As students work intently on a project together at GreenHouse, conversation stops. The room is filled with the sound of sanding while four pairs of hands put a smooth finish on a sleek form, to give a Northern white cedar tree a second life — as a canoe.
Several thousand tacks and dozens of hours later, what began as an idea for a class project is now a 15-foot, traditional cedar and canvas craft that UVM students have built and soon will navigate on Lake Champlain.
“Canoes in the Northeast have historically been important. I thought actually building something would be a good hands-on way for students to get involved,” says sophomore environmental studies major Patrick Coppinger, who initiated the project. “It has been a learning process throughout the whole thing. Working on this canoe and knowing the materials are local and that it will be used in this area in the future is really cool.”
Ecological design “collaboratory”
Hands-on learning is key to the teaching model at GreenHouse, one of UVM’s residential learning communities, which provides environmentally-themed programming for students in any major.
The canoe project, with nine students involved, reflects the evolution of GreenHouse into an ecological design “collaboratory,” a design-build laboratory for students across the university interested in collaborations. Ecological design uses natural systems to address environmental issues. That expands on the original GreenHouse focus of place-based learning through exploring the local landscape and ecology.
“We’ve always used a sense of place and ecological literacy as our educational themes. Having students engage in the places where they live in a participatory way is the genesis of the collaboratory piece,” says Walter Poleman, a senior lecturer at the Rubenstein School and GreenHouse faculty director. “It’s a theme that resonates with students. They want to learn how to do and make things. We’re making sure that higher education at a research university provides those opportunities.”
Through its connection with the tradition and culture of the area, the use of local materials and a local mentor not connected to UVM — canoe builder Scott Barkdoll of Middlebury — the canoe project exemplifies ecological design.
Connecting with the environment and the community
The project is part of a class, Ecological Citizenship, a key theme at GreenHouse, located in the University Heights South residential complex.
“Students develop skills to contribute to a community in alignment with ecological values, constraints and opportunities, to be involved with helping a community live well in its place,” Poleman says.
The canoe project has reinforced that concept.
“A handmade canoe is one of the best ways to connect to the environment around you. Any time you work with your hands, you’re learning more about yourself and the environment,” junior computer science major Fletcher Hazlehurst says.
Building a beautiful canoe
The cedar for the canoe came from a damaged, century-old tree near the Lake Champlain shoreline at Shelburne Farms. With spruce from Dorset, Vt., students are making paddles they will keep. The canoe will remain at GreenHouse when not in use.
When students started building Feb. 4, most had little or no related experience. Barkdoll has guided them in using clinching irons, handsaws and other tools.
“We steamed the ribs and bent them over the mold. It was cool to see how you can manipulate wood to the form you want,” junior biology major Thomas O’Leary says. “I knew almost nothing about making a canoe…To actually build a canoe that looks beautiful has been fun.”
“Making paddles is an individual experience. You can work for a few hours on your own and sort of meditate,” Coppinger says. “You develop a deeper relationship with the product, having spent so many hours working on it.”
The value of hands-on learning
Developing a deeper relationship between students and what they learn is one aim of the collaboratory, which has received grants from the Henry David Thoreau Foundation. In another collaboratory project this academic year, students built a cider house/sugarhouse for Burlington High School. Other plans include constructing a mobile, energy-efficient “tiny house” for an educational artist’s studio and creating a greenhouse system and permaculture garden for Champlain Elementary School.
Providing skills-based learning through engagement with tradespeople and craftspeople like Barkdoll is an important collaboratory feature -- and students say it's the best part of the canoe project.
“To build a boat from start to finish has been a great experience. It’s time-consuming, but it’s a rewarding project, especially when we can take it out on the water,” Coppinger says.
In April, the transformed cedar will visit its roots when students guide the canoe along Lake Champlain to Shelburne Farms, gliding on the waterway that once sustained it.
“Even if I never canoe again, I’ll keep the paddle as a remembrance of the experience and something I built. It’s something to keep forever,” Hazlehurst says.
