Hi friends,

We're excited to have everyone join the new course!  It was nice to see you all Monday, and good to see a few new faces as well.  Some of you know me, others don't, so I'll share a little bit of how I came to be here.  

My role in all of this is as an Extension Associate and Adult Program Leader for the Cornell Garden-Based Learning Program, part of the Horticulture Section of SIPS.  I have a background in urban and community planning and environmental studies, and researched children's garden design for my Masters thesis, so I came to this work from a social science, environmental justice and environmental psychology perspective.  For the past ten years, I've worked with national non-profits, like the National Wildlife Federation and Earth Force, on youth environmental action project curriculum, as well as a municipal sustainability office, working with green infrastructure and community gardening projects.  All in all, I've been gardening about 10 years (which is a fraction of most MGV and educators!), mostly with community and school gardens, and I'm always, always learning so much more, especially surrounded by the experts at CCE.  I'm excited to be back at Cornell, supporting professional development of both CCE educators and Master Gardener Volunteers, where I first started volunteering with after school gardening clubs at CCE Tompkins.

 Some of the statewide programs I support include:  the Permaculture Design Certificate, the Vegetable Varieties Trial Garden (with the wonderful Laurie VanNostrand), the NEW Food Forest Trial Garden Program, the Sustainable Landscapes Program Work Team, and the Seed to Supper Program and Student Course (with our leadership team of Marcia Eames-Sheavly, Rebecca Ligrani, Sharon Bachman and Jennie Cramer) - all of these program are open to Master Gardener Volunteers, to both support their volunteer hours and for continuing education.  The Garden-Based Learning Library course is a new initiative to familiarize our advanced MGV and educators on the new content for their MGV training needs, and I work with the talented Donna Alese Cooke on this effort.  Across the state, we have over 50 MGV programs and over 2,000 MGV.

Keep in touch and let's really use this time to tell our stories and get to know one another throughout the course.

Thanks for joining us,

Ashley