Earth Grant Blog

“My father always encouraged my sister and I to be ‘global citizens,’” says Earth Grant student and Engineering sophomore Ani Melichar. Through Earth Grant, Ani is working with people from all over the world, by supporting the International Rescue Committee (IRC)’s New Roots program, an initiative to support recent refugees to Tucson in gardening, food production, nutrition, and generating revenue through farmers’ markets.

Earth Grant student Paloma Martinez spends every Tuesday morning at Midtown Farm, in the Barrio Centro neighborhood of Tucson. Working alongside farm managers Jacob Robles and Brandon Alexander, Paloma walks the produce rows at the farm to see what vegetables are ready for harvest.

My name is Jazz and I love working with plants. So much so, I have a collection of 159 houseplants at home! I worked at Awareness Ranch through the Earth Grant program for the Fall 2021 semester, and part of my work has been working with integrated pest management (IPM) techniques. Awareness Ranch is a small local grower, who uses aquaponics systems in greenhouses to produce herbs and vegetables.

"Water bottle, plastic bag, another plastic bag, a piece of… soda bottle? Plastic...I think this one is an auto part, yeah? Another, no, two more plastic bags…” Jamie Irby, UArizona Environmental Science senior, points and describes half-buried trash items as she slowly walks a transect in the seasonally dry Santa Cruz River in Tucson.

The Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona’s mission is to, “change lives in the communities we serve by feeding the hungry today and building a healthy, hunger-free tomorrow.” While much of their work involves distributing donated and purchased food to people in need at over 300 sites in Southern Arizona, they also work towards strategies for long term food security, such as local agriculture, food production education, and civic engagement training.

Each year, UArizona Student Engagement & Career Development administers the Graduating Senior Survey to all UArizona graduating seniors, in effort to understand career destinations after graduation, as well as student satisfaction with their college education. Recently shared results from the 2019-20 survey emphasize the importance of internships in landing a job after graduation, especially for students demographically underrepresented in college.

Daniel Vega is a UArizona senior majoring in Sustainable Built Environments (SBE), a born-and-raised Tucsonan, and a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe. He was attracted to the SBE program because of his lifelong relationship with the natural environment, and a desire to employ sustainable building practices in his tribal community.