Students will gain a hands on, in depth experience of how to manage and implement an installation of a permaculture design.

This course discusses fundamental interactions between microbes, minerals, and organic matter responsible for carbon cycling, mineral weathering, and nutrient dynamics in soils. Through a combination of lectures and in-class discussions, we will examine the importance of these interactions for soil development, carbon storage, and fertility. Further, we will discuss the underlying mechanisms and suitable analytical methods for their investigation. Finally, we will examine how these mechanisms respond to global environmental change, and how this response in turn impacts soil functioning.

The ecology of major diseases related to food, from ergotism and the Salem Witch Trials to the Irish Potato famine to celiac disease and diabetes. How people, microbes and farming change our health and the environment. (Gen. Ed. BS).

In this hands-on class students will learn about permaculture basics while maintaining our on-campus permaculture demonstration gardens.

In this hands-on class students will learn about permaculture basics while maintaining our on-campus permaculture demonstration gardens.

Permaculture mimics ecological systems to design gardens, farms and homesteads which have the resilience and benefits of natural systems. Human designed systems however cannot function without social systems such as decision making, communications, organizational structure, and policy. This course will use case studies, guest speakers and in class exercises to explore how to apply permaculture ethics and principles to a variety of social systems. Students will engage with methods and strategies that build capacity and resilience while leading to long term systemic change.

This course covers social aspects of the agri-food systems as well as the political economy of food, agriculture and sustainability. Students are also encouraged to examine the cultural, ecological and economic implications of the ways food is perceived, produced and consumed. From rural development to the controversy of GMOs, from land conservation to the politics of globalization, from local food systems to global food justice, students use interdisciplinary perspectives to comprehend, analyze and visualize improved global and local food systems.

This course will build upon STOCKSCH 297AL through deepening students' understanding of teaching methodologies and community-building strategies for Sustainable Food and Farming majors.

This journal club is open to both graduate students and advanced undergraduate students who have an interest in reviewing the current scientific literature in the field of plant biotechnology.