Volunteer or Community Service

A city without schools

lblouin — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 11:07:20 +0000

A city without schools lblouin Mon, 06/09/2025 - 07:07

To the extent that many Michiganders know much about the schools in Inkster, a small, mostly blue-collar, mostly African American city in Detroit’s western suburbs, their knowledge likely revolves around the state government’s dramatic intervention that ultimately led to the dissolution of the school district in 2013. Inkster was one of several districts that had come under the scrutiny of then-Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration during a period in which the state appointed emergency managers to run several districts (and, in some cases, the cities themselves) or entered into consent agreements that required districts to financially restructure. The administration pitched the strategy as a tough-medicine approach to longstanding debt problems. But because the vast majority of the cities and districts Snyder pursued were majority African American, many residents, activists and policymakers voiced concerns, arguing that many white districts were also experiencing financial problems but were not subject to the same measures. Many cities eventually regained local control of their districts. Inkster was one of two places that did not. In 2013, the state declared that the Inkster School District, saddled with about $15 million in debt, was financially unviable and hence would be fully dissolved. Its approximately 4,000 students would be sent to schools in four neighboring communities. The state plan included $5 million in grants to cover costs associated with the district’s dissolution, including the demolition of all but one of Inkster’s school buildings.

Fleda Fleming, a lifelong Inkster resident who served as Inkster High School’s dean of students for 12 years prior to the district’s dissolution, says the fast-moving state action caught everyone in the community by surprise. Sure, Inkster had financial problems, as did many other districts, she says. But the narrative that Inkster was a failing school was, from her vantage point, not rooted in reality. Fleming, who had been with the district during some hard times in the early 2000s, says Inkster schools had actually been on a roll not long before the state dissolved the district. She attributes much of that to a young superintendent, Thomas Maridada, who came to Inkster in 2004 with a ton of energy and a new vision for public education in an urban community. Under his leadership, Inkster became one of the first districts in the state to adopt an “academies” model in the high school, a now popular approach in which students choose something akin to a college major to structure their academic experience. In Inkster, there were three concentrations: pre-health, business and entrepreneurship, and the performing arts. Inkster’s program also became the first in the state where academies students earned both a high school diploma and an associate degree in four years through a dual-enrollment partnership with Wayne County Community College.

Fleming says Maridada also dramatically shifted the culture of the schools. She recalls a day, for example, when he asked her to order trophies for a new year-end assembly to celebrate students' academic achievements. She thought it was a little curious he wanted two of everything. “It turned out he wanted one for the students to take home and another to put in a trophy case at the school so everyone could see them,” Fleming says. He rallied staff and students alike to the cause. Fleming remembers when she started in 2001, it was rare to get 400 students in the high school for school count day. Five years into Maridada’s reforms, they had 1,200 kids in the building, many of them college bound, many of them school choice students from other cities. “It was amazing work,” Fleming says. “It was one of those jobs where getting up to go to school every day really did feel like a joy for students and staff alike. It was hands down the best time of my professional career.”

Maridada, who earned a nod as Michigan’s Superintendent of the Year in 2008 for his efforts, left a mark on the district. But his style of leadership also inspired Fleming personally. It showed her just how much leaders mattered, a lesson that was reinforced when he left the district in 2009 to lead a similar charge in Pontiac and the Inkster schools lost some ground. She credits him and that experience, in part, with inspiring her interest in what was then an all new Doctor of Education program at ��-Dearborn. Maridada was working on his own doctorate during his five-year tenure in Inkster and spontaneously developed a habit of referring to Fleming as “Dr. Fleming.” She initially enrolled in the doctoral program without a particular professional aspiration in mind. But it proved to be a profound experience. Fleming fondly recalls being academically challenged and personally galvanized by her initial dissertation chair, Assistant Professor Maiyoua Vang, along with her committee members Professor Les Thornton and Professor John Artis. Her dissertation research experience was particularly meaningful for her. Under Professor of Education Chris Burke, she took on a qualitative study of African American sibling pairs, one female, one male, where the former attained higher levels of academic achievement. This was a theme ripped straight from her own life: In her family, Fleming and her two sisters all attended college, two of them earning advanced degrees. Three of her four brothers never finished high school. Moreover, she knew this was a common experience in many African American families. She wanted to know why Black women were collectively faring so much better than men when it came to academic achievement.

