Tackling food system challenges through experiential education

Study from the World Food System Center published in GAIA explores how educators can design food systems education programs to help graduates think and work in new ways.

Enlarged view: WFS Summer school
Participants meet with villagers, farmers, and small-scale processors in India (Image: WFSC)

The food system is the middle point for many of the challenges we face in the world today, such as environmental degradation, malnutrition, and social inequality. This also means that innovation and creative solutions to these challenges can have a large impact on the future of our planet.

However, we cannot change a system with the same methods that created the current challenges. The same is true for education. Universities need to ask: how can we ensure that our graduates have the new knowledge, skills, network, and values necessary to tackle complex global challenges?

This question embodies the core of the unique educational courses offered by the World Food System Center at ETH Zurich, including an intensive, residential two-week short course called the World Food System Summer School. The summer courses have been running since 2013 and have trained 166 participants from 53 different countries. This system-oriented program has run seven times in four different countries, bringing together university students from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds.

In a newly published paper in GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, the team of authors from the WFSC, Education Director Michelle Grant, member Prof. Nina Buchmann, and former team member Aimee Shreck, share their experiences from running these summer schools around the world. The article discusses the conceptual framework for the summer school program, elucidates the criteria used to design and deliver the program, and shares some lessons learned and challenges faced.

The 12 discussed design criteria used for the courses, ranging from using a systems thinking approach to appreciating participants as both producers and users of knowledge, allowed the WFSC to deliver a consistently highly evaluated program.

The authors hope that outlining this holistic design supports other educators to reflect on existing food systems education initiatives or to design new ones.

Read the full GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society article "Tackling Food System Challenges through Experiential Education: Criteria for Optimal Course Design" by Michelle Grant, Aimee Shreck, and Nina Buchmann external pageonline here

Enlarged view: WFs summer school
Field work and exchange with stakeholders in Côte d’Ivoire (Image: WFSC)
Enlarged view: WFS Summer school
Hands-on learning in Switzerland (Image: WFSC)
DEVIL

This paper is an output of the research project “Delivering Food Security on Limited Land”, a consortia project of the Belmont Forum, funded through the Swiss National Science Foundation. The World Food System Center, with Prof. Nina Buchmann as Principal Investigator, leads the stakeholder engagement and knowledge exchange activities for the consortium. For more information on the project, please visit the external pageproject page.

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