Every Friday morning, from September through November, five young women come to the Food Shuttle Farm to work as a team focused on a continuous process of hands-on learning involving active engagement, personal reflection, meaningful feedback, and active listening. Pretty heady stuff for farm work, but not so much for these members of the Caldwell Fellows from North Carolina State University. For the fourth year in a row, the Caldwell Fellows program has had a team assigned to the Food Shuttle Farm for their Sophomore Seminar, where the team members work together to live out their guiding principles of servant leadership, principled reflection, personal development, rigorous integrity, and academic excellence.
One morning, Cassondra, Lucy, Saumya, Megan, and Eleanor discussed the process that brought them to the Farm. The selection process for the Caldwell Fellows is quite rigorous. Of the over 300 students who applied for the program during their freshman year, only 27 were chosen and will participate throughout the remaining three years of their college careers. All the young women are sophomores, except Eleanor who is a junior. She completed her Sophomore Seminar at the Farm last year and is returning as a TA for the team this year. Eleanor actually interned at the Food Shuttle’s Camden Street Learning Garden over the summer following her sophomore year and chose to return to the Farm this fall.
The team members all agree that the opportunity to build leadership skills and have the sense of community that the Caldwell Fellows affords is what drew them to the program. But when they talk about what brought them to the Farm, they have vastly different reasons.
Cassondra is majoring in finance and accounting. She chose the Farm because it allows her to be somewhere completely away from her computer and the world of finance. Lucy, who is studying chemical and biomolecular engineering, has a great interest in sustainable farming so the Farm is a natural fit for her. The Farm is a totally new experience for Saumya, who recently moved to the U.S. to go to college. Megan, studying Crop and Soil Science, said that food insecurity is a personal passion for her, so she was drawn to the Farm because of its work in hunger relief.
The team will focus on an independent project during their Seminar. They have been provided with three small growing spaces that they will tend from seed to harvest. They are very excited about the opportunities involved in learning as they move through the various stages of the process and look forward to harvesting their produce and ultimately donating it to the Feed the Pack food pantry on NC State campus.
“You just don’t know how magnificent you might be. Think big! Think big about your possibilities in this world.” These are the words of John T. Caldwell, former NC State Chancellor, 1959-1975. They inspire the Caldwell Fellows, named in his honor. The Caldwell Fellows who share their Friday mornings at the Food Shuttle Farm may be tending the soil in small spaces, but for each of them and as a team, big possibilities await.