Marisse Aranas, Cultivating Change Through Education, Soil, and Sustainability
By Sidra Asif
There is something quietly sacred about the act of planting. To touch the soil, to feel its grain slip between your fingers, to watch something small and fragile push through it toward the light, it is a ritual that speaks of patience, hope, and connection. For Marisse Aranas, an educator and sustainability advocate at the Higher Colleges of Technology, this ritual is more than a metaphor; it is the foundation of a philosophy, one where education is not just instruction, but cultivation.
“I still remember the soil between my fingers,” she recalls softly. “Cool, dark, and full of promise.”
As a child, Marisse spent afternoons beside her grandmother’s garden wall, filling seedling bags of pepper plants with her cousins. What seemed like play at the time, rewarded with snacks and laughter, was, in truth, her first classroom. “She never told us we were learning,” Marisse smiles. “But through those moments, she taught patience, care, and the quiet power of nurturing life.”
Years later, as an educator, Marisse returned to that memory. The lessons from her grandmother’s garden became the blueprint for a deeper kind of learning, one that connects classrooms to farms, and minds to soil. In her world, sustainability isn’t a chapter in a syllabus; it’s a lived experience that begins with the earth itself.
Learning Beyond Walls
In the heart of her campus community garden, the usual hierarchies dissolve. Professors kneel beside students, puzzling over yellowing tomato leaves. Administrators discover the meditative calm of harvesting herbs between meetings. Faculty and staff trade cuttings and growing tips like neighbors swapping recipes. The garden becomes a living metaphor, a space where titles blur, where everyone becomes a grower, a learner, a caretaker.
“Someone once asked me why this mattered so much,” Marisse recalls. “I told them, because it brings me peace. And because the best things I’ve learned in life came from someone who made me feel joy while learning them.”
That philosophy that joy is the root of transformation defines her work. For Marisse, education becomes a movement when it stops feeling like instruction and starts feeling like an invitation; when learning is not imposed, but discovered through community, care, and connection.
From Soil to Soul: Linking Minds with the Land
Her passion for linking classrooms with farms is both scientific and spiritual. “Someone once told me, ‘Plants are like your children, you nurture them from the womb and watch them grow.’ Those words stayed with me,” she says.
In her teaching, Marisse draws powerful parallels between tending soil and cultivating the mind. “Your mind is the soil where everything begins,” she explains. “If it’s too acidic with doubt, too depleted with stress, nothing will grow there, no matter how many opportunities you plant.”
In her community gardens, students learn this truth through their own hands. They test soil pH, balance nutrients, and watch their seedlings transform from frail stems into flourishing plants. In that transformation, something profound takes root within them.
“They realize that just as soil can be adjusted and renewed, so can they,” Marisse says. “They learn that conditions, whether in nature or within themselves, can always be changed.”
It’s this intersection of ecology and empathy that fuels her mission. When a student’s lettuce finally grows after weeks of tending, or a staff member finds calm after an hour among the plants, she witnesses what she calls “education in its purest form.” It’s not about grades or lectures, but about creating conditions for growth, of both food and faith in oneself.
“The ecosystem beneath the soil mirrors the ecosystem within communities,” she reflects. “We grow better together. When the conditions are right, when there’s support, patience, and shared purpose, extraordinary things can grow.”
Rediscovering Roots in a Modern World
For young Emiratis, Marisse believes the path to sustainability begins with rediscovery, of heritage, of ancestral wisdom, of balance.
“During one of my sessions, a student said, ‘Ms., that’s how my father used to do it.’ That simple line reminded me, this is more than gardening; it’s remembering identity,” she says.
Before cities rose from the sands, Emiratis lived in harmony with the desert, reading winds, mastering falaj irrigation, coaxing life from arid soil. Farming wasn’t just labor; it was faith in nature’s rhythm. Today, when students touch the soil, they’re not just learning sustainability; they’re reconnecting with a legacy.
“To return to the soil is to return to self,” Marisse explains. “Progress and tradition are not opposites, they are roots and branches of the same tree.”
