Tufts is tapping its on-campus resources.
This year, students helped local children tap the maple trees on the Hill for syrup.
Led by Maisie Ganz, the "Somerville Maple Syrup Project" teaches local youth about connections between science and the surrounding environment.
The program, in its second year, has helped discuss classroom topics like the plant life cycle.
"The project has gained a lot of momentum," Ganz said. The undertaking involves a core group of around 20 Tufts students, including three who work as classroom teachers.
After attending one class in the fall, the Tufts students worked in three different classrooms for six to seven weeks in the spring.
According to Ganz, the goal was to give students a base of knowledge of general tree functions and how they change throughout the different seasons. "We cover a lot of basic tree biology," she said.
The first weeks of work in the spring consisted of classroom discussion about the trees and history lessons of syrup production in New England. How sap is turned into syrup was also discussed "in the context of evaporation," Ganz said.
According to volunteer Aaron Schutzengel, the discussions specifically focused on tree characteristics such as phloem, xylem and cambrium.
"We have a basic idea of what we want to cover, but our session could go [in] all directions," Ganz said. "There was a curriculum left over from three years ago, and last year we tweaked it to our liking."
Along with the classroom teaching, "we write poems and make songs and run around outside," Ganz said.
While sugar maples are traditionally used for syrup production, the Somerville project tapped all types of maple trees. "Our project is about teaching kids, not efficiency, so we tap all," Ganz said. The group tapped the majority of its trees on the Tufts campus, but also removed sap from scattered trees around Somerville.
In the end, Somerville youths and their Tufts mentors boiled down sap to produce 11 gallons of syrup. According to Ganz, about 40 to 50 gallons of sap can be turned into one gallon of syrup.
The 11 gallons of syrup collected were distributed to Tufts volunteers, who each received a small amount of syrup, and to all of the classrooms for the kids to have pancakes.
Leftover syrup was donated to local food assistance and homeless shelters.
Ganz began the project because she was "seeking to create a link between [Tufts] and the Somerville Growing Center," she said. "This year, I wanted to follow up on it."
The Maple Syrup project offered an internship this year to Lauren Fisher, who worked to obtain a $750 University College grant for the project. "We used it to pay our teachers and keep the project sustainable," Ganz said.
According to Ganz, the project will likely take place again next academic year. "I think I'm stuck, in a good way," she said.
