Click to enlarge Jeb Wallace – Brodeur Laken Vance
After 13 years of being based near downtown Montpelier, the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism needed room to grow, literally. This non-profit clinical herbalism organization uses the garden to both educate students and grow products for dispensaries. VCIH leaders realized they wanted quieter outdoor space and more easily accessible lots. As it turned out, a prime location with a longtime partner was just a few miles away on Goddard College's rural Plainfield campus.
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Founded in 2007, VCIH offers a sliding scale herbal medicine clinic, community classes, and a comprehensive herbalist training program. Long-term educational programs include the entry-level Herbal Roots Apprenticeship, the intermediate Family Herbalist Program, and the three-year Clinical Herbalist Program. All of these programs include hands-on learning.
“As herbalists, we often teach outdoors, and it can be very difficult to teach outdoors and have students listen to us and feel a little contained. ” executive director Laken Vance told Seven Days. VCIH's old campus is located up the hill from downtown Montpelier.
In June, VCIH moved to Goddard, where it is “surrounded by nature,” Vance said. Plants from Montpelier Gardens (likely perennials such as echinacea, the flowering vetch, and the shrub Eleuthero, also known as Siberian ginseng) travel about 8 miles to Plainfield in the fall with the help of local communities. You will be doing this.
Some of the attributes that attracted Vance to the new location were the flat land (more convenient than Montpelier's hillside site), improved accessibility for those with mobility issues, and the location right outside the classroom building. A garden space (formerly Goddard dormitory). Vance, a Goddard College alumnus and former faculty member, said the organization received a grant to renovate an old greenhouse into a drying space for harvest.
In addition to its natural features, Goddard's approach to education was also a selling point for VCIH. For nearly a decade, the two institutions have shared a memorandum of understanding that allows VCIH graduates to transfer credits toward a Goddard bachelor's degree. Conversely, Goddard undergraduate and graduate students majoring in subjects such as permaculture, sustainable living, and health arts and sciences can count their studies at VCIH as part of their individual study track.
The same-campus tenants were welcome because Goddard is a low-residency school where students spend 10 days on campus each semester and complete the remainder of their classes remotely. “We believe that leaving these buildings dormant is an irresponsible or inappropriate use of our resources,” said Bernard Bull, president of Goddard. “We could use the building to serve the larger community in the central area.” And help Goddard bring in additional revenue to support its mission. ”
Bull added that host organizations such as VCIH are helping keep Goddard afloat at a time when many higher education institutions are struggling. “It's not the solution, but it's certainly part of our vision for future fiscal strength and stability,” he said.
VCIH joins Earthwalk Vermont, a nonprofit nature education organization, as the lessor of the Goddard campus. The two are also partners in the university's Village for Learning Initiative. The plan is to invite like-minded organizations to make the most of underutilized campus space and collaborate on projects, events, and programming.
For now, the initiative “exists somewhere in our hearts, in our heads, and on paper,” Vance joked. The ball hasn't gotten rolling yet, as VCIH is still in the middle of a transition, Earthwalk is on hiatus due to COVID-19, and the public health crisis has wreaked havoc on traditional procedures and schedules.
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Jeb Wallace-brodeur A recent outdoor class at the Vermont Integrative Herbology Center in Plainfield.
While Vance is looking forward to collaborating with Earthwalk and Goddard, her current focus is on current students and new students. In the era of coronavirus, that means offering distance learning. VCIH pivoted to remote instruction for the first time in her March and plans to continue offering that option, even though it has been committed to in-person instruction for years.
“We are all classroom teachers,” Vance explained. “We are all people who love working directly with students, the practical aspects of herbal medicine, and the person-to-person aspects of clinical work.”
Still, she recognizes the benefits of distance learning for students. First, people who cannot relocate to Vermont can now access her VCIH program from afar. And those students are stocking up on telemedicine skills.
“Telehealth, frankly, is going to be something that we all need to focus on for the foreseeable future,” Vance said. . ”
In a typical year, distance learners are required to attend three in-person intensive lectures. However, depending on the public health situation, they may also be held online in 2021. “Then, hopefully in 2022 and beyond, we'll definitely be able to get everyone together for these intensive lectures,” Vance said, continuing. Online instruction will be provided until the end of the year.
Downtown Montpelier may seem to offer students access to jobs, housing, and tourist attractions, but Vance said once he experiences the new campus, he is daunted by the rural location of Plainfield. I'm sure that won't happen.
“I felt like there was very little good and a lot of bad,” Vance said of the Capital City campus. Noise and trespassing were problems there, she recalled, and her cost of living was high. “There are plenty of benefits. [of being in Plainfield]And I hope people feel the resonance and harmony that our school is on an old farm campus in the countryside,” she said.
Vance estimates that only five or six other programs in the country offer the rigorous clinical training that VCIH students receive. As a result, the program attracts applicants from all over the United States. Vance said the bond that unites the students is an understanding of herbal medicine as something bigger than personal medicine.
“We believe that herbal medicine has the power not only to heal individuals, but also to address broader dysfunctions in our culture, which at its core is a deep disconnect from nature,” VCIH's website states. ing.
Building on that idea, Vance says: [knowledge] And making a difference in the world is a value Goddard shares. ”
