Food Sustainability Index

This course on school gardens will provide students with interdisciplinary approaches on how to make our food system more sustainable and just by connecting students to local elementary schools. Through the school garden, Lab students will support an elementary school’s environmental and nutritional education curriculum. Lab students will use their experiences to create a model for state policy on gardens in school. As part of our intellectual scaffolding for understanding the importance of school gardens at the intersection of food justice, environmental justice, and climate justice, students will investigate the problems with the modern food system and how it exacerbates inequalities, for example, health outcomes and children’s performance in school. In this Lab, we will look at food and food systems to get at some of the fundamental justice questions raised and then how school gardens might be part of the solution to those inequities. Fulfills (HU or SB) general studies requirements.