Russell-Anelli’s course, which he’s been teaching for 20 years, lays a scientific groundwork for students in traditional agronomic fields, like plant and agricultural sciences, as well as students interested in civil and environmental engineering, city and regional planning, global development, sociology, geology and more. The course’s weekly labs rely heavily on research farms, greenhouses and other facilities on and off campus. The Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station (Cornell AES) maintains many of those facilities, primarily for the purpose of research. But increasingly, they are serving dual purposes as teaching resources.
“In the 20 years I’ve been teaching at Cornell, faculty have always gone out to farms. And we’re still going out to farms, but now we’re also going to the waste treatment facility, the compost facility, the greenhouses, and we’re going to these places for teaching and learning, not just for research,” he said. “These facilities have enabled us to do so much more with our teaching.”
For example, Russell-Anelli’s class visits Cornell’s Compost Facility managed by the Farm Services team, which collects compostable waste from the university’s dining halls, farms and grounds, and turns it into a high-quality soil amendment. They learn about how compost is made, and assess compost at different stages of decomposition, based on measurements like temperature, appearance and smell.
“They love this one because I have them put compost in a five-gallon bucket and use the bucket as a wine glass – they put their nose into it, and assess the bouquet of compost,” he said.
Afterward, students take samples back to the plant science greenhouses to make lab-based assessments, and then they grow cucumbers in the various stages of compost.