Some colleges have professors lecturing to hundreds of students in huge auditoriums. By contrast, delivering experiential hands-on learning—the Stockbridge specialty—requires smaller class sizes so that all students can participate and get the full attention they deserve. So, when a small pocket of Sustainable Food & Farming students nominated Stockbridge’ Sarah Berquist a teaching award in 8 different years, the University took special note.
Berquist is one of just five UMass professors to receive a 2024-25 Faculty Distinguished Teaching Award. The award demonstrates exemplary teaching at the highest level.
Professor Sarah Berquist has built her identity around commitments to deep teaching, contemplative learning, and connecting students to opportunities for community engagement. A former fellow in the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) that bestowed the award, she was previously part of their program Teaching for Inclusiveness, Diversity and Equity (TIDE) and is currently a member of their Contemplative Pedagogy Working Group. In the last few years, she has been recognized by the Provost’s Distinguished Community Engagement Award for Teaching, as well as an Outstanding Advisor award.
This new award also marks her 10th year of teaching at Stockbridge, before which she was a student at the Stockbridge School, earning her bachelor’s degree, and then her M.S. in Sustainability Science and Agriculture Education. Today she is the Chief Advisor and Coordinator for the Sustainable Food & Farming major at Stockbridge, while continuing to embody the qualities of a lifelong learner.
Why Students Love Sarah Berquist
Stockbridge students light up at the mention of Sarah’s name. In nominating her for the award, several anonymously sang her praises.
According to one, “Sarah demonstrates a desire to learn and grow from the classes she teaches as much as her students do.” Her teaching style “seamlessly integrates academic content with hands-on, real-world experiences and personalized mentoring,” claims another.
“She’s my favorite professor because she offers space for each student to consider their own learning journey and how they could implement class lessons, both academic and personal, in their futures,” raves a third.
While Berquist was selected as a finalist by prior winners of the Distinguished Teaching Award, it’s the fact that her students nominated her that means the most. “I’m grateful for the opportunity to reflect on my teaching, and to behold my own growth, including deepened clarity about the skills and competencies I want to grow in my students through my teaching.”
Teaching on the Ground—A Pedagogy for Challenging Times
Berquist’s teaching philosophy comes from the blend of experiences she had as a student, the scholars of education she’s studied, and her own use of experimental teaching methods in her classroom. She draws inspiration from a long list of scholars, teachers, educators, farmers, and activists, including bell hooks, Gregory Cajete, Leah Penniman, Eileen Muir, and Vanessa Andreotti.
She also cites the influences of her colleagues on campus, including Katja Hanh D’Errico from Community-Engaged Service Learning, Lena Fletcher from Natural Resource Conservation, and Brian Baldi of CTL. From Stockbridge, “John Gerber has been one of my greatest inspirations,” she declares.
“John’s approach to teaching and mentoring is student-centered, integrated with the ‘real world’ and he encourages and creates opportunities for students to bring their ‘whole selves’ to their learning, and to foster rich and meaningful connections,” she explains.
Gerber is a prior recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award in 2007. Berquist credits his style as a major influence on her own ability to plan solid curricula while also taking risks with how to teach it best by deeply listening to her students and letting them lead.
“For me, teaching is an immensely creative and vulnerable practice,” explains Berquist. “I care about the four-year arc of my students’ competency development.”
That caring begins with planning the curricula of courses and how they will interconnect to form a comprehensive major. In her own words, the learning objectives and projects in her classes enable students to grow “tangible skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, entrepreneurship, beholding and articulating complexity, and systems thinking” while becoming fluent in science applied to crop production.
Creating New Educational Paths and Community Partnerships
In her 10 years of teaching, Berquist has created (and co-created) a whopping 11 courses, both on-campus and online, as well as 3 immersive community-engaged internships and practica experiences. She also collaborated on a curricular re-design of the Sustainable Food & Farming bachelor’s degree program. For Berquist, these assignments have offered her “a unique opportunity to design and implement an instructional vision that fosters connection.”
