What We’ve Built With Partners
These projects are complete. Some ran a single day, some ran for years. Most started with an organization approaching us about a problem or an opportunity rather than with a program we’d designed in advance. Most involved students doing real work. Most left something—an exhibit, a trained cohort—that stayed after the project closed.
You'll notice a pattern. Most began with a community organization approaching us about a problem or an opportunity, not with a program we'd designed in advance and gone looking to place. Most involved students doing real work rather than observing it. Most produced something public — an exhibit, an installation, a trained cohort, a gathering — that stayed in the community after the project closed.
We’ll keep adding to this section as projects move to completion.
Reading Together in Marion
During the summer of 2023, a team of six students from Ohio State Marion researched Marion’s history of literacy advocacy and support, explored present community needs, and then publicized and promoted Marion’s distinct culture of literacy to the public. “Reading Together in Marion,” seeks to highlight the history of the Marion community’s ongoing commitment to literacy. This exhibit creates a space that encourages visitors to consider how they might contribute to efforts by the university and Marion’s civic organizations to promote literacy and learning to strengthen the community.
Language in Motion — Bilingual Book Walk
At the close of spring semester, students in Ohio State Marion Associate Professor of Psychology, Dr. Nikole Patson's psychology 4554 language development, service-learning course came together with representatives from Let's Read 20, the Marion Public Library, and fellow students in Dr. Ben McCorkle's English 4569 digital and English studies course to officially launch a bilingual book walk literacy initiative at Marion's Tall Grass Trail for the people of the Marion community.
Bucyrus City Schools Educator Professional Development
On Friday, February 13, 2025, educators from Bucyrus City Schools took part in a full-day professional learning experience developed in partnership with The Ohio State University at Marion. The General Business and Liberal Arts pathways at OSU Marion round out the staff’s prior training with Advanced Manufacturing and Technology and a focus in Healthcare Careers, all areas of projected growth and need within the Bucyrus community.
Microfarm
The Microfarm Project began with making the business of sustainable urban farming accessible, equitable, and profitable by leveraging the knowledge and science of the land grant university to grow cooperative businesses, make microfarming profitable, train new microfarmers, address racial and social justice by creating access to microfarming opportunity, study the impacts of microfarming on the surrounding community and ecosystems, and connect students to knowledge, research, and service opportunities in and around microfarming.
Since 2017, Ohio State Associate Professor Kip Curtis has been building partnerships and recruiting collaborators to pilot a microfarming system in Mansfield, Ohio. Since 2019, Ohio State, The North End Community Improvement Collaborative, IdeaWorks, Braintree Business Solutions, and The Richland County Foundation, along with a dozen aspirational microfarmers from Mansfield and Richland County, have been piloting the first microfarm aggregation system with the support of the Foundation for Food and Agriculture’s Seeding Solutions grant program.
In 2020, with the support of the Office of Outreach and Engagement, Dr. Curtis, and Catherine Gerber, Director of Development and Community Relations, began conversations with community leaders and others in Marion about expanding this program to Marion. Since then, Marion implemented an adult microfarm training program to train adults to manage their own microfarms. After training several adults, some of which started their own microfarm, with one being implemented at River Valley high school, which uses that produce in their cafeteria, the project shifted.
Solar Eclipse
The Ohio State University at Marion collaborated with Marion Technical College, the Columbus campus, and a number of area organizations and volunteers to provide open access to campus to over 1,000 visitors, including students, faculty, staff, and guests from the regional community, around Ohio, and visitors from across the country on Monday, April 8, 2024, to witness the rare total solar eclipse.