Though not a formal part of her study, the story of differential achievement in Fleming’s own family was, in many ways, indicative of the larger trends she would explore in her research. Her two oldest brothers started their high school years in Inkster schools, which she says were demographically pretty similar back in the late 1950s. But during her oldest brother’s junior year, the family moved from the west side of the city to the east side, which put the family in the Westwood school district. There, she says about nine in 10 students were white. It was a “cultural shock” for her three eldest siblings. After their move, her oldest brother actually secretly enrolled himself in his old school, which worked until the school discovered his east Inkster address. He chose to drop out rather than return to Westwood.

Her second-oldest brother eventually followed suit. But interestingly, her eldest sister made it to graduation. Fleming says her sister’s experience was not without difficulties: Fleming recalls one story where her “strong-willed” sister objected to the director of the school play casting her as a maid. But in the areas of discipline and expectations for academic achievement, Fleming says the situation was more difficult for young Black men. Moreover, by the time the three youngest children, which included another older sister, Fleming and her baby brother, reached high school, the demographics of the school district had shifted. Now, Westwood had just a small majority of white students. “I remember it was sort of like what Rodney King said: ‘Can’t we all just get along?’ We all just got along. Race was much less of a factor,” Fleming says. In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, her baby brother earned his high school diploma and ultimately went on to college, earning a master’s degree in guidance and counseling.

Fleming says she was not conscious of these dynamics growing up. But viewing it now through the eyes of a researcher, several interesting takeaways emerged. The changing racial and gender politics of the era certainly were relevant. But she also became fascinated with how expectations, both within the family and in the schools, shaped her siblings’ journeys. In particular, she now found it remarkable that her parents, who were both college educated, didn’t blink at the three oldest boys dropping out of high school, though she says they would have been “outraged” had any of the young women in the family followed that course. That spoke to something profound about the way gender and economics interacted at that time. After leaving school, two of her brothers got solid jobs in the auto industry, and the third earned his GED and served in the U.S. Navy. They all ended up doing quite well for themselves. “The joke in the family is that the boys' income levels surpassed the girls despite our advanced degrees ,” Fleming says. “So it reveals how the family viewed education. My parents valued education very highly. They were sticklers about using ‘proper’ English and were equally adamant about ensuring that all of their children were highly proficient in the core subject areas. But the endgame of schooling was not academic achievement, it was employability. And if boys could find that at the factory without a high school diploma, then the educational system was unnecessary. But that same path was not available to young women. And my parents were more protective about their daughters’ working conditions, so formal education and post-secondary education became essential to their employment.”

Fleming collected dozens of such stories from sibling pairs over the course of her research, many with similar experiences to her own family’s. Notably, sometimes the outcomes were quite different. She documented how, as economic conditions changed and a high school or college diploma became a qualification for more jobs, young Black men paid a higher price for lower expectations for their academic achievement. Many of the men in the youngest sibling pairs, who attended high school in the 2000s, also noted how the educational and disciplinary modalities of high school left them feeling unmotivated or unchallenged. Several noted that their mostly female, mostly white teachers failed to find ways to connect with them. The depth of what she was learning and experiencing through this research, and in her program more generally, also left her feeling more personally inspired. Fleming may have begun her doctoral program without the common professional goals of EdD students, who typically find it a useful bridge to a superintendent position or policy job. But she now found herself dreaming of a somewhat poetic final chapter to her career: She’d love to become superintendent of Inkster schools herself and restore some of the momentum she’d helped build. Indeed, it even felt urgent as the school choice dynamics that had brought many students from outside Inkster into the district started to flip after Maridada’s departure, as students left, in some cases, to follow their favorite teachers. Bolstered by what she was learning in the program, she thought she could help finish what they'd started.

Then 2013 happened, and with the dissolution of the district, Fleming’s dream was essentially rendered impossible. She didn’t experience this so much as a personal setback. Because of the stage she was at in her career, she was able to fairly easily transition into retirement. But she and many residents immediately grew anxious over how Inkster becoming a city without schools would impact the community. Along with its churches, the schools were the thing that regularly brought families together, and there was a lot of pride in what Inkster had built academically. More kids were going to college. They also had a state championship football team, a state championship girls basketball team and a highly acclaimed performing arts department that the city rallied around. Now, its students would be scattered across districts in other cities. In some cases, where district lines divided neighborhoods, kids who grew up together would be attending different schools.

