Daisy Tenorio Receives 2025 Santa Rosa Garden Club Horticultural Scholarship
Daisy Tenorio Receives 2025 Santa Rosa Garden Club Horticultural Scholarship
Congratulations to the 2025 Santa Rosa Garden Club Horticultural Scholarship recipient – Daisy Tenorio.
Tenorio returned to SSU after an eight-year educational hiatus, switching her major from film to Environmental Studies, Geography, and Planning. She is also double minoring in Sustainability and Chicano/Latino Studies
“I felt a call to return and complete my degree,” Tenorio wrote in her application. Her new fields of study reflect her desire to pursue a career in “a field that I felt both passionate about and would benefit my community.”
“I am most curious about the Latinx communities' connection with both healthy, organic food security and sustainable agriculture practices,” wrote Tenorio. “My career goal is to work in a non-profit organization that helps minority communities that are interested in regenerative
Agriculture.”
Tenorio finds her course work engaging both academically and because it has helped her connect with practice and community engagement toward contributing to more equitable and sustainable communities.
It “has been both reinvigorating in going further with my studies and giving me a push
to get involved,” she wrote. “This has made me realize the importance of not only the academic learning in my courses, but also continuing conversations with those who are being affected directly by unsustainable practices, environmental injustice and food scarcity.”
Tenorio has volunteered with Redwood Empire Food Bank and its farm partnership, Farm to
Fight Hunger, which harvests vegetables. She also volunteers at the Sonoma State
Garden with the Plant Futures Initiative Club.
Though her local volunteer experiences have been rewarding, the demands of school have made it difficult for her to do more. She hopes the Garden Club Scholarship can help her find a more fulfilling balance.
“This scholarship would help ease my work hours so I can continue volunteering with Farm to Fight Hunger, and other places such as Bayer Farms’ programs like ‘Farming for Health’, as well as helping tend to a community garden plot,” Tenorio wrote.
The annual $2000 Santa Rosa Garden Club scholarship is administered through the Center for Environmental Inquiry and supports students in any discipline pursuing hands-on horticultural learning.