Food Studies  News

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Watch Falk College’s Commencement and Convocation Ceremonies

Chancellor Syverud addressed students in the School of Architecture; College of Arts and Sciences; Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs; David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics; School of Education; and University College during the ceremony Saturday, May 22.

During the commencement ceremony professor’s David Larsen and Brittany Kmush in Falk College’s Department of Public Health both received the Chancellor’s medal for their work helping Syracuse University to successfully navigate the COVID-19 crisis. Their expertise in endemiology and public health ensured that the University’s policies were informed by data and aligned with best practices. The Chancellor’s Medal is the highest honor Syracuse University offers and is rarely given. Both had also received the Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence during this year’s One University Awards for their invaluable contributions, extraordinary work and selfless efforts to ensure a safe, healthy and rewarding residential experience for our students, faculty and staff in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Falk College also presented a live virtual Convocation at 11 a.m. ET on Saturday, May 22. Watch the recording below.

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Class of 2021 honored with Food Studies Awards

The Food Studies program is pleased to recognize the outstanding work of its undergraduate and graduate students for excellence. Congratulations to our Award Winners!

Food Studies Award winners:

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Congratulations Class of 2021!

Along with Dean Murphy, the entire Falk College community of students, faculty, staff, alumni, community partners and friends, congratulates the Class of 2021! Over the past several weeks, departments across Falk College honored student achievements and celebrated the graduating Class of 2021, which are detailed on individual department websites.

Graduates and families should visit the main page on the Commencement website on Saturday, May 22 at 11 a.m. EST to view the virtual school and college convocations, including the Falk Convocation, and livestream of all Commencement ceremonies. Recordings of virtual convocations will be posted online so that graduates and their families can view them at a later date.

Details about Syracuse University Commencement weekend, May 22-23 are available, including specific information about safety protocols for those attending in person.

“To the Class of 2021, as the newest Falk alumni, you join an accomplished community of socially responsible citizens who can and who must lead change,” notes Diane Lyden Murphy, dean, Falk College.

We know you will lead the way! Congratulations, and best wishes!

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Falk College announces the Evan Weissman Scholarship Fund

Professor Evan L. Weissman was a tireless advocate for equity in the food system. A highly approachable, committed teacher who engaged students in community-based work to advance social change, his efforts provided the foundation for many communities regionally, nationally, and beyond for grassroots food justice initiatives.

He passed away unexpectedly while at home with his family on April 9, 2020. To honor his legacy and to continue the work he believed in so deeply, his family has created the Evan Weissman Scholarship Fund. The scholarship will defray tuition costs for food studies graduate students.

As an educator, mentor, scholar, and friend, Professor Weissman was committed to the human condition. He taught and inspired students and colleagues alike by rolling up his sleeves, working side-by-side with them in grassroots efforts, most of which he envisioned and ultimately led, to address food disparities in the Syracuse community. His work continues to serve as a national best practices model for bringing food justice to communities across urban America.

“We know how much Evan loved his students: he was so delighted to see them not only learning in the classroom but also learning in and from the community. He firmly believed that food justice was both a human rights and civil rights issue,” says Marsha Weissman, Professor Weissman’s mother. “In creating this scholarship, we are keeping Evan’s spirit alive.”

Those who would like to make a gift to the Evan Weissman Scholarship Fund can make a secure gift online. To make a gift by check, please make it out to Syracuse University and mail to Falk College Advancement, 427 White Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244. If you have any questions, please contact David Salanger, Assistant Dean for Advancement and External Relations at 315.443.4588 or dasalang@syr.edu, or Megan Myers, Assistant Director of Development at 315.443.1817 or mmyers01@syr.edu.

“Professor Weissman was a dedicated educator and mentor who engaged students by connecting them to real-world experiences, including involvement in his own scholarship, advocacy, and community work to build a more equitable food system. By bringing students out of the classroom and into the world, Professor Weissman’s students became active change-makers for social justice, learning values and skills that will serve them well as leaders of tomorrow,” says Diane Lyden Murphy, Dean of Falk College. “We are deeply grateful to the Weissman family for their meaningful gift. The Evan Weissman Scholarship Fund honors Evan’s legacy and his deep commitment to his students.”