Almost immediately, Fleming began using her retirement to try to fill the void. By winter the following year, she had founded a new nonprofit, EQUIPPED, the purpose of which was “to create a space and opportunity for kids to do some of the same things we were doing in the high schools,” she says. In practice, that included things like academic enrichment programs, after-school ACT prep courses, life skills classes, a traditional community baccalaureate celebration and anything she could think of that could help students transition to their post-high school lives. The Inkster community immediately bought in, funding it with personal donations. She says if anybody needed help with anything, they knew the first step was to “get Ms. Fleming’s phone number.” Fleming says that informal, grassroots vibe has always been part of EQUIPPED. She never aspired to open a formal space for the organization, opting instead to host workshops and events in libraries, churches and community spaces. That has helped her keep costs down so she can funnel all the donations into programming. But it’s also just been more effective to meet students and families where they already are.

Over the past 11 years, Fleming says the programming has evolved a lot. “Basically, wherever I see a need, I try to find a way to address it” is the simple mantra that guides her. In recent years, that’s often meant putting an emphasis on the arts to counter cuts in programming that many schools have experienced. Fleming, who regularly produces holiday pageants at her church and jokes that she may have missed her calling by not going into the arts, is a particularly big fan of performance. Over the years, EQUIPPED has produced multiple student-led stage productions, including “An’Dee”, an original African American-centric reimagining of the classic musical “Annie.” Most recently, she partnered with Westwood schools to produce “Westwood’s Got Talent,” a variety show that featured performances by students, staff and community members.

Through all that evolution, one of EQUIPPED’s most consistent offerings has been a scholarship for college-bound students. Over the past decade, she says they’ve been able to annually award at least $15,000 in scholarships to students mostly from Inkster but also in surrounding cities, all powered by donations from community members. She calls the application process “easy peasy.” Students have to have at least a 2.5 GPA, a limit she set so that the scholarship could “reach down” to serve students who traditionally wouldn't be eligible for other academic scholarships. Applicants have to submit a college acceptance letter and two letters of recommendation, one from someone at their school and another from a community member. Then, there’s a 500-word essay, the topic of which hasn’t changed in years. “It’s always the same: ‘What advice would you give to a ninth, 10th or 11th grader about how to be successful in high school?’” She says the straightforward prompt is intended to get students to think critically and consciously about all the things that led to their success, so they might impart that wisdom to others. But it’s also a perfect way to mine ideas for new youth-focused programming.

Fleming with some past EQUIPPED scholarship recipients. Photo by Annie Barker

Even as the ranks grow of young people touched by EQUIPPED, including many who’ve gone on to graduate from ��-Dearborn and ��-Ann Arbor, Fleming knows she can’t fill all the gaps. Despite the work, and that of other community organizations in the city, Fleming says the closure of the city’s schools has left Inkster a changed place. “We’re strangers now,” she says. “Because students were scattered across several districts, there’s this feeling that you don’t know where your kids are, you don’t know how they’re doing and you don’t know how to help them. We’re from a culture where we say it takes a village to raise a child. When you remove the village’s impact from your children, you’ve not only lost a sense of community but an avenue for perpetuating your culture.”

In the immediate aftermath of the district’s dissolution, she says people in the community had many conversations over whether they could get their schools back. She says that fire never completely died out, and it’s recently started to smolder again. Not surprisingly, Fleming now finds herself as one of the people at the center of that effort. She recently teamed up with one of her former academies students and a ’96 Inkster High School graduate, both of whom have earned doctoral degrees themselves, to undertake a research project focused on the aftermath of the school closure. She says it’s not so much to investigate and relitigate the state’s decision-making process, which many think was racist, unjust and ignored alternatives, like the state’s 2023 effort to wipe away school districts’ legacy debt with state funds. (Notably, those funds also eliminated $12 million of debt Inkster residents were still paying off through their taxes, even though their schools had been closed for a decade.) Instead, the focus of their study is to document the impact the dissolution of the schools had on the students and families who lived through it, as well as the lasting impacts on the community. As in her dissertation research, Fleming is hoping that giving voice to these personal stories will help people understand that they form a common narrative — which she thinks could help motivate the community and policymakers to eventually do what she thinks is the right thing for the city.

