Susan Adams, senior coordinator for records and registration, and Emary Iacobucci, registrar and associate dean for records and registration.
The law school’s green team flourishes in UB’s community garden
It has been a hot summer in Western New York, and those who work in O’Brian Hall have stayed close to the air conditioning.
Unless, that is, they have crops to tend.
That’s the case for the law school’s Office of Records and Registration, who’ve spent lunch breaks and after-work hours all summer caring for a garden plot on campus now robust with delicious vegetables.
The weekly harvest.
The three-person law school team—Emary Iacobucci, registrar and associate dean for records and registration; Susan Adams, senior coordinator for records and registration; and E Joo Chua, academic records and scholarship coordinator—entered a springtime raffle organized by UB Sustainability. The prize was the chance to plant in one of 11 raised garden beds newly installed behind the GRoW Clean Energy Center, near the Flint Road entrance to the North Campus.
Worth a shot, they thought—and now they’re nurturing their green space alongside UB colleagues from other schools and departments including the School of Management, the Graduate School of Education and Engineers for a Sustainable World.
“The amount of participation in the first year of our campus garden has been astonishing,” says Derek Nichols, UB's associate director for sustainability. “The purpose of the garden was to provide a space for people to enjoy nature and connect with each other, and that’s exactly what’s happening. It’s great to see groups from all across campus meeting new colleagues and students while spending time in the sun, tending their garden beds and getting some fresh produce.”
The base of the beds, 9 by 4 feet, are made of corrugated steel, and the whole area is fenced to keep deer at bay. The UB Law bed is home to a variety of delicious vegetation including Roma tomato, cucumber, hot pepper and snap pea plants.
“By some stroke of luck, it’s doing really, really well,” says Iacobucci, who says nobody in the registrar’s office started out with a particularly green thumb, but they’re learning. “We got together and mapped out what we wanted to plant, did some research on plants and soil, drew a little map. Now it’s a delight to go over to the garden, and the whole thing has been quite rewarding.”
Rewarding, too, for the beneficiaries of their labor. The garden produced 28 cucumbers in just three weeks. “We have so many cucumbers that we’ve taken to stacking them at the window of our office in 304 O’Brian to share them,” Iacobucci says.
Not least among the rewards has been the chance to toil in the dirt with other departments and professional schools. “UB is very large and it can feel a bit isolating at times,” Iacobucci says, “but now we’re growing produce from scratch with our peers from around the campus, which makes it feel closer, more like a community. That’s incredibly fulfilling.”