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Caltech Students Strike Oil - Olive Oil

Heard on NPR ...

California Institute of Technology sophomore Dvin Adalian and junior Ricky Jones, about their successful olive oil production, from olives collected from the campus's trees.hear more...

From LA Times
...In October, the ripening crop snagged the attention of students Ricky Jones and Dvin Adalian. They began an exercise that might date to Socrates' pupils in ancient Greece: whacking olive trees with a stick (in this case, a plastic pipe) and collecting what falls....

Heard on Campus
...Caltech students and grounds maintenance crews got a lesson in olive cultivation recently, when Craig Makela, the president of the Santa Barbara Olive Company, came to campus. His visit was part of the Institute's new sustainability venture to turn dozens of its ornamental olive trees into a cash crop of fruit-bearing olive trees. The Institute plans to hold an olive harvest festival in the fall, which the Caltech community will be invited to participate in. After the olives are picked, they will be crated and trucked to Santa Barbara, where they will be turned into olive oil. The oil will then be bottled and returned to the Institute for distribution. If all goes as planned, Caltech will have about 300 gallons of extra virgin olive oil to sell, Makela said. The enterprise developed after two undergraduates, Dvin Adalian and Ricky Jones, spent a day picking olives last fall and then made a batch of oil, some of which they presented to Caltech president Jean-Lou Chameau and his wife, Carol Carmichael, senior counselor for external relations and faculty associate in Engineering and Applied Science. In return, the students and some of their friends were treated to dinner at the president's house.

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