Joe Trumpey Featured on "Michigan Minds"
Stamps Associate Professor Joe Trumpey discusses art and sustainability on the latest episode of “Michigan Minds,” a podcast that brings to life the breadth and depth of faculty expertise at the University of Michigan.
“A lot of my teaching is studio based so getting students to be able to experience, visualize and actually see some of these green practices is really important. I have been working with the Campus Farm since its inception. My Sustainable Living Experience course has a lot of really hands-on components: having students track their weekly garbage output, their weekly food consumption, their weekly water consumption. All of those sorts of things that are really hands-on and that’s leading to thinking about how does local resilient maker culture overlap with our U‑M sustainable culture.”
The Excellence in Sustainability Honors Cord program was created by Trumpey and Student Life Sustainability Manager Alex Bryan. The program allows students to accrue points over their years at U‑M, which then provides them with a tangible item to wear at graduation that represents their efforts.
…The cord for the 2022 graduates were created from locally sourced wool purchased from Zeilinger Wool Mill in Frankenmuth, dyed with plants from Matthaei Botanical Gardens and the Campus Farm, and braided by students within the program. He describes the dye process: “We collected a bunch of Goldenrod out of botanical gardens and the Campus Farm. We dye a strand yellow and we have a project going on with the school of Art and Design and the Campus Farm to grow dye plants, we have a dye garden out at the campus farm. So one of the plants we grow is Indigo. We were able to use that Indigo dye a strand blue and then we used a third strand just leaving as the natural light white wool color.”