Indigenous Food, Energy, and Water Systems

The Indige-FEWS GIDP PhD Minor integrates engineering and science disciplines with humanities to fully prepare students for the interdisciplinary collaboration required to tackle the FEWS challenges of Indigenous communities with skill, respect and fellowship. 

The purpose of the Indigenous Food, Energy, and Water Systems (Indige-FEWS) GIDP PhD Minor is to prepare students through research and scholarship to develop novel and sustainable solutions to real-world Food, Energy, and Water Systems (FEWS) challenges facing Indigenous communities. The GIDP PhD Minor coursework integrates fundamentals of systems thinking with cross-disciplinary pedagogy to support discovery and development of materials, technologies and unit operations for fit-for-purpose water systems and controlled environment agriculture (CEA) systems. Solutions will be fully integrated with the policies, decision-making and public acceptance of Indigenous communities, and will be grounded by an understanding of Indigenous societies, their governance and culture, and the ability to work effectively in these contexts.

Students will earn 13 credit hours to satisfy the Minor, completing one Indigenous research and outreach ethics seminar (1 credit unit) and one course from each of four "blocks": Systems (3 credit units), Fundamentals (3 credit units), Society (3 credit units), and Unit Operations (3 credit units). Courses may be completed in any order; however students are encouraged to take the Indigenous research ethics seminar early in the degree pursuit. 

Courses are offered by the following departments: Agricultural & Biosystems Engineering, American Indian Studies, Chemical & Environmental Engineering, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Materials Science & Engineering, and Optical Sciences.

Graduates will be uniquely positioned to work with Indigenous communities to address food, energy, and water challenges with a systems approach and a collaborative process.