Sustainable Community Food System (SCFS)

Community Partner(s): Commercially Licensed Co-operative Kitchen (CLiCK)

Demographics: diverse communities throughout CT

School or College: College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Campus Affiliation: UConn Storrs

Hebron

Program Description

Sustainable Community Food Systems minor gives students skills to help solve humanity’s most pressing problems. This minor allows students to learn how to be system thinkers looking at the big picture solutions of how transforming the food system is a platform for creating an equitable, humane, and sustainable society. Students discover how their actions can enable them to advocate for a more resilient and just food future. For example, a student may advocate for food security in just and culturally appropriate ways and learn to innovate toward a more sustainable food system as a social entrepreneur.
Sustainable Community Food Systems offers students a unique opportunity to connect theory and practice through classroom-based work with service learning and hands-on experiences in the local community. Focusing specifically on the issues of food sustainability, environmentalism, and social justice, students gain vital skills that will enable them to become leaders in society’s slow and contentious but ongoing shift to a more equitable, just, and sustainable future.
At the heart of the Sustainable Community Food Systems minor is an intensive internship (16-20 hours per week) with a single community partner that is part of the food system. Over the summer and fall, students gain practical experience through over 450 hours of paid and credit-bearing internships. This experience is then critically analyzed through an intersectional lens on the complexities of the entire food system that will become a part of a student’s written portfolio. This portfolio, plus their internship hours, reflects the summation of their work.

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internship food sustainability social justice minor immersion community farming