Discovering the Food System Funding and Acknowledgments

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Funding We would like to acknowledge generous support from the Cooperative States Research Education and Extension Service for the development and pilot testing of this resource. This project is one of several underway in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University and is supported by a Special Grant (99-34324-8120) entitled "Individual Differences in Setting and Meeting Nutritional Requirements." This grant supports a number of research projects that focus on a broad range of issues of relevance to setting and meeting nutritional requirements. Areas of investigation range from improving our understanding of the key roles of nutrients at the molecular level to the development of improved strategies to enable consumers to adopt newly created knowledge easily and effectively. At the community nutrition level, the grant supports developing an increased understanding of the issues related to food insecurity among the elderly in the U.S., the use of a distance-learning strategy linking nutrition and dietetics practitioners with university researchers, and the development of educational programs and tools to promote positive dietary change and food system sustainability. This project addresses the last of these community nutrition aims. Acknowledgements The authors would like to acknowledge the teachers and students who participated in the pilot testing of this educational resource. We would especially like to thank the home school students for their valuable insights and the Cooperative Extension educators for providing county-based coordination. (Pilot testers, grad students involved, CCE contacts.) Several graduate students have been involved in the development of this resource at various stages. Shannon Hayes provided excellent support in the formative focus group interviews, coordinated much of the pilot testing of lesson activities and assisted in revisions to the lessons. Nicole LaDue added many creative ideas that turned into activities for the lessons. Three graduate students from the Cornell University Department of Education, Annalisa Lewis Raymer, Laura Torbert, and Amy Bonn also provided much enthusiastic assistance, support and creativity to the development and pilot testing of the lessons. Gwen Beck, a Lansing Middle School teacher, was most generous and helpful in the development of this experiential learning program. She opened her 6th grade science class to us as a place to try out lessons and activities. Many thanks to her students who made us believe we were on the right track. We'd like to thank Andra Benson, Peter Signor, Stephen Ast, Jacoba Baker, Shirley Cuykendall, and John Bender for giving of their time and telling their food system stories to groups of Gwen Beck's students. We thank them for sharing so much about the work they do in their part of the food system and for responding so earnestly to the questions the students had prepared for them. We also acknowledge the contributions provided by Anne Meyer-Wilber whose expertise in learning standards and lesson activity development and evaluation has been invaluable to the project. Finally, conversion of this tool into a widely accessible web based-educational resource was facilitated with careful editing by Jennifer Watkins, and technical expertise of Craig Cramer. The cover graphic/website logo is by Rachel Kennedy.