in situation or a family that hasn’t the sufficient means to get to or pay for needed food. On local to global levels, food security could be affected by loss of farmland, political upheaval, population increase, climate change, export restrictions or other social, environmental or economic disaster. “Internationally there’s always been a food security crisis,” says Ash. “But it isn’t enough to say we need more farmland. Why isn’t there food? How is that land controlled? What’s the infrastructure, what are the roads like, how do you get to the food? It depends on, too, your definition of how you want a person to have access to food — via charity or via their having a job. “You don’t want food security to be based on stop-gap measures; that doesn’t solve the problem. It’s a matter of understanding the difference in defining it in terms of stop-gap or long-term food security. … I’m thinking about the important things we want our students to understand, the bigger issues.” Ash hopes that not only will the course be interdisciplinary but that the students will be, too. “Going forward, we see that as a goal: to bring those multiple perspectives from students,” she says. “This is the sort of course for someone who might be a policy maker or that someone working on international agriculture problems might take.” The course “grew organically,” Ash says, out of the relationship Ash’s CALS colleagues Dr. Suzie Goodell of FBNS and Dr. Julie Grossman of the Department of Soil Science have with Raleigh’s Interfaith Food Shuttle. Goodell’s and Grossman’s students have taken part in community nutrition and soil management service-learning activities with the Food Shuttle’s community gardens. “It hit us that we could turn those activities into a course more relevant to the community food security concept,” Ash says. She, Grossman and Goodell were as-
sisted in developing the course by CALS colleagues Dr. Bob Patterson and Dr. Michelle Schroeder-Moreno, Department of Crop Science, and Liz Driscoll, Horticultural Science Extension associate. “For a long time we’ve been interested in issues related to cultural competency, such as delivering nutrition education to limitedresource audiences,” Ash says. “And how do you help students, who themselves have no experience in unpredictable access to food, understand that issue? Understanding your audience is important.” So, as one of the class exercises, the students are given addresses in a community gardens neighborhood and in the housing projects, along with the address of the state farmers’ market. “We then ask them to find the nearest grocery store with Google Maps,” Ash says. “It’s a way to raise the awareness that it’s not that easy to get to the food by public transportation.” The students also do work on a farm at the Interfaith Food Shuttle’s land on Tryon Road, as well as the community gardens. And “so they can see the full breadth of what community food security encompasses,” students take field trips to places like a Durham community grocery operation run by a group that helps recovering addicts. “Students are learning that even activities that sound wonderful are not without their challenges,” Ash says. “I’d hate anyone to suggest there are always true solutions in the sense that one approach eliminates the problem. Better to think in terms of multiple approaches to reducing problems.” In fact, if they learn nothing else, Ash hopes the students will see “that the big concerns we have are all complex, and there are no simple approaches. I hope they come away with an ability to ask the right questions. I hope they know they need to ask questions and to be sure they’re always questioning their own assumptions.”
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aking a big-picture approach is something that Sarah Ash has practiced since her own student days in Boston at Harvard University, where she received her 1976 bachelor’s degree in biology, and in Medford, Mass., at Tufts University, where she earned her 1982 master’s and 1986 Ph.D., both in nutrition. She grew up just south of the University of Connecticut, where both her parents were professors. “Initially I was drawn to evolutionary biology, fascinated by the concept of change over time. However, I had this notion I would spend all my time in the basement of a museum of comparative anatomy,” says Ash. “I also wanted something interactive, something I could engage people in.” Then, one summer, she was rooming with a friend who took a course in nutrition. “She brought home her text, and I was fascinated,” Ash says. “I saw how relevant everything I had been learning was to nutrition. It crystallized for me how it all came together. To me, nutrition is the ultimate applied science. All basic science roads lead to nutrition, not to mention all the psychology, sociology, anthropology aspects that come into play. It gets back to this concept of understanding complexity.” Encouraging this interest was her undergraduate adviser, who suggested she take nutrition courses at Harvard’s School for Public Health. “I took a graduate-level public health nutrition course and a nutrition biochemistry course,” Ash says. “I then decided to do an independent study; I asked Professor Stanley Gershoff if I could do research in his lab, and he gave me a cool little research project. How important that was to me, that he took time to help me out. That was a touchpoint in life that mattered, that made a difference to me.” Upon graduation, she got married and relocated with her husband, Mark Ash, when he attended law school in Chicago. When they
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