Global Food Institute Student Newsletter

The Global Food Institute recently named Stacy Dean, a renowned national food policy leader and former Deputy Under Secretary for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, as our inaugural Carbonell Family Executive Director. We are excited for Stacy to join GW in the latter half of July.

A new Sustainability course will be offered in the Fall 2024 semester: SUST 3093: Environmental Ethics and Justice. This course will be taught by Angela Melidosian, Assistant Professor of Sustainability who will be joining GW this fall. The course fulfills Pillar IV of the Sustainability Minor and examines how different environmental ethics approaches shape and impact environmental justice issues and policies.

The Global Food Institute is in the process of creating a new Food Leadership Minor at GW. We will share more information with you when the minor launches. In the meantime, you can explore our larger list of Food Related Courses offered at GW. Note: only a subset of these courses will satisfy the new Food Leadership Minor requirements. 

The Smithsonian’s National Zoo Lion Tiger Department is looking for an unpaid intern during the fall semester. The internship will be 15 weeks, 240 hours total, 2 days per week, 8 hours per day (start and end dates flexible). You can view additional information about this position. If interested, please send a resume, cover letter, unofficial transcript, and a schedule of availability for the fall semester to julianok@si.edu. 

Friends of the Earth (FOE) is a national not-for-profit environmental organization that strives for a healthier and more just world. They are hiring two interns to provide support for their campaigns and policy work to reduce consumption of industrial animal foods and shift towards plant-forward, climate-conscious procurement, sustainable diets, and regenerative agriculture. Please see the job posting for more information.

Professor Caitlin Grady, from the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering at GW’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, is looking for a GW graduate student who is interested in a graduate research assistantship this fall and is familiar with food systems topics.

Dr. Grady is seeking support on her USDA-funded project focused on agricultural production and nitrogen management in the Chesapeake Bay. Dr. Grady and her team have already built the models they will rely on for this project, and they are now looking for a student keen to support policy scenario analyses with the models they have built.

The GRA can be flexible to include anything from hourly wage to full GRA salary with tuition benefits. Student must either have skills in or be interested in learning Python. Please contact caitlin.grady@gwu.edu if interested or to learn more. 

July 24, 2024 12:30-2pm

1919 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Mezzanine Conference Room 

Please join the GW Global Food Institute (GFI) for the second of four seminars in the Building System Dynamics Connections (BSDC) Seminar Series! The first 4 seminars of this series will be held monthly on Wednesdays (12:30-2pm; lunch 12:30-1, seminar 1-2) from June to September and serve as an introduction to the foundational concepts of systems thinking and modeling, with applications to food and agricultural systems research. The seminars will be offered in-person at 1919 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in the Mezzanine Conference Room with lunch available beforehand, as well as virtually. They will also be recorded for those who cannot attend (see below). Daniel Chen, Caitlin Grady, and Sydney Pryor will be leading the sessions. Resources discussed during the seminars can be found in this document. The topics are as follows: 

1) Intro to Systems Thinking and Causal Loop Diagrams (Wed. June 12th recording)

2) Group Model Building and Stakeholder Engagement (Wed. July 24th)

3) Foundations of Quantitative Modeling and Analysis (Wed. August 21st)

4) Applications of Systems Modeling to Policy Analysis and Development (September TBD)

To RSVP for Seminar 2, please fill out this form by July 17. Feel free to reach out to sydneypryor@gwu.edu with any questions. 

GW undergraduate Political Science major Aidan Spenser moderated a conversation between USDA’s Chief Scientist and Under Secretary for Research, Education, & Economics, Dr. Chavonda Jacobs-Young, and the Executive Director of the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research, Saharah Moon Chapotin at the USDA's Agrifood innovation Symposium. 

Have events or information you would like to share with other students? Email us at globalfoodinstitute@gwu.edu and we will consolidate these opportunities to share out with the group. 

If you are new to the Student Newsletter, you can view our previous student newsletter. 

Thank you all for your interest in the Global Food Institute. We look forward to your continued engagement with GFI!

The Global Food Institute Team