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Take Classes in Eco-nutrition

Now offering curriculum to support your professional development. Take courses that focus on Food Systems, Sustainable Diets and Biodiversity.  

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Jumpstart Your Professional Development

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Take classes that matter to you. Establish a new of understanding of sustainable diets and eco-nutrition. These classes are designed for those who grow, work in nutrition, culinary nutrition, public health and other sustainable food systems fields where knowledge about diverse diets with low environmental impacts can play an important role in ensuring food and nutrition security

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Learn from the top minds in sustainable diet and food systems, including Dr. Robin Currey, Director of Food Systems Sustainability at Prescott College.

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Create change in the world through nutrition, building a holistic health practice that is rooted in sustainable food systems.  


Featured Faculty

Dr. Robin Currey

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Dr. Robin Currey is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to researching and implementing solutions for global food and nutrition security. Dr. Currey is a Global Sustainable Food Systems and Sustainable Agriculture scholar and faculty at Prescott College teaching courses related to Food Systems Sustainability. Courses available this fall include: Place, Sustainability and Diets: Eco-nutrition, Food Justice and Sustainable Food Systems and Food System Biodiversity: Conservation in the Marketplace. Dr. Currey served as the Director of the Master of Science in Sustainable Food Systems (MSFS) program and as Assistant Professor of Sustainable Food Systems at Green Mountain College. In addition to her experience at GMC, Dr. Currey is an ethnoecologist specializing in agrobiodiversity, the former Director of Mercy Corps in Kyrgyzstan, an international development and humanitarian organization, and a current non-executive Director for a Mercy Corps-founded bank.

Fall Course Schedule

Food Systems Food systems are complex systems and the tools for understanding and influencing food system sustainability are interdisciplinary. This exploration of local, regional, national, and international food systems supports students’ understanding of how to analyze individual elements of the systems, their interrelationships and how to begin assessing the “sustainability” of those food systems at different scales and in different bioregions.  

Food System Biodiversity: Conservation in the Marketplace This course is designed to help students understand biodiversity conservation from farm fields to the world’s marketplace with policy-level implications. It contextualizes these issues in the framework of farm livelihoods. This course will provide the foundational material on farm biodiversity conservation and its role in agroecosystems. It examines world treaties that conserve biodiversity, food security issues, marketplace certifications, payment for ecological services, and market-based instruments to conserve biodiversity in the marketplace and effective policy measures to promote biodiversity.  

Place, Sustainability and Diets: Eco-nutrition This course encourages critical engagement with the concept of eco-nutrition, a systems-based approach to nutrition and wellbeing that recognizes complex relationships between diet, health, political economy, ethics, and the environment. Bioregional theories of place inform an exploration of eco-nutrition as it relates to supporting diets that are ethical, sustainable, and nourishing to the body. Students’ understandings of their own places and their food systems will inform the entire program of study for this master’s program. Methods of analysis for studying will be honed and students will broaden their understandings of distant and larger food systems through the cross comparisons made with the peers in their course.  

Sustainable Solutions: Impact Measurement and Program Design Agents of change develop programs and projects with stakeholders that translate theories of change into concrete action plans that are implementable and measure impact. The design of high-quality programs, their efficient and effective implementation and the measurement of outcomes and impacts are critical to finding solutions and being accountable to stakeholders. Project design, monitoring and evaluation tools and techniques will be introduced in this course. Impact measurement indicators and their association with theories of change and program activities are explored. Students will come to understand the links among them through course assignments, culminating in the design of a project with its implementation and impact measurement plan.  

Farmer's Market

The Adventure of Enterprise: Ecopreneurs, Innovation, and Sustainability Engage in the adventure of enterprise from strategic planning to a sustainable business model and social marketing. Become fluent in the main techniques and arrays of standards available for sustainable endeavors, including cradle to cradle, Natural Step, permaculture, triple bottom line, the 5 (and 7) P's, and more. This course helps students put ecopreneurship into practice, using biomimicry and ecological design.  

Mobilizing Change What does it mean to “build power” and what is the role of organizers in this process? In this course, students investigate contemporary theories and learn to practice key skills for building power to make change as they participate in and reflect on grassroots organizing. Students will explore, analyze, and practice different approaches to developing leadership and designing and driving strategic campaigns. At the completion of the two organizing courses, students will demonstrate knowledge in: 1. community organizing, 2. electoral organizing, and 3. union organizing.  

Food Justice and Sustainable Food Systems Food justice is a growing movement that seeks to shift global, industrial food systems towards more equitable, just, and sustainable foodways. Food justice can be measured through a community’s ability to acquire healthy food (food access), and its right to define its own food systems (food sovereignty). Using this framework, students will uncover how institutional racism and classism prevent certain communities from accessing healthy and culturally appropriate food. By the end of the course, students will have gained a comprehensive understanding of the historical, conceptual, and theoretical underpinnings of grassroots movements and the wider social, political, and economic systems that impact foodways. .  

 



If you're interested in learning more about Sustainable Food Systems at Prescott College, our Admissions team is ready to help! Our courses are a great fit for individuals seeking professional development on the graduate level. 

Speak With Admissions

Mary P. Scarpa

Mary P. Scarpa Regional Director, Strategic Projects and Outreach e. Mary.Scarpa@prescott.edu t. 570-589-0124