Professor Weissman joined Falk College in 2012 and played an instrumental role on the collaborative team that successfully launched a bachelor of science in food studies in 2014 and additional academic programs since that time. In addition to his service as undergraduate director of the Falk food studies program, Professor Weissman was an affiliated faculty member in Syracuse University’s Aging Studies Institute and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs’ Department of Geography. He was an active research collaborator at Syracuse, SUNY ESF, and beyond.

He was a founding member and served on the board of Syracuse Grows and served on the Onondaga County Agricultural Council. He was also involved with the Syracuse Hunger Project. His unwavering dedication to these causes also helped launch the newly-formed Syracuse-Onondaga Food Systems Alliance (SOFSA), a multi-sector coalition of stakeholders from across the food system in Onondaga County.

His scholarship was directly and consistently focused on equity, diversity, and inclusion through community-engaged, participatory teaching. Shortly before he passed, Professor Weissman was awarded Syracuse University’s Lender Faculty Fellowship. This project continues with the leadership of his colleague and friend, Maxwell School Professor Jonnell Robinson and student fellows focused on creating a local food system that prioritizes access, sustainability and resiliency.

The newly created scholarship honoring Professor Weissman will support current and future students in advancing his life-long commitment to food justice and using food as a tool for social change.

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Forests of Food in the City of Syracuse

Prospective students in search of an interesting college major might come across “food studies” and imagine an appealing mix of skills that could lead to a career as a chef, nutritionist or cooking show host. But food studies is actually something quite different. It is one of the fastest-growing fields of study in North America, preparing students for careers in policy analysis, research, marketing, community outreach and more. Syracuse University’s Falk College has taken food studies to new levels of relevance, encompassing everything from food delivery systems to social justice, public health and policy, landscape sustainability, urban design, and human rights.

These days, you’re likely to find food studies students scouring parks and forests for edible plants, accompanied by student researchers from a variety of other disciplines. They are all part of the Syracuse Urban Food Forest Project (SUFFP), an interdisciplinary research initiative between Syracuse University and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF).

Led by Falk College food studies professor Anne Bellows and ESF professors Stewart Diemont (environmental biology) and Matthew Potteiger (landscape architecture), the two-year undertaking examines the connections between ecological and human systems in the urban forests along the City of Syracuse’s southwest side. Poverty, food insecurity and chronic health issues are prevalent along this corridor, but the wooded areas there contain a surprising number of edible plants that can be harvested for human consumption and other purposes.

“This is a project that is about making connections—across the disciplines of ecology, food studies, design, traditional environmental knowledge—and the very fundamental connections between people, food and place,” Potteiger says. “It has opened up opportunities for students from these different fields to collaborate and engage directly with communities.”

The pilot project will assess the existing and potential ecological productivity and community engagement around managing and harvesting edible plants. The team is developing designs for how to increase the availability of wild edible plants as well as shared foraging knowledge about them and public access to them. A longer-term goal is to have connected “edible ecosystems” across Syracuse to benefit city residents, plants, animals and landscapes.

“Interdisciplinary and multi-institutional collaborations are key to resolving societal challenges such as food insecurity, environment and global climate change,” says Interim Vice Chancellor and Provost John Liu. “The collaboration here between Syracuse University and ESF researchers is an excellent example of working together to generate synergy.”

Foraging for Answers

The group’s research seeks to answer a number of questions. What are the best (and worst) practices to employ when managing urban food forests, and to what extent should the community be involved? What funding is necessary to maintain the forests over time? And what lessons can be learned from the urban food forest in Syracuse? The challenges include water access, invasive species, vandalism, contamination and funding, to name a few.

Seed funding from a Syracuse University Collaboration for Unprecedented Success and Excellence (CUSE) grant and an ESF McIntire-Stennis research grant made it possible for the faculty to build interdisciplinary teams to advance their research.

Additional funding came from the Syracuse University Office for Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement (SOURCE). The SOURCE provides grants of up to $5,000 to fund projects designed and implemented by undergraduate students guided by faculty mentors. This year, the SOURCE has also allocated funds for a pilot faculty research assistant grant for faculty mentors to hire undergraduates for remote work that supports their ongoing research. This enabled Bellows to hire food studies students to work as research assistants for the project.

“Including undergraduate and graduate students brings enthusiasm and energy that goes beyond completing assigned tasks and pushes the project beyond our field of vision,” Bellows says. “They tie the field work into their diverse curricula and seamlessly incorporate classroom, research and service in their SUFFP engagement.”