Fleming knows any fruits of that effort, especially anything as dramatic as reestablishing the Inkster School District, could be years away. It’s likely too far off for her to ever fulfill her dream of becoming that future district’s superintendent. Moreover, the state’s decision to demolish the city’s physical school buildings obviously could make things far more complicated and expensive for the community to realize that vision. But Fleming remains resolved, plucky and cheerfully defiant. “They tore the schools down. That’s fine,” she says. “That just means our kids will get all new buildings, like the rose that grew from concrete.”

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Story by Lou Blouin

Opinion or Voices

Volunteer or Community Service

Alumni Engagement

College of Education, Health, and Human Services

Education

Off

Mon, 06/09/2025 - 11:05

’14 EdD alum Fleda Fleming reflects on the legacy of the state’s 2013 dissolution of the Inkster School District and how her nonprofit has helped restore a lost sense of community.

Alum Fleda Fleming stands at the former site of Inkster High School, which was torn down after the state dissolved the city's school district in 2013. Photo by Annie Barker

News

Class project sparks new student club for future educators

lblouin — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 11:39:03 +0000

Class project sparks new student club for future educators lblouin Wed, 03/19/2025 - 07:39

Identifying and creating a solution for a real community need is one of Education Professor Chris Burke’s go-to project-based learning assignments in his place-based education course. Students form small groups and then brainstorm ideas, after which they pitch them to the larger group and the class votes on which project they’ll work on that semester. During the Fall 2024 semester, when McKenna Shelide was a student in the course, her small group came up with an idea to start a student organization for pre-service teachers. “It’s kind of surprising, but there wasn’t a club for us. And we really thought there was so much we could be doing,” Shelide says. Students ended up picking another idea for their class project. But after class, Burke pulled Shelide and the other students in her group aside and told them if they were really serious about starting a club, he could connect them with some folks who could help. Shelide and the other students jumped on the idea, and within a couple weeks, they had their own campus chapter of Aspiring Educators, the student arm of the National Education Association and Michigan Education Association.

Shelide, who’s currently serving as the group’s president, says one of their primary goals is to provide learning and professional development opportunities that complement their formal coursework, and the affiliation with the MEA has proven to be an effective way to do that. For example, at one of the club’s first meetings, a representative from the MEA talked about the ins and outs of teachers unions. And last November, the students attended an MEA conference that included sessions like “The Tea on Teaching,” which featured early-career teachers sharing their honest takes on finding their footings in the profession. Kamryn McCutcheon, the club’s vice president, says she found the session on prep for the state certification exam particularly helpful. “We got to talk through some sample questions, what to expect on test day and how the exam is going to be laid out,” McCutcheon says. “It’s obviously pretty stressful thinking about that test because you have to pass in order to get a job. So it just makes you feel better going into it when you know what to expect.”

Shelide and McCutcheon say the club is also focusing on service projects. For example, for Valentine’s Day, they got together to make homemade valentines for children in foster care. And they recently received a $2,000 grant from the NEA to partner with an elementary school in Allen Park to fulfill a student and teacher “wish list” of supplies and resources. Shelide says these service projects are obviously about giving back. But they also provide a venue for visiting schools, networking with teachers and getting more practical experience working with kids.

For one of their recent service projects, members of Aspiring Educators made valentines for children in foster care. Photo by Serena Cowette

Of course, the group is also providing some much needed camaraderie. Teaching is not the easiest profession to be going into these days. It’s demanding and stressful, the pay isn’t great and the hyper-partisan politics in America have spoiled some of the trust that used to exist between parents, teachers and students. With all of those challenges, Shelide says you have to really want to do it, and having a solid group of people around you who have similar worries and aspirations helps a lot. “My mom was a teacher and she had such a great group of friends at her school and I always kind of hoped I’d have the same thing — like, the people you go to chat with after the bell rings,” Shelide says. “With this club, I’ve met a bunch of great friends. Really, Kamryn’s probably like, ‘Can this girl stop texting me?’ So to be able to share your excitement — or if you need to complain about something — it’s just been so nice to have this group to rely on.”

Burke is excited to see the group is taking root. Student clubs can be hard to maintain long term, and he says the college has had a few iterations of student groups for pre-service teachers over the years. But those were all organized by faculty and failed to gain enough traction with students. “I think that’s the main reason you’re seeing a lot more success with this group. They have this core group of members and now they’re connecting with their classmates and friends, so you have this natural networking effect,” Burke says. “Plus, because it’s coming from them, they know what they need. We faculty have good intentions, but we can just kind of make guesses at it.”

