The FDSYS minor will educate and prepare students for existing and emerging food systems careers by designing and delivering an integrative, interdisciplinary Food Systems minor that is learner-centered, experiential and stakeholder-responsive. The minor uses a competency-oriented approach to inform its curriculum, reflective interdisciplinary collaboration, and food systems stakeholder involvement.
Competencies and Guiding Principles of the Food Systems Minor
A comprehensive ecology of knowledge framework emphasizes both what is taught, and how it is taught as mutually supportive components of education. The competencies of the minor are the what: the student learning objectives that graduates of the Food Systems minor are expected to demonstrate proficiency in. The guiding principles of the Food Systems minor are the how: they serve as a roadmap for how the courses and experiences in the minor will support the learning objectives.
Competencies
Students who complete the Food Systems Minor will:
- Solve complex problems: Analyze, plan, act on and evaluate solutions across multiple domains of the food system, including health, science, economics and business, community, agriculture, the food service industry, and policy.
- Use evidence from multiple ways of knowing (epistemologies) to analyze, select and assess food systems problems and solutions. Different knowledge include scientific, social, cultural, historical, political, indigenous, and local perspectives.
- Respect and critically reflect on one's own and others' perspectives and values to understand how these perspectives and values influence food systems decisions.
- Be civically engaged both locally and globally to enable positive change in food and agricultural systems.
Guiding Principles
- Experiential learning. Courses and related activities will offer students place-based, learning experiences in food systems beyond the classroom, thereby integrating theoretical and practical knowledge. Activities will include engaged scholarship, internships, service learning, research, and other creative and professional work experiences. For example, the required Supervised Field Engagement Experience will provide opportunity for personalized work on food systems related topics, practice in stakeholder engagement, and network-building for students with potential future employers.
- Interdisciplinary problems and project-based learning. Problem-based learning, experiential and stakeholder-driven projects, and systems-oriented inquiry have been linked to positive student appraisal of competency development for individual courses (Galt et al. 2013). Courses and related experiences will incorporate pedagogies and curricula that emphasize students' engagement with interdisciplinary food system problem-posing (inquiry) and project-based learning, thereby placing students at the center of their learning.
- Community partnerships and engagement. Courses and related experiences will advance students' and community partners' knowledge, skills, and dispositions toward forming and maintaining partnerships in service towards food systems security and mutually beneficial community, health, and environmental sustainability goals.
- Personal transformation through reflection. Courses and related experiences will provide opportunities for students, instructors, and allied partners to reflect (individually and collectively) upon their learning about a wide range of issues associated with environmental sustainability, economic development and community prosperity, justice and well-being with an intention to articulate change in one's own understandings.
- Collaboration and deliberation. Courses and related experiences will promote among students, instructors and allied partners opportunities to develop knowledge, skills and dispositions inherent to democratic/civic participation.
- Career stakeholder engagement. Courses and related experiences will engage food systems stakeholders and prospective employers from government, industry and non-profit sectors. By assessing stakeholders' understandings of critical competencies for successful food systems work, Food Systems minor graduates will be better prepared to address current food system challenges and also achieve their personal and professional goals.

