By Anne Baker and Lucia Allen
For many college students, food is something to be consumed, not considered. Be it a pre-class muffin from Au Bon Pain or a late-night snack at Cappy’s, young consumers might no think about the source of the food they are eating. But for environmental studies professor Jennifer Cole’s students, that’s about to change.
Cole, who teaches the Honors course The Edible Environment, focuses on teaching students not only where the dinner on their plates comes from, but the effect it has on the environment as well. Cole said the progression to an environmental class with a focus on food was organic one.
“I started developing environmental science classes, and I was astonished to learn that agriculture had the biggest impact on the earth-beyond [all else],” Cole said. “I started incorporating more [of agriculture] into classes, and students expressed the most interest in the subject of food.”
Cole, who is also the director of the environmental studies program, has been teaching The Edible Environment and the non-honors variation, Eating and the Environment for many years. But with the help of the university’s Honors program’s Sherman Fairchild Endowment for Honors Program initiatives grant, Cole now takes her honor’s sections on a mandatory field trip to Tide Mill Farm in Maine to learn about food and the environment first hand, said Maureen Kelleher, associate professor and director of the Honors Program.
Cole took her class on an inaugural week-long trip to the farm over the summer. This fall’s class will spend a weekend there, according to the syllabus. The summer trip cost about $2,000, Kelleher said.
While on the trip, students stay in the farmhouse and farm, cook and eat organic food, according to the class syllabus. Cole said she considered the hands-on project as a chance for her students to learn about the importance of their food choices.
“All of my [students] know first thing that there’s something you do on a daily basis that affects the environment, that the food choices you make impact it,” Cole said.
Senior mechanical engineering major Steve Lachance, who went on the trip during the summer, said the class was integral to his understanding of the difference between organic and inorganic foods. Organic foods, unlike inorganic foods, are grown without synthetic chemical pesticides or fertilizers.
“I tried to eat healthier beforehand for my own personal health, but once I’ve taken this class, now I’ve taken a stand to have the food I eat reflect what I believe in,” Lachance said.
He said he now makes a concerted effort to make food choices that are better for the environment, such as eating less meat.
Matilda Urie, a senior mechanical engineering major, said the trip helped her realize that growing organic food was more labor intensive than growing non-organic products.
“The most important thing I took away from [the trip] was: Learn as much as you can about how your decisions impact the world, then take action,” Urie said.
Honors students are required to take one Honors interdisciplinary course like Cole’s. Kelleher said the Honors Program often sponsors trips like Cole’s excursion to Maine. They are typically day-long trips, but Cole had proposed adding a field component that was longer than usual, Kelleher said.
“It is a part of the different strategies to bring the content of the course alive to students,” Kelleher said.
Lachance said the most important thing he learned from Cole’s class went beyond food.
“It wasn’t a class that said, ‘meats are bad’
