This seminar is designed to introduce students to some of the major topics and approaches in food studies today. We’ll discuss arguments for and against local and organic production, vegetarianism, and GMOs. We’ll explore nutritional myths and controversies. We’ll visit the archives and create a public exhibit featuring primary sources about what we can learn from food history. And we’ll investigate labor conditions in the food industry and food insecurity in the U.S.

This community-academic partnership course offers a unique opportunity for students to gain an interdisciplinary overview of crises and opportunities in today’s food system through a weekly lecture series bringing high-profile speakers to campus from diverse sectors: academia, grassroots movements, public health, farming, and more. The course will be mainly virtual with some in-person sessions.

This special topics course seeks to examine environmental problems and issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. Must be enrolled in Food Literacy for All concurrently.

This course explores impacts of modern human society on land, ocean, and atmosphere, considering all aspects relevant to a sustainable future. Throughout the semester, students work on a sustainability pledge to apply class material to everyday life.

This course examines the relationship between plants, people, and the environment; focusing on economically important plants. Plants are important for survival, aesthetic, and environmental purposes and have had significant impacts on human history, society, and environment. Today plants are critical for our future. Topics include foods, fibers, drugs, and ornamentals.

This course explores what we do and why we do what we do to the world around us.  Without ignoring the theoretical, this course will focus on ethics as it bears on practical, everyday things: using energy, eating food, building houses, flying to far-away destinations, hiking in wild places, watching birds….  Our effects are far reaching: climate change, industrial agriculture and CAFOs, pollution and ecological restoration, biodiversity and species extinctions, wilderness, genetic engineering of plants and animals. We will ask “what is a good way to live in nature?”

Study of body mass regulation including the understanding of food, digestion, metabolism and different intervention strategies such as a diet and exercise.  Students learn assessment and prescription principles and techniques.

Study of the evolutionary basis of contemporary nutritional patterns, the short and long-term effects of industrialization on human biology during development and adulthood.

This introductory special topics course seeks to examine environmental problems and issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. Specific topics will vary by term.

Food is an essential part of the UM student experience. What did UM students eat in the past and where does the food served on campus today come from?  This first-year seminar examines changes in the food system that has fed UM students in Ann Arbor over the past 150 years and the ways that food is helping the University reach its sustainability goals.  We explore all aspects of the food system from production to waste. This seminar includes a variety of engaged learning experiences, including historical research on early 20th century UM student scrapbooks, a visit to the Campus Farm, and a project with MDining. Students will have opportunities to learn directly from the people who are working to make the university food system more local and sustainable.

Second-Year Course — In this course, students complete the four-term introductory language sequence by selecting one of several “special topics” courses intended as an introduction to the study of an academic discipline, such as Music, Politics and Society, Film, or Science, taught in German. Students should emerge from the course prepared and motivated to do work (or read for pleasure) in German throughout their academic career and beyond. Students are strongly encouraged to arrange their schedules so they can enroll in the section whose topic interests them the most, in order to get the maximum benefit from this course. Interest in the course content is the most effective motivation for language study. More generally, students should be ready by the end of the course to pursue an internship or study abroad in Germany.

This course introduces the student to the growing epidemic of severe allergic diseases, such as food allergies. Course lectures and discussions will focus on the advances in immunology and public health that have led to a decrease in infectious diseases but have been associated with an increase in hypersensitivity diseases, such as asthma and food allergies.

This minicourse focuses on environmental issues in the Great Lakes. Topics include the formation and geology of the Great Lakes, hydrology and dynamics of water levels, effect of invasive species on food webs and fisheries, and pollution, particularly the role of nutrients in causing toxic algal blooms.

Nutrition in the Life Cycle will cover nutritional needs of individuals during critical stages of development. Students will learn about the biological basis for nutritional requirements in normal development and maintaining health in adulthood. Consequences of over- and under-nutrition and how to identify and address these issues will be discussed.

This community-academic partnership course offers a unique opportunity for students to gain an interdisciplinary overview of crises and opportunities in today’s food system through a weekly lecture series bringing high-profile speakers to campus from diverse sectors: academia, grassroots movements, public health, farming, and more. The course will be mainly virtual with some in-person sessions. 

N/A

Nutrition in the Life Cycle will cover nutritional needs of individuals during critical stages of development. Students will learn about the biological basis for nutritional requirements in normal development and maintaining health in adulthood. Consequences of over- and under-nutrition and how to identify and address these issues will be discussed.