Student Engagement and Research

One research assistant is Lisa Bush ’21, a senior from Canton, Connecticut. “As a food studies major, the idea of having a food forest in Syracuse is inspiring,” Bush says. “It allows people to source locally grown ingredients for home use, encourages community participation and helps bring food to those who are food insecure. The SUFFP also provides a way for the Syracuse community to utilize locally grown ingredients rather than purchasing from an outside source.”

Bush consolidates information, reviews similar projects in other locales and brainstorms ways to get the community involved in SUFFP through school, community and social media. She believes that her work on the project will resonate long after she graduates. “I’ve come to realize that the collaboration of different minds, schools of thought and backgrounds creates an impactful, quality project,” she says. It has opened her eyes to the amount of work and collaboration a community project like this demands. “It’s been an invaluable experience, and as I move forward in my career, I hope the skills, research methods and thought processes I have gained will be put to good use.”

Briana Okebalama ’22, from Alpharetta, Georgia, is majoring in earth sciences through the College of Arts and Sciences and pursuing an integrated learning major in environment, sustainability and policy through the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. “Learning about the food forest has broadened the scientific knowledge related to my major,” she says. “And connecting with the community as a way to address food insecurity has added to my knowledge about environmental policy.”

Okebalama’s role as a student researcher is to expand community outreach and engagement for the project. Working with community partner Antonisha Owens, she created a newsletter containing information about the project’s history and background on products that can be foraged locally. Also included are photos of food foraging walks, recipes and upcoming SUFFP events.

“Having the opportunity to work within the local community is especially important when you consider the privileged environment we inhabit as students,” Okebalama says. “It’s good to step back with an understanding of and appreciation for the community and use it to benefit that same community. With senior year approaching, I feel this has really helped me progress as a student. I’m gaining excellent skills that will also help me build a resume.”

Grace Taylor, an ESF senior majoring in environmental studies, assists in the project by creating interpretive materials like annotated maps, waysides and workshop plans for foraging. “I’m trying to understand what will appeal to the broader community,” she says. “I want my materials to guide those who were initially interested in the project, but I also want them to be useful for those who stumble upon our foraging sites by chance in the years to come.”

An Unusual Introduction to Syracuse

For Marie Claire Bryant, a graduate student pursuing an M.S. in food studies at Syracuse University, the project has unfolded in unexpected ways. Bryant moved to Syracuse after working on urban agricultural projects in Nashville, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and she started working on the project at the height of COVID-19 precautions. While no restaurants or other venues were open, she was still able to participate in foraging, which happens in small groups outdoors. “Being introduced to Syracuse through foraging was really exciting as a food studies student,” she says. “We have found so much naturally growing food that we didn’t expect. One time we came across a large patch of water mint and watercress growing together in a stream. A ton of it! The aroma of the mint hit us suddenly and we realized what we had found: fresh, edible greens growing naturally in an urban forest. People need to know that there is food growing right in their neighborhoods.”

The thrill of discovery is only the beginning. “The next step is learning how to responsibly harvest so that the food source doesn’t disappear, which is a major part of what we hope to instill in the entrepreneurs we work with,” Bryant says. The group has also applied for grants to purchase hundreds of trees to be planted by local youth in conjunction with existing youth empowerment organizations. “As a graduate student, my focus is on land governance, foraging on public land, and the laws and social dynamics that challenge growing food and harvesting on cooperatively owned land. My interest in the project has grown immensely since I got involved, and I am so grateful for this experience.”

Growing Community Connections

Antonisha Owens, an entrepreneur who owns a salon on the South Side of Syracuse, joined the project as a community partner. She learned about the SUFFP from Cimone Jordan, a planner for the City of Syracuse Department of Neighborhood and Business Development, and decided to join the group on one of their many foraging walks. “I was amazed at how many of the ingredients I use in my natural products can be found right outside my door,” Owens says.

After learning how to microbraid her own hair when she was 16, Owens quickly developed a following of loyal customers. She earned a cosmetology license and opened AficaPure Artisan and Hair Clinique, a hair salon and boutique where she styles hair, provides beauty treatments and sells her line of homemade natural beauty products—soaps, scrubs, shampoos, conditioners and body oils.

She loves learning to identify and harvest the plants that grow in local forests, like water mint, burdock root, rose hips, wild basil, paw paw fruit, juneberries and many more. “A lot of the ingredients I use in my beauty products are costly because I want the best quality, so it helps to find them in nature for free,” she points out. Someday, Owens hopes to start a small farm where she can grow her own ingredients. “I want to work together with nature to provide cleaner, safer products in an ethical and humane way.”

