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Lindsey MacDonald
A University of Michigan graduate, MacDonald, 26, is currently a Master’s student concentrating in conservation ecology through Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment. She is one of four Master’s students that established the University of Michigan Sustainable Food Program, an initiative that brings together and provides resources for food related initiatives on campus. Her team has already launched Michigan’s first farm at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens. MacDonald’s sustainable food initiative and farm project joins the growing local food movement across the nation. Her team is helping to bring Michigan up to speed with peer institutions, like Yale, that already have large scale farms in place. Although currently a small plot, MacDonald and her group have plans to expand to two acres this spring. The farm will be used to provide local food to dining halls on campus, serve as a tool to educate students about food issues, and allow them to actively participate in food production.

MacDonald first became interested in food as an undergraduate while working on her honors thesis on green roofs and agriculture. Since then, she has remained involved in the sustainable food world. Addressing food issues will help tackle a host of environmental problems on this planet, she says. Before returning to Michigan, she taught environmental education and started a garden in Colorado, worked on an organic farm in New Zealand, and established a garden that provides food for outdoor trips while serving as Assistant Director for Outdoor Adventures. “I love connecting people,” says MacDonald. “The connections between people that are created around the topic of food are really powerful.” Individuals share their experiences over meals and campus farms create opportunities for students to contribute ideas about food sustainability, MacDonald says. Food is the perfect avenue for someone like MacDonald to build these bigger connections. “[Food is] an environmental issue, it’s a social issue. Everybody eats,” says MacDonald.

MacDonald’s biggest challenge is over-committing herself and finding time to do all of the things she cares about, evidenced by the small Moleskin notebook she carries crammed with notes, numbers, and thoughts. “I love everything that I’m doing, I don’t know what to cut out,” she said. MacDonald also works as a graduate student instructor. Adding to her packed schedule she enjoys trail running and spending time with friends drinking local beer. “Relationships are really important to me,” she said of her boyfriend Ben. She does all of this on an average of five hours of sleep. “She has her hands in so many things, yet makes time for everyone,” said her student, Rebecca Guerriero.

MacDonald’s passion for her work helps keep sleep deprivation at bay. “It’s not always glamorous, it’s almost never glamorous actually,” MacDonald said, “but I’m motivated to do the less fun tasks [like writing grant proposals] because I’m so passionate about the bigger picture.”

She also feeds off the energy of undergraduate students that work with her. “When I see the energy that some of these students have, how can I not run with them?” MacDonald said. It’s this contagious excitement, and get-your-hands-dirty attitude that she loves working with, both on the campus farm project and as a graduate student instructor. “She models the leader that I hope our undergraduate students develop into,” said Dr. Michael Shriberg, the professor of the class she instructs.

For MacDonald, the most important reason for a farm on Michigan’s campus is to benefit Michigan students. “Students are going to graduate from Michigan and go be leaders,” said MacDonald, “but whatever they do they still make decisions everyday about what they eat. There’s a power to giving students the skills to make more knowledgeable decisions about those things.”

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