Hey there, sustain-a-folks!

We’re shaking things up a bit this week here on the Messiah Sustainability blog: My name is Jessalyn Megerle, and I’m your guest writer for this beautiful week!

A little bit about me: I’m a senior, majoring in Sustainability Studies, concentrating in sustainable agriculture, and minoring in Food and Nutrition. I’m also the social media manager for the Pulse here on campus, and I’m interning for Everblossom Farm this semester. You may have seen me around campus in a Pulse t-shirt, showing off my Chaco tan, or talking about Washington state — which, incidentally, is why I’m writing for the blog this week!

This past summer I had the amazing opportunity to study in Washington state through the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies, and I want to share some of my experiences with you. My sustainable agriculture concentration required a class through Au Sable, and I chose Ecological Agriculture so that I could learn more about “how agricultural systems can be developed to better resemble natural ecosystems to achieve multiple outcomes: food for communities, a vibrant economy, and healthy ecosystems” (Au Sable). My second class was International Development & Environmental Sustainability, which focused on “ecological sustainability and sustainable society in the context of various factors that are bringing environmental degradation and impoverishment to people and cultures” (Au Sable).

With campus on the beautiful Whidbey Island, our small groups of students from Christian schools all over the United States lived, learned, and traveled together. From the agricultural extension for Washington State University to the famous Penn Cove mussel farm to the nonprofit organization Skagitonians for the Preservation of Farmland (pavement is forever!) and beyond, “Eco Ag” class taught me about Christian land stewardship, sustainable farming, and even about the soil that our food is grown in.

With the International Development class, we ranged even farther around the Pacific Northwest: Olympic National Park and the Elwha River Restoration project. Cape Flattery, the northwestern-most point of the contiguous US, and its beautiful lighthouse. The San Juan islands, where we saw a pod of orca whales in the wild (did you know that baby orcas are a pinkish color?). World Vision headquarters, in Seattle. East Hastings in Vancouver, Canada, one of the most poverty-stricken neighborhoods in all of North America. The Makah Indian Reservation, in Neah Bay.

And while all of the travel and other experiences were incredible on their own merit, what we learned while we traveled was even more incredible: we read about and discussed sustainability, poverty, feminism, community development, social justice, Christianity, and more. Who knew you could learn so much in a van with four other sustainability kids and one professor? I learned more from one five-week intensive course than I have from any other class I’ve ever taken, and I was more challenged as a sustainability student and as a Christian than I ever have been before. It would take much more than one blog post to describe it all! Months later, I still think about the class on an almost-daily basis, not only from a sustainability perspective, but from a Christian perspective. The opportunity to combine my passion with my faith is one that I hope to never forget and never take for granted.

Like an organic free range chicken burrito, it’s time to wrap up this blog post, but I’m never finished talking about my time on the west coast: if you see me around campus, don’t hesitate to ask me questions, or shoot me an email at jm1652@messiah.edu. Seriously — I think my roommates are sick of hearing me talk about it!

Posted on November 11th, 2015 by as1635@messiah.edu
Filed under: Fall 2015