Beyond Farm to Table: Global Food Institute Launches Minor in Food Leadership

September 6, 2024

Authored by:

Ruth Steinhardt

Mya Price has a deep understanding of the power, intricacy and reach of food systems. Growing up in a single-parent home in Lexington, Kentucky, she saw firsthand the way food access-and the lack of it-could shape the lives of individuals and communities. She lost members of her family to hypertension because they were unable to access either the healthcare programs that might have helped them or the material nutrition resources they needed.

"A lack of access to food and resources and healthcare and all those intersecting systems, particularly in low-income communities, is where I started my journey and is part of my life and who I am," Price said. "So when we talk about food, it's imperative to me to uncover the layers of barriers to equitable access. It's not just a question of having a grocery store in your neighborhood. What's happening beyond food? What are the root causes contributing to those barriers that we may not see?"

As a master's student at the University of Kentucky, Price studied childhood food insecurity in rural Appalachia east of her home state. As a doctoral student in Washington, D.C., she expanded her expertise to an urban context and worked with Feeding America to find solutions to hunger throughout the United States.

Now Price is an assistant professor in the George Washington University's Global Food Institute (GFI), where she helps students examine the ways food is farmed, processed, distributed, purchased, consumed and disposed of, as well as the human and environmental costs of those systems. GFI was founded in 2023 by world-renowned chef, author and humanitarian José Andrés, HON '14, in partnership with GW.

Price's arrival marks an expansion in the scope of GFI, which this semester launched a new minor in food leadership. Students will dig deep into the realities of food from production to consumption, with a focus on experiential learning and community-engaged scholarship. Food leadership minors will explore agricultural science, basic nutrition, food systems' impact on sustainability and climate change, the human lives involved in these vast processes and the historical injustices that mar and make our current food landscape.

The 18-credit minor requires a first-year seminar, one three-credit course in nutrition and one three-credit course in each of GFI's three pillars: policy, innovation and humanity. Finally, students will complete a capstone project researching a local food challenge and advocating for equitable outcomes.

Tara A. Scully, GFI's director of curriculum development, said she hopes students will come to the food leadership minor from a variety of disciplinary and personal backgrounds. They'll use their unique viewpoints to imagine new systems and foodways that are more fair, more sustainable and more nourishing for people and the planet.

"We are thinking about how to build business leaders who understand food, public health leaders who understand food, research scientists, politicians, journalists, engineers-you could say there's a connection to every area of study," Scully said.

Food leadership minors will graduate with skills transferable to almost any career: a deeper understanding of the systems within which we live, an ability to describe those systems from different stakeholders' perspectives and on-the-ground experience identifying opportunities for improvement, proposing solutions and using policy levers to get results.

Though she's only been at GW for a few weeks, Price said she's already seen and been inspired by students' passion and creativity. In her "World on a Plate" class this Tuesday-a course created by GFI founder Andrés-students first explored possibilities for disruption with Kate Heath, director of student entrepreneurship in GW's Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. (One participant, senior Hannah Ettelsheim, is already on track to innovate food systems through entrepreneurship: She's a cofounder of ECOFEM, which helps female farmers use black soldier fly larvae farming to convert organic waste into animal feed.) Heath stressed that students don't need a serious interest in entrepreneurship as a career path to benefit from the resources and opportunities OIE can provide. The "innovator's journey"-identifying a problem, exploring who suffers from it, developing and refining solutions-is applicable in any field.

"I think it's so special that [GFI is] thinking about innovation and entrepreneurship in relationship to your curriculum," Heath told students. "You guys are tackling some of the biggest problems at hand right now. When we think about sustainability and agribusiness and food services, there's so many places to innovate and so many places where we can add value and fix problems."

In the second half of the class, Sanofi Professor of Prevention and Wellness and Chair of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences Jennifer Sacheck and Assistant Professor of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences Gabby Headrick, both from the Milken Institute School of Public Health, led a spirited discussion covering the basics of nutrition, barriers to nutritional equity and the evolution of public discourse on the topic. Students who are interested in nutrition have the opportunity to revitalize the field simply by bringing underrepresented perspectives to it, Headrick said.

"I am a white woman, and most people who are registered dieticians in the United States identify as white women, but white women are not the only racial, ethnic or gender identity in the United States," she said. "If we care about nutrition and about evidence-based information being distilled out to folks by trained professionals, it's crucial we figure out ways to diversify that workforce and make sure everyone can enter that workforce and gain that training."

"World on a Plate" fulfills the food leadership minor's required policy course. For Scully, who previously taught the class and still attends every week, the class is a microcosm of what she and other GFI leaders hope for from the new minor. It casts new light on something students participate in every day, inspiring new ways of seeing, opening unexpected doors to unimagined futures.

"Every time we teach this class, students come to us and say, 'This has changed my career path-I'm going into food systems in some shape or form because of this class,'" Scully said. "We're talking about huge issues that challenge our students on a daily basis, but we have resources at this university that are awe-inspiring and diverse voices that should be heard. What we're doing here at the Global Food Institute is trying to make sure that people who typically are not at the table get a seat."

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