Odile Huchette

Odile Huchette, a horticulture lecturer, has won the university’s 2020 Community Engagement Award for Community Engaged Teaching.

Both in the classes she teaches and as director of the Reid Greenhouse in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, Huchette stresses community engagement as part of her teaching.

In her horticulture classes focusing on sustainable food, for example, students make weekly visits to small-scale farms, farmers’ markets, food co-ops and other local organizations to learn about Greensboro’s food system. Then, through the community connections they have made with the visits, students participate in community volunteer activities and events, and apply what they learned by selecting a local organization to engage in a spring service-learning project.

This year, students engaged in a project supporting Brooks Global Elementary and its surrounding community by teaching the kids how to best use their greenhouse for vegetable seedling production and create a network of partners who could benefit from those plants.

In previous years, her students’ projects have included helping to start the Urban Teaching Farm in Warnersville with the Out-of-the-Garden-Project; helping to restart the Dudley High School gardens; working with Guilford County Cooperative Extension on updating their Local Food Guide; and helping the Renaissance Community Co-op with their online presence and event organization.

“Engaging the community in my courses has been rewarding on both a personal and professional level,” Huchette said. “Bringing meaningful, real-world experience to my courses helps me to connect with my students and engage them in a more active way to develop their knowledge and communication skills, and for some of them, has helped them find their vocation.

“It also helped me network and engage with the local community, which, for me, has led to leadership roles in organizations and groups actively working to fight local food insecurity, like the Guilford Food Council, Greensboro Community Food Task Force and the CAES Food Desert Task Force. These experiences in return benefit my students and keep expanding the opportunities I can offer in my courses.

“It has taken a lot of effort and community work to get to this point, so it is very nice to see it get rewarded.”