Agricultural and educational researchers recognize the critical value of an integrated, multidisciplinary approach to education in building a food-secure world, reducing poverty, and conserving and enhancing natural resources. However, schools generally contribute little to communities in the context of food growing and environmental learning. The main objective of this qualitative research was to explore the role of school-community relationships in enabling environmental learning in the context of food growing activities. Findings suggest that the role of school-community links in enhancing environmental learning is more likely where community members are actively involved in school programs that have an emphasis on an experiential learning approach. However, this depends to a large extent on the availability of parents or concerned community members and their willingness to engage in voluntary school-based activities. Factors that could potentially strengthen the role of school-community links in supporting environmental learning include: allowing space for informal learning, mediating learning in civil society settings, ongoing facilitation by a committed coordinator, community buy-in and accountability, and addressing public interests through tangible benefits. A major challenge is to find an appropriate balance between social justice and practical food security concerns, while remaining true to ecological considerations.

This thesis presents qualitative research conducted in summer 2017 at the Finger Lakes Free Clinic, which provides free medical and holistic care to people without insurance in upstate New York. The primary goal of this research was to strengthen the relationship between a free clinic and its donors by gathering donor concerns and perceptions regarding federal healthcare policy. Data from 32 interviews with donors, staff, board members, and volunteers, along with 100 hours of participant observation revealed that donors to this clinic were concerned about the potential impact of Congressional healthcare reform yet did not consider federal policy a strong influence on their donations. Rather, donors cited dedication to local giving and personal connections with the clinic as their primary motivations. These motivations suggest the value of viewing the clinic-donor relationship as a relationship of reciprocity. From this framework, the research identifies opportunities for the clinic to reciprocate donor generosity while expanding services in response to a growing need. Insights from the research will guide the clinic's response to federal policy changes and support the clinic's vision of becoming a national model for integrative care.

A vertical world The connection between worlds is a layer of time The city contains many of its vessels The vision, the vessel, a tall building / Master of Architecture

As New Paltz grows into the future, the past is blended with the present. Possibilities for understanding the past are available as future plans are developed. Connections between places and between times are an integral part of strengthening the character and identity of this town. Current urban and architectural concerns are studied, explored and presented as possibilities for the future. / Master of Architecture

Part of the struggle of making architecture is reconciling its various realities; as it exists as pure idea and its transformation into a ‘thing’ existing in the world. Modern times pose a new challenge as well. As Jacob Bronowski has said, the dilemma is no longer to find structure for material but to find material for structure. Therefore, the ‘imposed idea’ is important as an impetus for Architecture to exist. In this project the imposed idea was the use of a series of parallel walls, vertical planes, that delimit the place for dwelling. In the first drawings, an attempt was made to use color as the substantiation or realization of space. The line drawing remains as a descriptive adjunct to the expressive drawing. They <i>become</i> together; the idea vs. its realization each describing the ‘thing’ in its <i>evolving</i> reality. / Master of Architecture

Thesis. 1975. M.C.P.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / Bibliography: leaves 441-444. / M.C.P.

Thesis. 1976. M.Arch.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. / Microfiche copy available in Archives and Rotch. / Bibliography: leaves 53-54. / M.Arch.

This dissertation examines politics and poetics of food, memory and ‘home’ among Dominican immigrants in New York City. Through a framework of ‘foodmaps’ it traces cultural histories of seven Dominican families from the gendered perspectives of the cooks in each household. Examining translocal food paths reveal the crucial role of migrant food relations in gendered production of home, place-making and community formations. ‘Migrant seasonings’ (the way immigrants season their foods and lives and the way they are ‘seasoned’ into new social relations) could be understood as contested sites of power negotiations, as strategic reclamation of ‘small measures of autonomy’, sociopolitical action, and historical visibility. Dominican foodmaps respond to culturally and historically specific ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ shared with other Afro-diasporic populations in the Americas. Food-place-memory becomes hence a continuum between geopolitical ‘seasonings’ in sending societies and new racializations in the US. Some findings of this project are: 1) food paid-unpaid labor are critical in negotiations of labor-time, places and social relations within households and in relation to the City and US state; 2) food is a key mediation for the way Dominican migrants learn to navigate and orient themselves in new environments; 3) cooking practices are inseparable from the narrative memories that give them meaning, constituting complex memory-work strategies, communicative and expressive means; 3) Food practices are crucial for the way cooks (especially women) claim value and autonomy for their life projects, produce senses of ‘home’, and re-inscribe through food-narratives their migrant history of struggles in Dominican Republic and the U.S. Basic contributions of this work are: 1) filling gaps in critical ethnographic research on food, gender and migration in Dominican and Caribbean studies; 2) development of a ‘foodmaps’ framework (a method-analytic frame to trace boundaries of ‘home’ through food relations); 3) examining food practices beyond ‘ethnic foodways’ tradition and nostalgia, but instead as critical and traumatic place-memory sites of implicit resistance, and as narrative spaces that re-inscribe working-class histories into hegemonic national narratives; 4) problematizing notions of private/public, personal/collective, memory/history in Afro-Caribbean socio-cultural formations; and 5) ‘native’ ethnography usage of interdisciplinary feminist, collaborative and media-based methodologies. / text

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This study investigates the expressive youth movement hip hop, a predominately black male subculture defined through participation in the competitive activities of graffiti writing, rapping and breakdancing. The general objective is to determine what is being communicated through these expressive forms, to whom, how, and finally to suggest why it is being communicated. The extent to which the encoded messages are consistent with reports of the subculture's goals is then discussed. It is asserted that hip hop operates as an alternative identity management and problem-solving mechanism within the black American ghetto. Drawing on traditional aspects of black cultural identity and expressiveness, hip hop creates a distinct way of life, reflecting a constructive and optimistic philosophy, to challenge the existing roles of the street hustler and gang member. Developed in the inner city boroughs of New York City in the late 1960's and early 1970's, hip hop functioned as a non-violent means of projecting a self-image and of measuring self-worth. It continues to be used to confront fundamental issues in a fight to overcome the restrictions of ghetto living, providing an expression of both an aesthetic and a cultural style based on the pursuit of excellence. The focus of the study is a form and content analysis of a selection of recorded raps, which parallels an interpretation of the messages conveyed in the musical form with assertions made by insiders regarding the functioning of hip hop. The thesis explores the hip hop male persona and worldview, his social relations and his role in the community, as they are articulated in the raps. The results of this analysis are then applied to a discussion of hip hop graffiti and breakdancing symbolism. The study concludes that the three expressive forms are communicating the cultural agenda of its members as well as providing the means through which to achieve their goals. It is contended that within hip hop, members empower themselves through aggressive self-glorifying imagery and role-playing, and that they apply this sense of greatness to motivating their community, outlining a strategy for coping with their existence by re-energizing it and transforming it into a positive experience. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate