Yale Bulletin and Calendar

November 7, 2003|Volume 32, Number 10

Colleges' sustainable dining
initiatives are focus of conference

Representatives from Northeastern colleges will gather on campus on Friday, Nov. 14, to strategize a transformation in college dining.

The one-day conference, "Tilling the Soil, Turning the Tables," will include panels and workshops promoting sustainable food practices on college campuses.

Three years ago, when students began advocating for more organic food in the University's dining hall, Yale College hosted a local farm fair, which culminated in a feast prepared by famed restaurateur Alice Waters. Since then, the University has inaugurated the Yale Sustainable Food Project. As part of that initiative, one residential college has started to serve a seasonal menu built around the freshest, ecologically cultivated ingredients, and an organic garden and a composting program were created.

At the conference, professors of such disparate disciplines as urban studies, psychology and environmental science will join writers, dining hall managers, farmers, chefs and practiced veterans of the sustainable food movement to share their knowledge with participants. Organizers hope the conference will lead to further cooperative efforts among the participating colleges and with cultivators in the region.

The conference begins with a panel on "Sustainable Dining Efforts in the Northeast," to be held at 8:30 a.m. in Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Ave. There will be welcoming remarks by James C. Scott, Sterling Professor of Political Science and director of the Agrarian Studies Program. The panelists will include dining service directors from Yale and from Williams College, and a "forager" from an independent day school. The moderator for this discussion is Bill Duesing, a local farmer and a spokesman for the organic and sustainable food movement.

Gus Schumacher, former undersecretary of farm and foreign agricultural services in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Joan Dye Gussow, author of "This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader," will deliver the keynote address at 10:30 a.m.

Three workshops will comprise the first afternoon session, to be held 1:30-2:45 p.m. in Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 63 High St. In the first, students will share their insights about how to engage other students, dining services and local farmers in the sustainable food effort. In the second, Kelly Brownell, author of "Food Fight" and director of Yale's Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, will lead a discussion about obesity and offer advice on how to stem the tide of the epidemic. In the third, Lisa Brawley, who teaches urban studies at Vassar College, will talk about model farms that are already operating on college campuses in the Northeast.

The second session, which will also include three workshops, will be held 3-4:15 p.m. in Linsly-Chittenden Hall. In the first, Beth Collins, a forager, and John Turenne, executive chef at Yale, will discuss working with seasonal and organic produce in a school environment. Mark Winne, the director of the Hartford Food System, will lead the second workshop on educating students, staff and communities in responsible eating. The last workshop, concerning composting systems, will be led by Angie Fowler, who manages a five-college recycling program, and Josh Viertel, an associate director of the Yale Sustainable Food Project, who recently set up Yale's pilot composting system.

Participants are also invited to visit the Yale Sustainable Food Project garden, located less than a half-mile from central campus, where they can learn how Yale students are involved in each step of the food cycle: from growing, preparing and eating food to composting for the next year's crops.

The conference is free and open to the public.

T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

Harold Koh is appointed as next Law School dean

Clinton asserts 'shared responsibilities' among nations . . .

'Women Mentoring Women' program launched

Budget plans for the coming year

Event to explore ethics of media coverage in wartime

Colleges' sustainable dining initiatives are focus of conference

Women astronauts will talk about their 'Place in Space'

Computer scientists to develop ways to protect privacy online

Exhibit looks at Robert Damora's '70 Years of Total Architecture'

Yale Rep show explores collision of politics and culture in America

Her native landscape inspires Irish writer's 'desperate themes'

DeStefano hopes 'game plan' will bring him to Olympics

Study: Recovery rates from childhood leukemia . . .

Memory-enhancing drugs may actually worsen . . .

Dr. Robert Arnstein, counselor to generations of students, dies

World-renowned oncologist Dr. Paul Calabresi passes away

Rare form of obsessive compulsive disorder linked to gene mutation

Older patients may not be prepared to receive diagnosis, study says

Symposium will examine 'American Literary Globalism' . . .

Koerner Center to showcase emeritus faculty member's works

Researchers sequence and analyze the DNA of an ancient parasite

Two books on slavery are winners of the Douglass Prize

United Way Campaign nears halfway mark in meeting its goal

Yale Books in Brief

Campus Notes