Outback Farm named among top 40 college farms

The Outback Farm, a joint program of the Western Washington University Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies and the Associated Students of Western, was recently named one of the top 40 ranking college farms in America by CollegeRanker.com.

Farms were selected based on criteria including student involvement, hands-on experiences, volunteering opportunities and community outreach programs.

The farm, founded in 1972, is a five acre student-run site located at the south end of campus that teaches, develops and implements sustainable growing and land use methods in order to enrich the student body, the University and the Bellingham community.  

Jack Herring, dean of Fairhaven College, said that the ranking is due to the quality of the programming and the farm’s interaction with the community.

“The Outback Farm from its inception in the early 1970’s was student initiated,” Herring said. “Its had an organic student connection from its very foundational roots.”    

CollegeRanker.com’s mission is to research all factors of college life and present what it finds to potential college students to help them make a decision of where to attend school.

For more information about the Outback Farm, please visit http://www.wwu.edu/sustain/programs/outback/

File photo by Jon Bergman / WWU
File photo by Jon Bergman / WWU