Event Details

Community you can Consume: Cooking to Teach in the Liberal Arts
Todd Armstrong, Russian Studies, Grinnell College
Annual Food, Agriculture and Society Spring Lecture
Lunch Provided

In this talk, Armstrong offers a case study about building a sustainable teaching kitchen at Grinnell College and using it to support integrating experiential learning and community engagement through food preparation. The first part charts his own path through literary studies into experiential learning in the kitchen and offers examples of how this high-impact pedagogy is effective in the liberal arts context. The second part explores the development of the Global Kitchen, from its initial planning stages to its realization in a new campus building, and how they created an organizational infrastructure that provides dedicated staffing support for its use as a teaching and learning space. The third part focuses on his efforts to develop networks with local organizations that address food insecurity, such as giving gardens and food pantries, and to empower students to engage in this kind of social justice work. Ultimately, he shows how experiential learning in the kitchen - “cooking to learn” - helps students achieve traditional liberal arts learning goals and gain practical life skills. Just as importantly, students engaged in this kind of learning develop a greater awareness of and formulate possible responses to the “wicked question” of hunger in the world.

Co-sponsored by: Food, Agriculture & Society Program; Sustainability Office; Russian Studies Dept; Geography Dept; and the Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship