Traverse City Central Preps for First-Ever On-Campus Greenhouse

Thanks to a recent six-figure grant, Traverse City Central High School will soon have a brand-new building on campus: its first-ever greenhouse. The new facility will be built in the courtyard behind the school’s F building (pictured) and could be up and running as early as next spring, according to Assistant Principal Nathanael Kepler. Once built, the greenhouse will become a key component of the school’s Trojan Integrated Experience (TIE) program, which offers an alternative to typical science, language arts, and history curriculum.

The TIE program launched with the 2022-23 school year as an option for ninth and tenth graders. For freshmen, the TIE program integrates English language arts (ELA), United States history, and biology into a double block course. For sophomores, the model swaps biology for environmental science.

“The idea is: you write in history and you read and write in science, so the ELA is integrated into that learning, and then the backbone of the whole program is U.S. history,” Kepler explains. “Students are still hitting all the standards, and still getting essentially the same coursework, but instead of looking at those three subjects as three separate classes, we combine them.”

This year, Kepler says there are 50-60 Central students enrolled in the TIE programs, with four teachers handling the courseload. Many of those students have non-traditional learning styles or preferences – hence their interest in an alternative curriculum.

“A lot of it ends up being project-based learning, with a focus on getting these kids hands-on and understanding the content in a different way,” Kepler tells The Ticker.

Incorporating gardening and agriculture into the TIE program’s environmental science curriculum has been on Kepler’s wish list for years. Before he was an educator, Kepler was in charge of the gardens at the Kalamazoo Nature Center. He wants to bring that experience to Central, and the new greenhouse is the first step.

“My dream is we start getting raised beds going, maybe some native plantings, and that this whole part of campus becomes an outdoor green space,” Kepler says of the F building quad. “I see it being a garden, a greenhouse, maybe some space for wild plant life. I think it could become a really cool area that we use a lot more than we do currently.”

The new greenhouse is 16 feet by 30 feet, and comes in a kit that will make it easy to build. Right now, Central is waiting on a permit to install the new facility, but Kepler says it should “go up pretty quick” once that approval comes through.

The greenhouse project is fully funded by a $200,000 grant from Allen Foundation, Inc., a Midland-based nonprofit named after botanist, chemist, and Dow Chemical veteran William Webster Allen. Allen launched the foundation with the goal of “reaching more people with better nutritional information and thereby helping to alleviate malnutrition.”

Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS) had a strong proponent in its corner when it sought the grant. One of the Allen Foundation's board trustees is Emily Umbarger, the director of sustainability at Interlochen Center for the Arts.

Umbarger has led numerous sustainability initiatives at Interlochen, including the creation of the institution’s Climate Action Plan and the establishment of hoophouses, raised beds, an apiary, and an industrial composting facility on Interlochen’s campus. She also sits on the TCAPS Sustainability Team, and was the person who flagged the Allen Foundation grant opportunity in the first place.

“Working with [TCAPS Superintendent] John VanWagoner on the TCAPS Sustainability Board, he mentioned that they wanted to do a greenhouse, and I knew immediately it was a perfect mission-fit for the Allen Foundation,” Umbarger says. “As someone who has seen firsthand the impacts that this type of education can have on kids, I jumped in to serve as a mentor, advocate, and supporter. I think that, when you put your hands in the soil, when you connect with nature, when you put down the electronics and really reset your brain, something really magical happens to the human body.”

While the project is starting small, Kepler hopes the greenhouse can ultimately become a prevalent school and community asset. One priority is getting two of the four TIE teachers certified as Master Gardeners, which Kepler thinks would quickly grow the reach.

“I was Master Gardener-certified years ago when I worked at the nature center, and it plugs you into a volunteer community group, because to keep your certification, you have to hit a certain amount of volunteer hours,” Kepler says. “So, having those teachers take the course and get plugged into the MSU Extension, I think that could then lead to getting community members in here to work with the students. And maybe the local Master Gardener chapter could then support or utilize the space in the summer when we're not here.”

As for what’s actually going to be grown in the greenhouse, Kepler sees potential for everything from vegetables to greens to herbs to flowers.

“In the long term, I’d love for us to be able to grow enough food that we can potentially even showcase it in the cafeteria. That would be in my ideal world,” he says. “But there's other thoughts, too. For example, I've seen schools do fundraisers to help continue to sustain the project financially. So, maybe we’d grow flowers for Mother's Day and have a sale, or do starter plants and then advertise those to folks in the community.”