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Story by Lou Blouin. If you want to learn more about the club, email McKenna Shelide.

Campus Life

Volunteer or Community Service

College of Education, Health, and Human Services

Education

Off

Wed, 03/19/2025 - 11:25

��-Dearborn’s education students have a new group for peer support, professional development and community service.

Kamryn McCutcheon (right) and McKenna Shelide helped launch the Aspiring Educators club, the first student organization ��-Dearborn has had for education students in a number of years. Photo by Annie Barker

News

Dearborn Wolverines spend their spring break giving back

stuxbury — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 14:48:52 +0000

Dearborn Wolverines spend their spring break giving back stuxbury Wed, 03/12/2025 - 10:48

For many, spring break is a time to relax, reflect and get ready for the second half of the semester. But for a group of ��-Dearborn students, it is an opportunity to help others.

Through the university’s annual Alternative Spring Break, interested Dearborn Wolverines joined one of two service groups — volunteering their time with the Cincinnati Homeless Coalition in Ohio or locally in Detroit. Civic Engagement Coordinator JaNai' James led the Detroit-based group, partnering for the second year in a row with Camp Restore, a local organization that coordinates volunteers to address community needs. ASB has been a part of ��-Dearborn student life for more than 15 years.

During this year’s week of service from March 1-7, photographer Annie Barker documented the student-volunteer experience with the Detroit-based ASB program. Students completed a neighborhood-mapping project, where they collected data on abandoned and damaged homes that will be used to plan neighborhood revitalization projects. Volunteers also connected with the community organization Delray Neighborhood House to sort and deliver donations for families affected by recent severe flooding in the neighborhood.

At the Delray Neighborhood House, ��-Dearborn volunteers package donations for residents affected by a recent ﬂood. In late February, a broken water main ﬂooded dozens of homes. Repairs to the area are ongoing.

Residents filled out request forms — here’s one from a family in need.

Syeda Muntaha, left, and Zaynab Al‑Akraa seal a donation box with items that a family requested.

Muntaha, left, and Kalaia Jackson organize donations in the back of the delivery van.

James navigates through Detroit neighborhoods to bring boxes to the residents affected by the flood.

From left, Al‑Akraa, Jackson and Muntaha deliver donations to people in need.

Photo story by Annie Barker

Volunteer or Community Service

Off

Wed, 03/12/2025 - 14:47

Alternative Spring Break connects student volunteers with community-based projects through a week of service.

��-Dearborn Civic Engagement Coordinator JaNai’ James, seated, and students, standing from left, Kalaia Jackson, Syeda Muntaha and Zaynab Al‑Akraa, pose for a photo in between deliveries to Detroit residents affected by a severe flood.

News

Connecting campus with community

stuxbury — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 19:00:20 +0000

Connecting campus with community stuxbury Mon, 10/23/2023 - 15:00

When Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Lei Chen wanted to explore pursuing a National Science Foundation funding opportunity with the nonprofit Code 313, ��-Dearborn’s Office of Community-Engaged Learning helped him establish a relationship with the Detroit-based STEAM education organization.

When Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Amanda Esquivel drafted a proposal to the National Science Foundation Research Experience for Teachers, OCEL helped her secure letters of support from local schools.

And when Assistant Professor of Human Services Finn Bell was planning a practice-based learning course on program planning, implementation and evaluation, OCEL staff helped him connect to community partners, including ACCESS and the City of Dearborn Public Health Department. OCEL then met with Bell and the partners over the summer and also led a discussion with Bell’s class on best practices for working in local communities and assuring mutual benefit.

If you feel like you’ve just started hearing about the Office of Community Engaged Learning, you’re right. Until recently, it was known as the Office of Metropolitan Impact. The new name reflects a decade of evolution and a refined focus, says Molly Manley, OCEL’s outreach and engagement specialist.

“When we were founded, our charge was to figure out how to engage in and with the community – what are the best practices and what should we be focusing on? And it was kind of up to us to figure it out,” says Manley, a ��-Dearborn alum who has worked in the office since it formed in 2011, beginning as an AmeriCorps staff member. The first few years were spent streamlining community outreach efforts across the university, working to develop a common perspective on ��-Dearborn’s approach to community work, and securing the Carnegie Foundation’s Community Engagement classification, which is regarded by many as the highest form of recognition for community engagement among colleges and universities in the U.S. ��-Dearborn was awarded the classification in 2015 and is currently preparing for reclassification in 2026.

