with a local nonprofit to provide access to a community-supported agriculture model of produce distribution. Each of these initiatives has roots in the idea that our students and our community are one and the same, with much to learn from one another. This is not only because MSU Denver is a non-residential commuter campus that serves local students with an accessible education, but also because important communities of Denver are struggling with the impacts of gentrification that are also affecting our faculty, staff and students with escalating rents and challenging living environments.