Food studies professor Anne Bellows has been amazed at the cooperative spirit of the community partners, students and faculty that has made this undertaking flourish. “The Syracuse Urban Food Forest Project has developed, survived, and is blossoming because of a network of actors and interests that sustains us individually and as a group,” she says. “It is in the synergy of the alternate waves of creativity, insight and productivity that we find inspiration in the pure camaraderie and fun of working together.”

~ A Syracuse University Story by Mary Beth Horsington originally published on March 30, 2021

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Food studies student Ethan Tyo publishes a book on plant-based food

Tyo, with help from some friends, just published his first cookbook, “Fetagetaboutit,” in February.

This is his first project as a Food Studies graduate student at Falk College, which took almost two years for him to finish the adventure. Nevertheless, his interests in food and lifestyle have been with him for a long time.

During his undergraduate time at SU’s School of Information Studies, Tyo realized that he had a strong interest in food since 2015 when he was studying abroad in London. He experienced a huge weight loss there and changed to a plant-based diet as a matter of interest. Eventually, he was exposed to “a whole new world of color” and started exploring the journey with food through a different perspective toward understanding the importance of nutrition and lifestyle, he said.

Back then, Tyo was also active on social media platforms and had worked with several global entrepreneurs and food companies to create content and do content planning. Nevertheless, he was not motivated in these works but really hoped to start his own project someday.

“I spent the break between undergrad and grad time trying to think about how I (could) approach the stuff that I was interested in via social media after going through a lot of personal stuff and personal growth,” Tyo said. “And so, I dropped off social media because I really wanted to focus more on, how am I going to approach sharing my work and how I want to shape my career.”

With a strong interest in food and a willingness to promote a healthy lifestyle, Tyo decided to pursue his graduate degree. At Falk College, he said that he can really focus on food systems on a larger scale and see the implications that food has on people. Moreover, he is also eager to dig into the history of food because the food systems have developed and released in such a “fascinating way.”

“I wanted to be someone who creates content that was valuable and something that people would use to help better themselves with,” Tyo said, after working in the field of media for several years. “This cookbook is a way to kind of taking a step toward (solving the puzzle) of ‘I don’t know how to cook, what to eat or even where to start’ when people don’t want to sustain themselves on eating out all the time.”

To Tyo, he perceives this book as a foundational ground for people to be like “Hey, here are some simple recipes and ingredients for plant-based food,” so that people can know where to get them and what to look for in the kitchen.

Divided into different sections, including breakfast, entrees, snacks, and drinks, the book tells the story of Beatmaster Bobby Slay, star chef by day and master DJ by night, as well as his recipes. More notably, besides teaching people how to cook, the book also aims at educating people to eat plant-rich meals and reduce food waste, Tyo said.

And that is about sustainability, something that this cookbook hopes to highlight. It provides readers with tips and tricks not only on grocery shopping and produce storage but also on effectively using food scraps in composting or recipes, the “Happy, Probably” website reads.

Tyo also wants to thank his colleagues for working on this book with him: SU alum Kyle Blaha G’17 brought him a fun, satirical twist to the traditional cookbook with short stories on Bobby’s adventures, meal plans (playlists), and the overall voice of Bobby. The book tries to cover all the essentials that a plant-based kitchen needs to get started. Each recipe also has a song accompaniment so that people can listen when they are cooking or eating. Laura Markley — the graphic designer and a current Ph.D. student in the Civil and Environmental Engineering program — also offered minimal-waste guides and tips.

He will be working with the LaunchPad and other campus partners on the rollout of the book. For Tyo, this cookbook is not the end of his journey with food. It is more like the starting point for him to keep pursuing this career and discovering more about food and, more importantly, the culture and self-identification that lie behind it.

“In my next project, I really want to focus more on my cultural movements and bring them back to this aspect of how I integrate my own cultural understanding and cultural knowledge growth through the work that I do,” Tyo said.

He has been a mentor to other LaunchPad student entrepreneurs working in the creative space and in the food sector and will be a judge for the upcoming Hult Prize with its theme, “Food for Good.” His book will be added to the LaunchPad’s innovation and entrepreneurship collection at SU Libraries in both print and digital versions.