Historically, both in metro Detroit and nationwide, many community members working with their local universities have raised concerns that research and community-based projects were not developed in concert with residents or did not have tangible benefits for them, Manley explains. “We’re there to make sure when we have a project we want to do, it’s in partnership with the community and we’re willing to make adjustments and compromises to make sure not only are community needs being met, but our students and our faculty are also able to meet their needs,” she says.

OCEL had to try different things in order to land on the approach to community-engaged work that was right for the ��-Dearborn campus, Manley explains. In January 2022, OCEL was moved to the Provost’s Office. After a summer of strategic planning, Manley and Elspeth Muzzin, OCEL’s engagement strategist, workshopped the office’s new name and identified focus areas for their work. One of those involves supporting student success by increasing the number of PBL courses and engaged-research opportunities, as well as continuing to support internships and student employment. Another is supporting faculty research and service. This includes working closely with faculty who are doing community-based work and providing professional development on community-engaged practices. OCEL’s goal is to ease the burden on faculty and make it easier for them to focus on the “learning” portion of practice-based learning.

“Our philosophy is that we can go into the classroom, and we can help show the students how to engage with partners in the best way and help ensure they learn about how to begin and maintain relationships, reflect on community perspective and recognize that community members and organizations are experts in understanding their communities and their neighborhoods’ needs best. Then the faculty can trust the students to manage that relationship,” Manley explains.

The end goal is making projects and coursework even more meaningful. “Instead of just managing logistics and managing projects, faculty can actually help students with their content, and the expertise area that they're teaching them,” Manley explains.

Manley and Muzzin are also in the process of developing online tools. They are working on a Canvas-based toolkit with helpful resources. “It's set up like a professional development course,” Manley explains. “There's modules with different topics. And it's all focused on community engagement, engaging for research, engaging for coursework. We have things in here to help faculty with troubleshooting, to help them with planning.” They are also building out a robust database, known as Collaboratory, for tracking community-engaged projects, with the goal to enhance knowledge of what is happening across campus and spur greater collaboration within and across disciplines.

OCEL will continue to work closely with other units on campus as well, including helping all departments and units with the community engagement sections of grant proposals. They will be deepening their partnership with the Environmental Interpretive Center, which is now also housed in the Provost’s Office. At the same time, OCEL is handing over some previous responsibilities in the interest of not duplicating efforts. For example, Enrollment Management will now be the go-to unit for K-12 partnerships. For business and industry connections, that’s Institutional Advancement.

Even with all these resources, Manley and Muzzin recognize sometimes faculty will just need some face time. Faculty are welcome to set up an appointment with either one of the staff or attend one of their office hours. “Every situation is different,” Manley acknowledges. “We're always available for one-on-one consulting.”

Article by Kristin Palm

Volunteer or Community Service

Provost

Off

Mon, 10/23/2023 - 18:59

The Office of Community-Engaged Learning, formerly OMI, is refocusing its efforts, with an emphasis on supporting faculty in practice-based work.

OCEL staff Molly Manley, left, and Elspeth Muzzin are ready to assist with community-engaged projects. They can meet virtually or at their office in the Mardigian Library’s Ford Collaboratory. Photo/Preston Welborne

News

One sweet campus tradition: Making Michigan maple syrup

stuxbury — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 17:46:15 +0000

One sweet campus tradition: Making Michigan maple syrup stuxbury Wed, 02/15/2023 - 12:46

A squirrel ran across a maple tree’s large branch, stopped near the end and plopped down for a snack. Its nibble of choice? The maple tree’s leaf buds. Most people might not notice an animal grabbing a bite to eat in the tree canopy. But ��-Dearborn’s Environmental Study Area Program Manager Rick Simek has a sense about these things.

Sitting at an outdoor picnic table, Simek said he’s unsure of the impact this year’s warmer Michigan winter will have on the trees’ sap production. Simek then paused and then squinted to get a better look at movement in the trees. “Some animals have sweet tooths, just like we do. That squirrel is eating the maple buds. If the squirrel thinks those are pretty tasty, that’s a good sign,” Simek said. “It tells us that the sap is moving around in the tree and it’s time to tap.”

