The Fueled Project

FUELED is a collaborative, student run project focused on bringing fresh, local food to JMU students and business to the Harrisonburg community through an expansion of connectivity and experimental growth.

(See the JMU Fueled Project on the JMU website.)

Fueled is the brain child of JMU alum Amanda Presgraves ('16). She brought her passion for health, for food, and for the environment to the JMU College of Business Venture Creation class in the fall of 2014. JMU was about to tear down the aging D-Hall, and Aramark, JMU's food service provider, was in need of some temporary, portable dining alternatives that could take its place. The business plan developed by Amanda's team won 1st place in the pitch competition, and Aramark agreed to fund it to the tune of over $200,000 for the actual food truck plus hundreds of hours of expertise and labor.

This is more than a food truck.

The truck was designed from the beginning as a "living lab" where students could study anything and everything from alternative energy, to environmental footprint, to how to run a small, food truck business, to health, to marketing, and anything else that could be imagined.

Amanda recruited two professors: Mark Gabriele from the Biology Department, and myself. She asked us to imagine what a "Fueled class" would look like. We partnered with Nick Swayne, Director of 4VA and the JMU XLabs and ran the first class in the spring of 2017.

Five interdisciplinary project teams emerged from the class:

• Fueled Website and Social Media strategy
• A JMU Garden project to supply food to the truck
• A team to build a relationship with Local Food Hub
• A team that sought to put solar panels on the truck
• A team that sought to use wind energy to power the truck

Of these five teams, the first three were successful. We have a website. We have a student-run garden. We have a relationship with Local Food Hub and are making plans to increase the quantity of food that comes from local sources. The other two teams were hampered by red tape and the challenges of building structures on campus. They have left excellent documentation so that future teams can pick up where they left off.

Morgan's Role in Fueled

Amanda and I met when she came on the study abroad trip to the Philippines with me in Summer 2014. She took my introductory programming class in Spring 2015, and it was during that semester that I spent a great deal of time working with her on the early plans for the truck. I co-organized and ran the first iteration of the Fueled class that ran in the XLabs in the Spring 2017 semester.