By Kaila Snyder, Contributing Writer
Communications professor Adam Dean and the students of his advanced digital media class partnered with the East Snyder Community Garden to host a seed exchange for the local community.
The seed exchange, held on Feb. 9 at the Rudy Gelnett Memorial Library is an annual event where individual gardeners and seed companies from across the U.S. donate seeds to the East Snyder Community Garden to share.
The garden then gives out the seeds for free to anyone in the community who wants to grow their own vegetables, plants and flowers.
In Dean’s advanced digital media class, students received the opportunity to design and distribute the digital media promotions for the event. Students met with representatives of the garden to learn about the garden’s history, values and design preferences.
Dean, who currently serves as the garden’s president, explained the advantages of the relationship between the class and the garden and why he continues to encourage a relationship between the two.
“I think it’s really important that media creators understand that our roles are not merely to entertain an audience but also to provide a public service,” Dean said. “Having collaborated with community-based organizations in my classes for more than a decade, I’ve found it to be a win-win.”
“The students get to take charge of media projects that are intended to serve a real need in the community, and the organization gets to see a variety of different ideas that they are tailored for their cause,” Dean continued.
Sophomore Daltrey Granoff, a student in Dean’s advanced class explained how the class learns from their work with the community garden.
“Our class has been working on a website to design advertisements for the seed exchange,” Granoff said.
“Each one of us took our own approach on what we thought [the design] should look like. We then collaborated with the garden’s head of communications to decide which designs would best fit this community to get the word out,” Granoff continued.
The East Snyder Community Garden’s mission is to give to the community.
Besides donating approximately 5,000 pounds of food annually to local food kitchens, the garden also hosts educational programs open to the public which cover a range of topics from native bees, caring for soil, composting, container gardening and more.
The seed exchange is one of the garden’s staple events and is a long-standing community event.
Granoff spoke on the event.
“The event is held to bring the community together and gives them a chance to take some seeds for themselves.”
The event is also a great way to promote our local garden,” Granoff continued. “Anyone can purchase a 20-dollar plot and members of the garden can teach them how to plant these seeds for themselves.”
The garden is always looking for community volunteers as well as student assistance from the Susquehanna community.
Dean’s class will continue to collaborate with the garden for further public relations projects.
The class is currently working on a project to help the garden conduct research for their next session of educational programs.
