Cultivating Success

While Emily Ulizio ‘25 was searching for a summer experience, one sprouted before her in Washington College’s own backyard – or rather, in our Campus Garden. A Environmental Studies and International Studies double major, Emily was eager to apply her passion for the environment to her internship.

 

As a Food Initiative Intern through the Office of Sustainability and the Rebecca Corbin Loree Internship, Emily’s summer is looking decidedly greener as she undertakes the responsibility of caring for the Campus Garden and all its residents. 

While Emily’s mornings are typically busy caring for the garden’s chickens and vegetation, her internship as a whole brings into focus the importance of healthy living and bettering oneself and others. 

“Part of my internship is the concept of bettering my lifestyle and bettering myself. It’s been a real emphasis during my internship.”

From reading up on nutrition to engaging in exercise, Emily’s internship has honed in on health since the beginning. Part of the experience has been weekly food workshops led by her supervisor, Shane Brill. Together, they’ve made everything from seed cookies to yogurt using nutritious foods and methods. 

“The food workshops have been really eye opening since it shows that you can cook really good food that is also really good for you, which is something I don’t think people associate with nutritious foods.”

The flexibility of her internship has also lent itself to helping Emily work towards new goals and skills. With the ability to make her own schedule and set tasks for herself, Emily says that she’s been working on not only setting realistic goals for herself, but prioritizing what’s most important to her; “Knowing my limit and knowing what I will be able to achieve is something I’ve learned really well, as well as managing these goals. Part of it is also realizing that if I don’t get something done, to not get hung up over it.”

Part of Emily’s internship journey has also included workshops with other RCL interns, including workshops through the Career Center that aim to help the interns understand their personal strengths and the strengths of others, and how to better collaborate with people from all different backgrounds; “We talk about our strengths and how we can implement those in our lives, careers and internships and how we can use those strengths to help others.”

And helping others is something Emily is certainly passionate about. Over the course of her internship, Emily has set forth some pretty big projects for the garden. As part of the garden’s partnership with Bayside H.O.Y.A.S, an organization dedicated to “Helping Our Youth Achieve Success”, Emily has proposed refurbishing the unused vegetable beds to create a garden space for the local community. 

“One of [my projects] has been to implement a little vegetable garden so that the college community could access those vegetables and cook with them. But we’re going to have the vegetable beds available to not only the college communities, but to the Kent County community as well. We’re going to have kids from local schools come out and look around, and harvest some veggies to let them see where some of their food is coming from and see the ‘seed to plant’ journey.” 

While the project is ongoing, so is Emily’s tenure in the Campus Garden. As the Outreach Coordinator and Garden Officer for the coming year, Emily hopes to increase the presence of the garden in both the college community and the greater Chestertown community

“I think the garden could be really successful if we have more people involved.” She smiled, “This is bigger than the our college community, we’re trying to help people who aren’t as privileged receive these types of experiences”