“I’m committed to offering experiential education centered on community engagement,” Berquist explains. “This approach includes facilitating opportunities for students to connect with each other through collaboration in small group work and projects that directly engage them in both our campus and local community.” Outcomes that connect with existing communities take significant planning that builds slowly over time.
A partnership with Amherst Elementary School Gardens began 8 years ago in 2017. As a result, students in her Agricultural Leadership & Community Education course today are writing and teaching a garden-based science curriculum to children from kindergarten to grade six. Berquist sponsors an internship opportunity, enabling a few students to design and lead lessons at Amherst Elementary for a semester or more, while also supporting the maintenance of the garden sites created on school grounds.
“We are so grateful for the opportunity, through our garden-based learning internship, to work and learn with UMass students who have each enriched the School Garden Program in unique ways.” said Jennifer Reese, Science & Garden Coordinator at Amherst Elementary.
Last year, Amherst Elementary was recognized by the university with a Distinguished Community Partner award.
A New Sustainable Career Path in Floral Production and Design
A very exciting addition to the Stockbridge catalog is Berquist’s revival of our course in Retail Floral Design, recently featured in UMass magazine. In an unusual approach for a college professor, she collaborated with a few dedicated students to revitalize and rebrand the course as “an experimental experiential educational enterprise.”
“In my farmer-florist courses, we are collaboratively running a real campus business together!” says Berquist with a big smile.
Running a business as part of their class gives students real-world entrepreneurial opportunities to problem-solve, innovate, and co-create in the field of farmer-floristry. “Students sustainably grow, design, and market floral arrangements to the campus community through weekly farmers’ markets and other events.”
Berquist has added community engagement to the floral design course by forming an intentional relationship with Slow Flowers Society, a movement of farmer-florists in North America and beyond who advance sustainability in all partsof the floral industries. She makes additional efforts to produce her own podcast series, conducting audio interviews with diverse industry professionals to widen student awareness of leaders in the field. As a result, her students now collaborate with a network of professional floral producers and distributors, offering them additional career pathways after Stockbridge.
In September of 2024, the Retail Floral Design course was featured in the organization’s video podcast. In Spring 2025, her students designed a series of botanical couture scenes as part of the American Flowers Week campaign. Their work is featured in a just released summer issue of the Slow Flowers Journal. This will be a great piece to show to their future employers.
The Challenges & Rewards of Experimental Teaching and Learning
Not every university is willing or able to spend resources on preserving small class sizes to make experiential education successful. But receiving the Distinguished Teaching Award helps to assure Berquist that UMass Amherst does indeed recognize the value of her work. “My approach to teaching is undoubtedly more demanding than pure lecturing, admits Berquist. “It requires many ‘contact hours’ working alongside students in the field and doing outreach to coordinate with community partners.” While large general education courses consistently have higher enrollments,
Experiential courses like these undoubtedly yield a depth of skill development that students consistently report as effective across their twice-annual course evaluations.
Through course projects like microteaching lessons, portfolio creation, practice hours, and reflection, students practice communication, inclusive leadership, peer feedback, and entrepreneurship.
The real rewards for her work are clearly visible to those who witness her students in action. “I can see students embodying the teachings when I observe them lead others in real time,” she explains, “teaching elementary school students in garden-based science lessons, or leading each other on the farm or in class.”
“I feel more alive and connected when teaching this way,” Berquist admits, “The contiguous passion that flows between my students and I, and with our community, is what keeps me committed to this engaged pedagogy.”
The Stockbridge School has always hosted a faculty dedicated to experiential learning: providing students opportunities to get their hands in the soil, work meaningfully with classmates, pursue innovative and collaborative interdisciplinary projects, and engaging in our local communities. We are thrilled that Professor Sarah Berquist has been recognized by the university for her exceptional work developing new pathways for both education and career-building.