In light of impending course registrations, we are going to take a moment to provide you with a quick article about how you, a member of the Tufts University community, can take your food education into your own hands. By the end of our article's run, we will only have presented you with the very tip of the iceberg, so from there it will be up to you to press on to find knowledge and good eating! Fortunately, there are more and more food?related classes being offered and food groups are popping up everywhere. With rising numbers of self?declared food movement activists, we can only imagine the number of courses and organizations will explode, so you better get a head start, right?
Of course, you can probably wiggle food issues into almost any liberal arts discipline, so today we'll just focus on the particular classes that endeavor to deal directly with food and food issues. We've scoured the course catalog so you don't have to. You can find more information on each of the classes we've mentioned here on the World Wide Web.
Next semester, our Medford campus will bear witness to a few food?related classes. Despite the limited offerings, the courses offered manage to reach broadly across food system issues. If you're looking for an examination of the social side of things, Professor Cathy Stanton of the Anthropology Department will be leading a seminar titled "New Food Activism" which is an "anthropological exploration of the multifaceted local and sustainable food movements that have emerged in the past two decades in many parts of the world." Professor Colin Orians of the Biology Department will also be teaching a food?related seminar, but with more of a focus on the science surrounding many of the food movement's greatest concerns. His class, "Seminar in Plant Biotechnology: Food for All: Ecology, Biotechnology and Sustainability" is "an interdisciplinary examination of the pros and cons of two divergent approaches to meeting the increasing global food demand: organic farming and genetic engineering." If you're willing to get up for a morning class to learn the basics of nutrition science, Professor Kelly Kane will be teaching Human Nutrition. Unlike the seminars, Human Nutrition is offered multiple times during your college career so don't fret if you can't fit it in this time around, but try to squeeze it in if you have the chance!
For the thrill seekers among us, you should take a peek at the courses offered through our various graduate schools. For example, with professor permission, the ambitious student could take Friedman School Professor Hugh Joseph's "Community Food Planning," or Professor James Tillotson's "The Global Food Business." According to several students who have taken graduate level courses like these, the workload is heavier, but the extra effort is worth it.
A less academic and more hands?on way to get involved with food issues is to join a club! On campus, Food For Thought, Tom Thumb's Student Garden, Hillel's Moral Voices and Tufts Culinary Society each take on at least one angle of food and food systems. Off campus, there are groups like theMOVE, which aims connect people who want to volunteer on a farm to farms that need volunteers. There is also the Slow Food Boston chapter, dedicated to improving the food we eat and hosting events around that mission. Finally, you can always find volunteer opportunities with community gardening groups like The Food Project, CitySprouts and Groundwork Somerville.
Be it through a class or an extracurricular, engaging with food system issues is something we should all consider if we want to keep eating the nomz of our choice.
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Sara Gardner is a freshman who has not yet a declared a major. She can be reached at Sara.Gardner@tufts.edu. Mae Humiston is a senior majoring in anthropology. She can be reached at Mae.Humiston@tufts.edu
