At its annual Freedom Fund Banquet, the Albion Branch of the NAACP honored Earth & Environment Professor Thom Wilch with their 2025 Community Service Award. The honor recognizes Wilch’s leadership as faculty director for the Center for Sustainability and the Environment (CSE), and the role CSE plays in supplying healthy food to the community.

“I was very surprised and humbled to be honored by the NAACP,” Wilch said of the recognition. “I share the award with the dozens of CSE student interns and volunteers who have dedicated many hundreds of hours to the student farm, the Albion Community Garden, and the Community Table of Albion. The students and I have benefited as much from developing relationships in the community as we have from growing and providing food.”

As CSE director, Wilch partnered with Americorps to create a unique summer internship program. Each growing season, up to six student interns work both the Student Farm and the Albion Community Gardens. Over the past four years, the Student Farm has provided 6,000 pounds of produce that was given away to residents of the greater Albion area.

“The community of Albion faces many challenges, not least among them is food security,” Wilch said. “Access to healthy food is a social justice and environmental justice issue that we are also working to change.”

Bob Dunklin, past president of Albion NAACP, noted the CSE’s role in the community garden’s success. “We’re proud of the community garden, but Thom and the students provide a lot of help,” Dunklin said. “Thom overwhelmingly deserves this honor. We didn’t want him to think his work had gone unnoticed.”

In addition to gardening, the CSE interns and members work on a range of sustainability projects, including meeting with city officials to plan the annual Community Day service event, involving well over 100 college and community members.

“The fundamental mission of CSE is to empower students to be social and environmental changemakers,” Wilch concluded. “In CSE we embrace the saying ‘Think global, act local.’ From my perspective, one of the goals is that Albion students will become engaged members of society. The experiential learning and community engagement we do in CSE move us all toward that goal.”