In her view, modern innovations like hydroponics and smart irrigation are simply contemporary expressions of ancestral resilience. “Technology doesn’t erase tradition,” she says. “It amplifies it.”
Cultivating Leadership: A Woman’s Journey
Marisse’s own journey has been one of perseverance. Entering a field dominated by technical expertise, she faced her share of skepticism. “There were times my ideas were called too idealistic,” she admits. “But the soil taught me resilience. Growth takes time. Roots must struggle before they find depth.”
Her leadership philosophy is grounded, literally and figuratively. “When projects fail, I look to the earth,” she says. “Even the richest soil needs rest; even the strongest roots need renewal.”
What keeps her grounded are the faces of her students and colleagues, their laughter during planting sessions, their pride when they harvest their first lettuce. “Leadership, like farming, isn’t about control,” she reflects. “It’s about cultivation.”
Each time she steps into the garden, Marisse finds herself reminded of what truly matters: not perfection, but persistence; not instruction, but inspiration.
Turning Awareness into Action
In an age of digital learning, Marisse insists that true sustainability cannot be taught; it must be experienced. “Awareness begins in conversation, but transformation begins in practice,” she says.
Through her projects at HCT, students grow, harvest, and share food, bridging theory with tangible impact. Many have launched start-ups rooted in upcycling and sustainable business innovation. “They don’t just meet academic requirements, they become changemakers,” she explains.
By connecting innovation to empathy, she teaches that sustainability is not an abstract concept, but a daily practice that merges profit with purpose. “When creativity grows from care,” she says, “impact becomes inevitable.”
Where Tradition Meets Technology
For Marisse, the future of food and farming depends on harmony between innovation and intuition.
“Technology and tradition are two hands working toward the same goal: sustaining life,” she says. “One offers wisdom, the other precision. Together, they create balance.”
She sees modern hydroponic systems as the natural evolution of the ancient falaj irrigation network, both guided by the same principle of resourcefulness. “The tools may change,” she says, “but the values remain.”
In this balance lies the blueprint for sustainability, a rhythm where progress doesn’t uproot the past but allows it to blossom anew.
Planting the Seeds of the Future
When asked what qualities the next generation must develop to secure the planet’s food future, Marisse smiles and points to her home. “The answer is in the letters of our nation’s name, U.A.E.”
U for Understanding, of the land, its limits, and its gifts. A for Adaptability, the courage to turn challenges into innovation. E for Empathy, the heart that connects humanity to the planet.
“When the youth grow with these values,” she says, “they embody the spirit of the UAE, a nation that turns desert into life and vision into reality.”
Moments That Matter
There are, she admits, small moments that remind her why this mission matters. Like the day a faculty member told her, “I’m not a green hand,” and she replied, “Planting isn’t for green hands, it’s for willing hearts.”
Weeks later, that same colleague proudly showed her his first seedlings. Today, he co-leads her sustainability project.
“It’s never about expertise,” she says. “It’s about willingness. When people place their hands in the soil, something shifts inside them. They rediscover that growth isn’t limited by ability, but inspired by intention.”
One Seed at a Time
If Marisse could leave one seed of wisdom for future changemakers, it would be simple: “Start small, but stay rooted.”
Change, she believes, doesn’t begin with grand initiatives but with a single act of care, a hand in the soil, a shared harvest, a small project that blooms into purpose.
“The soil doesn’t bloom overnight,” she says. “It needs tending, balance, and time. The same is true for people and ideas. What matters most is consistency, kindness, and the courage to keep cultivating, even when results aren’t immediate.”
And perhaps that is the truest lesson of all, that the real changemakers are not those who rush to harvest, but those who keep planting, with hope, with heart, and with the unshakable belief that every seed, no matter how small, can grow into something extraordinary.
In the quiet hum of the HCT community garden, among the laughter of students and the rustle of basil leaves in the afternoon wind, Marisse’s grandmother’s lesson lives on, whispered through the soil, passed from one generation to the next:
Education, like a garden, flourishes when it is rooted in care, nurtured in joy, and shared with others.