Jack Seitz ’05 is a real instance of the interdepartmental targets of the Faculty Farm. This historical past main’s expertise with farming within the Faculty Backyard (earlier than it turned the Faculty Farm) helped information his path to a Fulbright fellowship, Grasp’s diploma in Central Eurasian Research, and Doctoral dissertation on agriculture within the Kazakh steppe.
Jack labored within the Faculty Backyard for 2 tutorial years and one summer season of his Dickinson expertise. In true Faculty Farm style, Jack was bribed into his first farming place by a good friend who provided recent produce after frisbee observe. Jack fondly remembers many antics on the farm, together with a mishap with a professor and a few useless rabbits. Maybe most significantly, conversations about meals and agriculture within the Backyard’s beat-up ’78 Chevy Silverado began Jack on a path of deep thought of agricultural observe that has taken him from West Virginia to Kazakhstan.
Instantly after commencement, Jack gained a Fulbright Fellowship to Kazakhstan to analysis the Virgin Lands Marketing campaign, which was a mission undertaken within the Nineteen Fifties by the Soviet Union to plow up “virgin” steppe in Kazakhstan and plant wheat. After his Fulbright, Jack moved to his grandparents’ small farm in York County, PA and began a Licensed Naturally Grown vegetable truck with two different DCF alums.
Nonetheless, Jack was not content material with collaborating within the present meals system in Pennsylvania. As an alternative, he wished to advertise meals safety. So, Jack moved to the coalfields of Southern West Virginia to work with a non-profit that helps low-income communities entry produce. Whereas there, he helped set up farmers markets, train youth, and create an illustration farm.
Whereas sustaining this busy work schedule in West Virginia, Jack earned acceptance to an M.A. program in Central Eurasian Research at Indiana College. He deferred this system for a couple of years to proceed working in West Virginia, however finally moved to Indiana. When not finding out Central Asian historical past, languages, and tradition, Jack volunteered on the Indiana College faculty backyard. He then enrolled in a PhD program at Iowa State College specializing in agricultural and rural historical past. Jack’s dissertation drew upon his Fulbright analysis, discussing the function of agricultural science, peasant farmers, and agronomists within the Russian Empire’s settler colonization. It additionally connects Kazakhstan to different semi-arid areas, together with the North American plains.
Jack is now an Assistant Professor of Historical past at Tennessee Wesleyan College. His distinctive background within the fields of historical past, agriculture, and politics creates fascinating alternatives for him to discover typically disregarded points like environmental historical past, settler colonialism, erasure of individuals of shade, and problematic capitalism within the meals system, in his courses.
Dwelling in East Tennessee, Jack is completely happy he’s in a position to have an enormous backyard with fruit bushes and blueberry bushes and get up to the view of the Smoky Mountains daily, however he realizes how tough studying about place, and dwelling and proudly owning what is actually stolen land, will be.
Jack remembers the Faculty Backyard because the spark that helped him notice that farming is about extra than simply the great thing about the land; it requires asking tough questions on energy constructions and relationships with meals. Within the midst of his pursuit of high-level, systemic change, Jack maintains empathy and respect for the difficulties of farming. He credit this empathy to his time engaged on his personal farm and within the Dickinson Faculty Backyard.
When he’s not being (in his personal phrases) “an ornery critic of our agricultural system,” Jack performs the banjo and enjoys singing round a campfire together with his pals.
The Faculty Farm is proud to be represented by alumni like Jack, who’re working to deal with big-picture points within the meals system. We applaud his wonderful work to this point and are excited to see the place his analysis will take him subsequent!