~ A Blackstone LaunchPad story by Kaizhao Zero Lin ‘21, LaunchPad Global Fellow.

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Graduate Student Works With Food Policy Council to Combat Rising Food Scarcity Due to COVID

After Gaudé was displaced from their job due to COVID, the late food studies Professor Evan Weissman connected Gaudé with the facilitator for the Syracuse-Onondaga Food Systems Alliance (SOFSA). Weissman was an associate professor in food studies and nutrition at Falk College for eight years before passing away unexpectedly while at home with his family on April 9. His research examined grassroots efforts to address food disparities in urban America.

“Evan had a very genuine and honest and humble way of looking at the world and doing it with such compassion. A lot of people that are involved with SOFSA knew Evan very well. I think we all are trying to do what he would have done in the way he would have done it and try to remember how he thought about things and how he approached them,” Gaudé says.

SOFSA is a new food policy council that sprang into action in response to COVID. “They saw the need to help organize and try to connect people with emergency food,” says Gaudé, who is working with SOFSA to establish an organizational structure while fulfilling the spiraling demand for emergency food. They have been researching other food policy councils, designating leaders and working on the bylaws. Gaudé says they are trying to make sure that social justice and racial justice is embedded within the organization itself. “We can’t achieve any kind of food justice without facing those things,” they says.

SU News sat down with Gaudé to discuss their role with SOFSA and the challenges the Syracuse community faces in mitigating food shortages due to the pandemic.

Q: What are you researching while working with SOFSA?

A: Most of the food policy councils that exist have more of a traditional leadership, like president, secretary, treasurer, co-chair, that sort of thing. Right now, we’re trying to do some research on non-hierarchical leadership or horizontal leadership, just to see if that improves the equity of the operations of the organization. I’m still doing research on that to see if that’s even a thing that people have tried, and if it works the way they think and want it to. We’re still looking and evaluating.

Q: How has the pandemic created more food scarcity?

A: The pandemic has really emphasized and exaggerated the inequities that already existed. We’ve seen all of these standard and popular supply chains really falter. Other avenues like shorter, value or regional supply chains have been able to rethink and redesign how they connect people with food. I think it’s really exciting work to be doing right now, because we have this impetus and this momentum to truly assess the current food system, make changes and start doing things in a more efficient and equitable way.

We’ve also been very cognizant and explicit about the things that we want to include and embed within the core mission of the organization, like systemic racism and the toll it has had in marginalized communities and the food system. You can’t separate the two.

Q: What are some initial challenges?

A: One of the things that we’re struggling with right now is reaching stakeholders with the lived experiences of the situations that we’re trying to address. That’s absolutely essential to have, to have the residents represent themselves. Without their input and voices telling us what they need, then we become just a group of mostly white people trying to do a good thing.

We’ve also been working democratically amongst all of the members and inviting anyone who expresses interest to be a part of it. We are trying to get out as far as we can into the community without physically going out into the community, due to COVID. Inviting people to come to the meetings, to come to the advisory board meetings and help us, critique us, tell us where we could be doing better.

It is a difficult time to be a young organization, because all of the traditional avenues to gain traction, visibility and new membership are not available to us right now. We’ve been getting a lot of input and feedback on our development thus far and trying to find like models that exist just to identify best practices. We’ve been connecting with other established organizations like Syracuse Hope, and with Peter Ricardo at the CNY Food Bank.

Q: What have you learned in this process?

A: I think one thing that I didn’t understand was the importance of food knowledge. It is one thing to pass a bill that says that corner stores need to have a percentage of fresh food, but if the members of the community that shop there don’t necessarily know what to do with it, they’re not going to eat it. For instance I think I’m biased because I cook everything, and if I don’t know, then I’ll look it up. But I’m also not a single parent of four kids with two jobs that doesn’t have time to educate myself on how to cook a rhubarb. It is a privileged thing to be able to afford to destroy a dish to a point where it is inedible. If you’re unable to afford more food, what are you going to feed your family if that happens?

We have been partnering with other organizations, like Jessi Lyons at Brady Farms to brainstorm different events that we could have given the limitations with COVID. I think letting people see the farm, how a carrot really looks out of the ground, and then also pair that with a cooking demo. It shows that cooking is not scary. It is scary until you know how to do it. Once you get past that fear, then it is a lot of fun.

~ A Syracuse University story by Brandon Dyer originally published on March 8, 2021.

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