Dr. Julia Angstmann, Director of the Center for Urban Ecology and Sustainability (CUES), has been recognized as a winner of the 2022 Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) Sustainability Awards in recognition of her work to help lead higher education to a more sustainable future.

“The 2022 AASHE Sustainability Award winners demonstrate an inspiring passion for progressing sustainability at their campus. They are raising the bar and evolving what sustainability in higher education looks like,” Meghan Fay Zahniser, AASHE Executive Director, said.

Angstmann joined the CUES staff in June 2015 and has been integral to its transformation. “I am honored to receive this award recognizing the work of the Center for Urban Ecology and Sustainability (CUES) and our faculty collaborators in creating farm-situated place-based experiential learning curriculum that benefits our campus and local communities,” Angstmann said. “Because of this effort, The Farm at Butler is now a recognized and well-utilized resource for classes and internships on our campus.”

In a competitive field of more than 430 entries, 12 winners were selected across five categories. In addition to category-specific criteria, AASHE Sustainability Award entries are judged for overall impact, innovation, stakeholder involvement, and clarity.

Angstmann’s project, Cultivating Scientific Literacy and Action through Place: Expanding the Use of a Campus Farm as an Interdisciplinary Learning Hub, has also received close to a million dollars in support and funding from the National Science Foundation. Since its inception, this project has allowed The Farm at Butler to grow into a campus center for research and interdisciplinary farm-situated, place-based experiential learning for courses across the University’s six academic colleges. As part of this effort, students conduct real-world research that contributes to our understanding of the impacts of urban agriculture on the environment and society.

The Farm at Butler serves as an important center for research in urban agriculture in addition to contributing to student learning outcomes such as significant increases in campus farm place attachment, situated sustainability meaning-making, environmental science literacy, and civic-mindedness. Because of the success of the courses centered on the work of the Farm, the University has been able to allocate additional funding toward campus farm space.