To focus your interest in food systems and agriculture the Institute for Global Sustainability offers:
Location: UVM campus, site visits, and/or online
Community members interested in food systems and agriculture. Graduate and undergraduate students interested in food systems and agriculture.
Upon completing the three courses below emerging leaders interested in sustainable food systems will receive a Certificate of Completion for the Interdisciplinary Focus on Sustainable Food Systems.
Certificates of completion for individual courses will be distributed to participants on the last day of class. Participants who complete all three courses for the interdisciplinary Focus on Food Systems must email (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) to request the Certificate of Completion be mailed to them by Continuing Education.
Exploring New York City's Urban Food System, offered annually in Spring (NFS 295) course will explore all aspects of the urban food system of New York City, from blacktop farms, city foraging, ethnic food manufacturing, take-out and delivery, and neighborhood restaurants. Students will start the course at UVM to read and discuss the new book Gastropolis: Food and New York City and prepare for a 6 day trip to New York City. Students will then spend six days in New York, housed in dorms at New York University. Each day will involve exploring a component of the urban food system through field visits, group discussions, individual reflections and shared meals.
Environmental Cooking, annually in Summer (NFS 195) participants will better understand the regional food system and will learn to cook and eat in a way that helps meet their needs for a safe and nutritious diet, while ensuring that food production systems are environmentally sensitive, economically viable, sustainable over the long term and socially responsible.
The Permaculture Design Certification Program comprised of the Permaculture Fundamentals and Permaculture courses offered annually in Spring (PSS 156 & PSS 196) goes above and beyond the standard curriculum, led by a group of some of the most experienced designers, farmers, and educators in Vermont and the Northeast. Together, participants design and implement permaculture solutions, and each student will also be guided in generating a whole systems design for a space of their own choosing. This program focuses on permaculture as a framework for understanding and integrating the vast diversity of technologies and trends in the movement for sustainability, and advances permaculture ethics and skills as a new cultural paradigm.
Date: June - August 2010
Location: Classroom sessions will be held in the mornings at the University of Vermont's Miller Farm. Afternoons will include hands-on activities that may be at the Horticulture Farm, Miller Farm or various locations around the state.
Who Should Attend?
What is the Farmward Bound™ Program?
The summer 2010 Farmward Bound™ Program will offer pre-farm residency courses in plant and soil sciences and other relevant areas such as cooking, business, food-systems, and on-farm energy production followed by a one or two-week farm-based residency where students will have the opportunity live and work on up to three different farms representing a diversity of approaches.
This highly-flexible, innovative, hands-on program is designed for aspiring farmers and agriculture leaders. Throughout the growing season each summer students may select from a diverse set of complementary courses that provide students powerful tools for understanding and applying techniques that are at the heart of sustainable food production. Students can choose to participate in a final in-depth learning experience where students live and work on a farm.
Through this program Plant & Soil Science Department students can complete three or more core classes during a short summer session and students seeking to complete a Summer Minor in Ecological Agriculture or Food Systems will be able to advance toward degree completion.
Summer 2010 Farmward Bound Course Electives Include:
1 day per week for 8 weeks duration (June 14 - August 6, 2010)
2 days per week for 4 weeks duration
Great reasons to take part in this sequence:
Date: Annually in summer, with courses alternating each summer for a two-year completion of the minor
Location: UVM Campus
This minor is designed to give students a knowledge-based concentration in diversified crop production based upon ecological principles that is economically viable, socially acceptable, and minimizes impacts to the environment. A minimum of fifteen credit hours is required for completion. Courses offered for this minor will alternate between summers so students can complete the full minor over two summers.
For More Information: Visit the Minor in Ecological Agriculture Web Site
Date: Annually in summer, with courses alternating each summer for a two-year completion of the minor
Location: UVM Campus
This interdisciplinary minor in Food Systems gives students the knowledge and skills necessary to understand our complex interdependent food system of food production, processing, distribution and consumption. A minimum of eighteen credit hours required for completion. Courses offered for this minor will alternate between summers so students can complete the full minor over two summers.
For More Information: Visit the Food Systems Web Site
Spend a weekend in Burlington, VT exploring John Dewey's theories of learning through cooking. Participants will explore the vibrant local food community and delve into the various pedagogies of cooking for college and university courses.
There will be ample opportunity for cooking (and eating!) throughout this exciting new program.
Location: University of Vermont & the City of Burlington
Date: Postponed until Summer 2010
Program Fee: $275 (estimated)
Instructors: Dr. Lisa Heldke, Dr. Cynthia Belliveau and Dr. Amy Trubek
Friday
5:30pm: Local foods dinner and introductory discussion:
What does teaching and learning through cooking do for both teachers and students?
Saturday
9am - 11am: John Dewey, the Laboratory School and Cooking
11am - 1pm: Trip to Burlington Farmers' Market to forage for lunch and dinner
1:30pm - 3pm: Cooking for learning: what would it be like to use hands on learning in a kitchen in my academic discipline?
3:30pm - 6:00pm: Group cooking project
6:00pm: Dinner
Sunday
9:30am - 11:30am: Building a lesson plan or developing course design
11:30am – noon: Final discussion
Lisa Heldke is Professor of Philosophy and Sponberg Chair of Ethics at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN. She is the author of EXOTIC APPETITES:
RUMINATIONS OF A FOOD ADVENTURER, and coeditor of COOKING, EATING, THINKING: TRANSFORMATIVE PHILOSOPHYIES OF FOOD. She has been writing and teaching about food from a philosophical perspective for more than twenty years.
Dr. Cynthia Belliveau is a faculty member in the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at the University of Vermont. Dr. Belliveau's research is in food systems primarily focused on pedagogical applications in sustainability. Dr. Belliveau is the Director of Vtrim™, an evidenced based behavior weight loss
management program for the public developed at UVM in 16 years of clinical trials. As Dean of Continuing Education, she directs college and professional credit programming for college student and adults. Dr. Belliveau has consulted for Winrock International, US AID, and the Sri Lankan Government. She continues to teach undergraduates about food and cooking in the university Food Lab.
Amy B. Trubek, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Nutrition and Food Sciences Department. Dr. Trubek has a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. Trubek has ten years of experience teaching undergraduate courses in the Contemporary Food System, Food and Culture, Food History, and French Culture
and Cuisine. She was awarded a University of Vermont Service Learning Fellowship and is a member of a UVM Problem Based Learning Community. Trubek was a 2002-2004 Food and Society Policy Fellow, a national fellowship program to do research and outreach on contemporary food systems issues. An established food studies scholar, she is the author of two peer reviewed books.
Offered each summer is a program in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) at the University of Vermont. During the summer 8 - 15 students manage a herd of 60 Registered Holstein and Jersey cattle and earn academic credit if desired. Students commit to 12 weeks of learning and work between May 24 - August 20, 2010. This on-farm experience also includes special projects and field trips and offers students an uncommon experiential learning experience that will help distinguish them as future agriculture leaders.
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