That’s an especially good thing for ��-Dearborn’s long-standing campus maple syrup collecting tradition. On Saturday, Feb. 18, community members are invited to help the university’s Environmental Interpretive Center staff tap 50 maples to begin the sap collection process. Volunteers can also help hang sap buckets — basically round tin structures with a bent lid — on the trees too. Interested in the all-ages event? Sign up.

“We enjoy sharing this beautiful part of our campus with the public to experience traditional seasonal activities that go back a long, long time in our part of the world,” Simek said. In addition to the tapping activity, Simek said people will learn how to identify non-leafed sugar and black maple trees and other distinguishing characteristics about maples. They’ll also hear about the maple syrup-making process and its history on the land.

Here’s a taste of information volunteers will get at Saturday’s program.

In this 1980s photo, Cathy (Schmidt) Bean, '84, and then EIC Program Manager Mike Hayes, '78, make maple syrup on campus.

Maple syrup collecting officially started as a campus community event in 1984. But the trees were tapped to make syrup years prior to that.

Simek: “We are lucky to live in an area where the climate is just right for tapping maple trees and making syrup and we have many sugar and black maple trees on campus. We do 50 trees each year and are careful not to over tap them — that’s why we rotate every few years or so.

We know there was a forest of maples by the Henry Ford Estate that Henry tapped for syrup right after he and Clara bought the land in 1908. Maple syrup making is mentioned in a 1911 book by Jefferson Butler, who did bird surveying for the Fords. He said how much he enjoyed watching the process. Some of those original maples that the Fords tapped are still there, but most are newer. They are descendants of the Ford’s sugar bush (that’s what we call a group of maple trees used for maple syrup).

Of course, Indigenous people on the land tapped trees for the sap hundreds of years prior to that. We don’t have an exact record to point to, but we know maple syrup is distinctly North American and that Indigenous peoples were using it as a staple food when the Europeans arrived.”

EIC staff member Rick Simek, right, pours maple sap into the outdoor kitchen as children watch the maple syrup making process.

If you want to grow your own sugar bush, you need to plan ahead.

Simek: ““The adage goes that people who plant trees are working for their children and grandchildren. That is certainly true with sugar maples and black maples. If you plant saplings this year it would be 40 to 50 years before the trees were big enough to tap — and about 100 years before they were big enough for two buckets.

I don’t ever want to discourage anyone from planting a tree, but people should know it’s a natural process that takes a bit of time, just like many of life’s best things. So you won’t be able to collect your own sap anytime soon.

That’s why we invite people to come do this with us. We want people and families to have this experience. It will go beyond February 18 too. For two or so weeks after our tree-tapping event, we invite volunteers to help us collect the sap. We do collection around 4 p.m. daily, depending on conditions. That’s where we bring the buckets from the trees to where our sap chefs will later turn it into syrup. Sample tastes of syrup are available to anyone who drops by our syrup kitchen while it's being prepared.” Want to help empty sap buckets? If you are interested in joining a volunteer corps for a hike out to the sugar bush, please let the EIC staff know on this form.

The syrup will be available to buy in March.

Simek: “We cannot just take our pancakes up to a tree and top them with syrup. It takes 35 to 40 gallons of sap from sugar maples or black maples to make one gallon of maple syrup.

That’s because it’s mostly water — and like 2-to-4% sugar. The sap is like water that tastes just a little bit sweet. When we boil it in our outdoor kitchen, which removes the water through evaporation, we get a natural treat: yummy syrup. On average, we collect 480 to 500 gallons of sap — which is about 12 gallons of syrup. We then bottle it in small containers (250ml) to sell. When it’s ready, an order form will be available on the EIC website. I’m partial, but our syrup is really good stuff — and we know exactly where it comes from right down to the trees.”

Article by Sarah Tuxbury.

Nature or Environment

Volunteer or Community Service

Environmental Interpretive Center

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Wed, 02/15/2023 - 17:46

Dress for the weather — the forecast says 47 degrees and sunny — and come to ��-Dearborn on Saturday. You’re invited to take part in a favorite seasonal activity.

EIC staff member Rick Simek leads a maple tree tapping lesson to younger EIC explorers. During maple syrup season, approximately 1,000 children on school field trips visit the center. Photo by Sarah Tuxbury

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