Long before she was teaching sustainability and food security at PennWest, Dr. Sarah Bashore was a kid working in a family garden and imagining how to save the rainforest.

The dream may sound ambitious now, but the impulse was real. After being introduced to the Rainforest Alliance in high school, she decided she was going to “buy a Jeep, move to the Amazon, and singlehandedly save the rainforest.”

What followed was a deeper, more grounded version of that same mission. She went to college, studied broadly and realized that if she wanted to understand the environment, she needed to understand systems: plants, animals, microbes, food and people.

That systems-based thinking now shapes her work at PennWest California, where she connects teaching, research and service around sustainability, plant-microbe interactions and food security. Her background in microbiology and plant sciences helped open that path. In graduate school, she encountered research that linked the worlds she loved most, and it changed the way she saw science. As she explained, graduate school is where you begin “to contribute to science as opposed to just learning all of it.

“It’s both, and it really opened my eyes to all of these connections,” she said. That shift helped her see how knowledge becomes action.

Dr. Bashore brings that same spirit to students at PennWest through real-world learning and community engagement. Her work extends beyond the classroom into stewardship of campus resources and broader leadership in sustainability initiatives. She also plays an important role in the PASSHE Sustainability Council, where faculty and staff collaborate across institutions on environmental education, climate issues and student food access.

Sustainability, in Dr. Bashore’s view, has to be bigger than a single discipline. It is tied to ecosystems, social justice, business practices and human well-being.

“When we look at it together, we all have the same enemy, which is waste,” she said.

That perspective also informs her belief that food is not a privilege students should have to earn. Access matters, and so does building systems that support students fully.

Dr. Bashore’s work reflects what PennWest can look like at its best: practical, thoughtful and connected. In Dr. Bashore’s world, science is never isolated from people, and education is strongest when it helps students see how ideas, communities and the environment all grow together.