GoUSF: Star Route Farms—Experiential learning at California’s oldest continuously operating certified organic farm

Star Route Farms (SRF) is a 100-acre organic farm located in Bolinas California (~30 miles north of USF) that is recognized as the oldest continuously certified organic row crop farm in California. Acquired by USF in 2017, SRF is a mix of organically farmed agricultural land and freshwater holding ponds, Pine Gulch creek, riparian forest, mixed hardwood forest, and grasslands. Join GoUSF in person or on Zoom to learn about some of the innovative ways USF faculty use SRF to enrich curriculum and provide students with immersive learning experiences. The farm has hosted between 350-400 students a year for the past several years for a variety of courses as well as undergraduate clubs, graduate and faculty researchers, and visiting high school and college students from other universities.

This free event is part of GoUSF’s April Environmental Justice Programming and is open to the entire USF community.

About the speaker: April Randle, PhD has been a faculty member in the Environmental Science Department at the University of San Francisco for nine years. Her research interests are broadly focused on how ecological factors shape the behavioral and morphological traits of species and influence species’ distributions and interactions. She has conducted research on a broad range of taxa, including:  tropical trees, amphibians, annual plants, primates, tomatoes, and marine mammals. April’s most recent work centers largely on teaching ecology-centered courses in both the ENVS and MSEM programs at USF, and on her role as the Faculty Director of Star Route Farms.