The Happy Little Trees

Hello, we are the Happy Little Trees! Our group is composed of four first-year students named Fay, Arial, Maddie, and Molly. We all enjoy shopping, hanging out with friends, and painting! Fay is doing a double major in Risk Management and Entrepreneurship. She loves to play volleyball, cook, and play with her dog. Maddie is majoring in Business marketing. She enjoys spending time with her family, boating and traveling. Arial is majoring in business marketing. She loves cats and being creative. Molly is undecided. She enjoys taking naps and painting and loves dogs.

Research

While figuring out our research topic, we aimed for a topic that is related to both teams’ service projects. After hearing the MSU students were focusing on composting, we decided to research the issue of food waste today in the United States and Russia. We worked with students from MSU to compare and contrast the food waste in the US and the food waste in Russia. We went further to investigate our own cafeteria right here at Penn State Berks, and conducted an interview with Head Chef, Joseph Ertel. After many zoom meetings with the MSU students and continuing our research, we created a narrated presentation summing up all of our findings and comparisons. 

Food Waste Research Presentation Link

Service

For our service project, we decided to paint ceiling tiles for the Southwest Middle School right in Reading. We worked with Shana Holler, head of their science department to plan on painting the tiles for the science hallways. We focused our painting on the environment and sustainability. We painted two tiles each and created paintings that would showcase the importance of our planet and conserve its unique beauty. It was very fun to create art while also educating such a young group of students at the middle school. We created a video showing our progress and experience with this portion of our project.

Service Project Video (Ceiling Tiles)

Outcome

As a whole, we all worked well together and enjoyed both portions of this project. Although finding the right times to meet with MSU students was difficult, we still enjoyed getting to speak with them and collaborate on this project. It was great to grasp a different perspective of the world and be able to work with international students. We worked hard on our paintings as well and hope the students at Southwest Middle School enjoy them and make an impact on their views of their environment. It was a great experience and we were very glad that through this experience we were able to make new friends!