Student Jobs
The Center for Agroecology employs dozens of UC Santa Cruz students each year in a variety of roles across our sites, programs, and operations. In addition to providing wages to student employees, we also offer professional and leadership development opportunities.
Center for Agroecology student employment and leadership development opportunities
Student employees work on the campus farm, Chadwick Garden, Cowell Coffee Shop, and produce stands; in administrative and outreach roles; and in program development. Our Leadership Development Program involves providing student staff with professional development opportunities and increasing levels of responsibilities for longer-term student employees, including opportunities to instruct and mentor interns and more recently-hired students.
Land-based positions
Land-based student employees help maintain the campus farm and Alan Chadwick Garden, grow and harvest crops for campus farm stands and food pantries, and support land-based research. Many of our land-based students are based at one of the following sites:
Current job openings
Current student job openings are posted on Handshake, UC Santa Cruz’s student job posting platform. A Handshake account is required to view our current student job openings. To learn more about Handshake and how to create an account, visit the Career Center website.
- The UCSC Farm Garden, a small-scale, hand-worked garden in the center of the farm that focuses on growing flowers and specialty crops and producing seedlings
- The UCSC Farm Field Site, a 10-acre, tractor-cultivated portion of the farm that focuses on growing crops for Basic Needs Programs including food pantries
- The Alan Chadwick Garden, a 3-acre garden specializing in growing ornamentals, annual and perennial food crops, fruit trees, and native California species
We also employ students who steward the Black Lives Matter Garden and the Community Herb Garden, both located on the UCSC Farm. These gardens both aim to create safe spaces for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) students through connecting with the land and working with traditional herbs and other plants. In addition to site-based employment opportunities, students also support land-based research, facility maintenance, and pest control across all sites.
Produce distribution
Student employees run our produce stands, including the Produce Pop-Up during the academic year and our Farmstand during the summer. These students help source organic produce from the campus farm, gardens, and the local Farmer’s Market and help support a more food secure campus by selling it at a reduced price to students and others. Student employees also help distribute produce grown on the campus farm to campus food pantries and the non-transactional Cowell Coffee Shop.
Cowell Coffee Shop
Student employees prepare food and serve it for free to their peers at the non-transactional Cowell Coffee Shop, a cafe designed to increase food security for students. Cowell Coffee Shop students also help plan and support events that center connecting through food, and they mentor interns based at the coffee shop.
Food Systems Working Group (FSWG)
FSWG is a student-led organization that works to bring sustainably-grown food produced by socially responsible operations to campus dining halls and, through a collaborative process, promote education and awareness of our food system. FSWG positions include co-chairs who plan and run events and other initiatives, and Real Food Calculator team members who investigate and analyze UCSC Dining purchases and researches and proposes alternatives to big-ticket food items that don’t currently meet sustainability standards.
Education equity
Education Equity Team students work to improve equity in the agroecology major. These students survey fellow students majoring in agroecology and use survey results to guide recommendations to faculty and staff for increasing equity, building belonging, and making the atmosphere more welcoming to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) students.
Event, administrative, and outreach support
Student employees support events hosted at our sites and administrative work, as well as outreach efforts including social media management.