The trust she has built has allowed Lisa DuRussel to integrate her deep connections into the projects she designs for her students. She says that these projects tend to attract SEAS students who are interested in both community engagement and the questions surrounding the future of vacant land in Detroit.

Join U-M at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum where a special exhibit was created in a collaboration between researchers from the University of Michigan and the museum. 

An interdisciplinary team of 20 master’s students from SEAS, as well as the Ross School of Business, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and the School of Social Work, worked throughout the semester alongside Paige and others at Bailey Park to advance sustainability knowledge through various community engaged projects.

“Hazen Pingree was mayor of Detroit around the turn of the (20th) century and one way he addressed hunger in the city was to encourage people to grow potatoes in their back yards and in community plots the city set out. They were called ‘Pingree’s potato patches.'”
~ Jason Hawes, U-M PhD candidate

Cadillac Urban Gardens doesn’t just grow produce. It grow leaders and environmental stewards, says U-M alumna Sarah Clark, who founded the garden. Clark started working with Dolores Perales in 2013 when she was a sophomore at Detroit Cristo Rey High School. Perales went on to earn dual master’s degrees from U-M.

By expanding the program and building on its history as leaders in environmental justice, SEAS is continuing to foster the educational experience that communities affected by injustice have been demanding of universities.

This indicates that the practice of gardening may be spreading beyond the Black-led institutions like churches and nonprofits that originally promoted it.

While the clinic’s main emphasis will be on serving the community, the work also extends the mission of SEAS aimed at promoting multidisciplinary sustainability with a collaborative approach. 

Six of the 11 Michigan cities subjected to emergency management saw changes to their drinking water systems that were implemented to save money or to reduce expenditures. In many cases, those decisions led to poor water quality, service unreliability and increases to water bills, according to the researchers.