Mgmt. students build garden at local school

Ten Wharton freshmen are helping turn a vacant courtyard into a garden at the local Lea Elementary School. Kids like to get their hands dirty. So when several teachers from Lea Elementary School at 47th and Locust streets teamed up with various Penn faculty, staff and students to build a garden in a deserted and bleak courtyard in the middle of the school, the children were bursting with ways to beautify the space. "City children there have basically no greenery and no playgrounds," said Vivianne Nachmias, a professor emeritus of Cell and Developmental Biology, who has helped plan the project. Ten Wharton School freshmen are now helping Nachmias achieve her goal as part of their Management 100 project, which asks students to work in small groups to perform a community service project. Nachmias and Lea teachers came together last spring to begin brainstorming about how to turn a desolate patch of asphalt, unused for the past 25 years, into both a recreational and educational space for the schoolchildren. Although the Management students, who call themselves Tecaslammm -- an acronym of the first letters of all the group members' names -- originally took on the task of assisting the garden's creation as a course project, they decided to continue working with the teachers and students after the class ended. "The more we give to this project, the more we get back," Tecaslammm member Misha Sanwal said. Tecaslammm worked last semester to raise money and work with the elementary school students on design. This semester they said they hope to work more closely with the schoolchildren. "This project has everything we need to learn how to communicate with professors and kids, to organize and delegate," group member Matt Tanzer added. Behind the scenes, Penn's UC Green has been acting as "facilitators" to help get the right people talking, said College senior Hillary Aisenstein, who works on UC Green, an initiative to plant trees, flowers and shrubbery in areas around University City. Lea technology teacher Jeffrey Gaskins and art teacher Maria Pendolfe enlisted the help of the school's children in developing ideas for the design. The students discussed several aspects of the garden, including flower beds, a vegetable garden, benches and walkways, murals, sculptures, miniature trees, a water pond and a fountain. The garden will allow for varied learning experiences and experiments giving the children an "appreciation for horticulture," while the pond will allow for the study of bacteria and hydroponics, a way of growing plants without soil, Gaskins said. Art classes have also been working on murals that represent the four seasons to adorn the courtyard walls. "Inner city kids don't get to interact with nature a lot," Pendolfe said. "Doing something for the community, they see themselves as part of something else." While the students and teachers have been working hard to create a vision for the project, many other parties have been tackling the more business-like aspects of the effort. One major component of the project is fundraising. Removing the asphalt alone will cost about $2,500. Nachmias and some of the Wharton students and community members have been writing to various area merchants asking for support.

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