The Falk College food studies program would like to congratulate the following Class of 2022 award winners:
Chef’s Prize: Avalon Gupta VerWiebe
This is awarded to a Food Studies graduate who demonstrates exceptional ability in the culinary arts. This ability should also include food justice and community engagement goals of the Food Studies Program. Avalon came on board as a lab assistant in FST 304: Farm to Fork. In the class she showed great enthusiasm for the culinary aspects of food systems and helped students manage the kitchen environment and connect the topics from seminar to the cooking in the lab. Avalon was also instrumental in a Foraging panel discussion event which included food foraged locally. In addition, her practicum with Syracuse Onondaga Food Systems Alliance and her work the Onondaga Nation youth leading sessions about food justice support her culinary activities.
Food Justice Award: Anna Zoodsma
This is awarded to a Food Studies graduate who demonstrates the ability to successfully address food justice related issues through a variety of mediums. Throughout her time in the Food Studies master’s degree program, Anna has demonstrated a consistent commitment to creating social change through the food system. In her practicum work with Salt City Harvest farm, a local organization that provides farmland to New Americans in the Syracuse area, she has devoted her project to looking at the relationship between community mental health and farming for refugees. In this work, she also volunteers at the farm and is providing her research to the organization to help them access further support and funding.
Community Engagement Award: Erica Rose Lushan
This is awarded to a Food Studies major or minor who demonstrates the ability to create or implement progressive food-based initiatives which engage diverse politics locally, nationally, or internationally. Erica is doing her practicum with Syracuse City School District learning about food service budgets. She strategically uses the budget to help plan, produce, transport, and distribute meals for every student.
Culture and Commensality Award: Rose Noterman
This is awarded is given to the Food Studies major who has expanded the Food Studies program to new audiences by sharing food knowledge and practice through social activism. Rose is engaged in her classes and is passionate about creating positive change in all food system studies.
Research Award: Phoebe Ambrose
This is awarded to a Food Studies major who produces a research project and paper of exceptional quality. The paper should address substantial issues regarding the sustainability of the food system including food justice, human rights or ecological, economic and social impacts of food production, consumption, processing and distribution. Phoebe did research regarding Pete’s Giving Garden and Hendrick’s Food Pantry to promote grassroots change to address campus food insecurity, strengthen the community through collective service, and encourage sustainability.
Roseane do Socorro Gonçalves Viana Human Rights Award: Ellen Pitstick and Michelle Tynan
Viana Human Rights Award for the best graduate paper on the human right to food, nutrition, and/or health. Selection to be made by a committee: of two or three; headed by someone other than Anni Bellows from the Food Studies Program. Roseane do Socorro Gonçalves Viana, Brazilian nutritionist and right to adequate food activist and writer, left a powerful message of hope and belief in the essential goodness of each and every person, of the need to take on our individual and collective responsibilities to ensure the welfare and dignity of all and for each and every one, that all struggles are important and must be respected, and, most of all, that the voices of the affected must be heard. Michelle received one of the Viana Human Rights Paper Awards this year for her paper, “The H-2A Guestworker Visa Program and the Human Right to Just and Favorable Work.” Ellen won the other Viana Human Rights Paper Award for her study, “Will they get my snail of approval? Slow Food and the Human Right to Food.” Both papers fill important gaps of food justice analysis by using an international policy frame that global food activists are employing to leverage their work.