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the nutritional requirements of pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Main topics include: physiologic and metabolic adaptations of pregnancy and lactation, maternal nutrition during pregnancy and lactation, composition of human milk and formula, feeding practices of infants and toddlers, and the nutrient requirements of infants, children, and adolescents. At the conclusion of this course, students will have gained a sufficient foundation in maternal and child nutrition to better understand the relevant scientific literature.

This course will provide students with an understanding of the principles of program evaluation with an emphasis on global nutrition programs.  The course will create a space for discussion and practice in which knowledge can be applied to current global nutrition issues through research and critical analysis.

Students will learn about the impact of physical activity on the nutrition requirements in active individuals and special populations with chronic disease. Students will also learn how to use exercise and diet modification for weight loss and maintenance through lectures and hands on activities.

The world is in the midst of a period of environmental change that is unprecedented in the history of human life. This course examines the causes and consequences of one of the most prominent forms of change in the modern era – loss of biological diversity and its impacts on the ecological functions performed by natural ecosystems.The goals of the class are to (i) detail the scientific evidence for why Earth’s biological resources are being depleted, (ii) outline how these changes are likely to impact ecosystems and the services they provide to humanity, (iii) describe the social and economic trade-offs we are likely to face as a result of biodiversity loss, and (iv) study the current and emerging management strategies that are used to curb changes in our planet’s biological resources.

This course examines the principles of food systems management, defying and applying management theories and functions in food and nutrition settings.  Human, material and facility management will be discussed. Students gain an understanding of the tools available for managing effective and efficient food and nutrition organizations.  Purchasing and inventory techniques will be examined.  Using the foodservice systems model as a guide, it shows students how to transform the human, material, facility and operational inputs of the system into outputs of meals, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and financial accountability.  This course will cover cost control, methods that are specific to managing food service operations, including food waste and theft.

This course examines the principles and applications of epigenetics and epigenomics as they relate to human nutrition, environmental exposures and disease etiology. Lectures will address epigenetic mechanisms, environmental epigenomics, and policy implications. Examples and case studies will evaluate these  processes using both animal and human examples drawn from the primary literature. Students will also be introduced to current laboratory methods and emerging technologies for examining epigenetics and epigenomics.

This course examines the principles and applications of epigenetics and epigenomics as they relate to human nutrition, environmental exposures and disease etiology. Lectures will address epigenetic mechanisms, environmental epigenomics, and policy implications. Examples and case studies will evaluate these  processes using both animal and human examples drawn from the primary literature. Students will also be introduced to current laboratory methods and emerging technologies for examining epigenetics and epigenomics.

This course provides a foundation in the legal and institutional dimensions of U.S. water policy, and an in-depth examination of the political challenges of water sustainability and equity. Course topics include perspectives from local, state, national, international contexts. Students will gain substantive expertise in the landscape and key levers of U.S. water policy and politics, strengthen their policy analysis skills, and work toward solutions to complex socio-environmental problems.

This course will explore Black Agrarian Cooperatives and the connections to grassroots movements from historical and contemporary lenses. The goal of this course is to develop an analysis of food, farm, land, and environmental cooperatives as anti-capitalist strategies and practical implementations of justice. The course will examine historical and current case studies of Black cooperative philosophy and practice and how they operate in grassroots movement settings. Students will develop an understanding of the historical and contemporary factors that shape the emergence of Black agrarian cooperatives as acts of sociopolitical and socioeconomic resistance, community self-determination, and empowerment. Students will analyze grassroots case studies, policy landscapes, and community discourses connected to Black agrarian cooperative formations.

Global food systems have dramatically altered biogeochemical cycles, contributing to climate change and eutrophication of waterways. Growing concern about agriculture’s environmental impacts is increasing demand for citizens, scientists, and policymakers who have in-depth knowledge of more sustainable agroecosystem management approaches. We will focus on how management impacts carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) cycles from soil-plant to global scales. The course links theory and practice, and domestic and international examples, to discuss the complex challenges of sustainable food production, with an emphasis on applying ecological principles to soil management. Students will develop skills using this knowledge in applied settings.

The rights of Indigenous peoples are powerful policy and legal instruments for enacting agendas in conservation, food security and food sovereignty, environmental quality, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and sustainable development. At the same time, Indigenous peoples struggle against nations, institutions, and industries that willfully ignore or strategically exploit Indigenous rights. Rights are among the major policy and legal instruments Indigenous peoples use in pursuit of environmental justice. Students of environmentalism, sustainable development, and environmental justice ought to have practical knowledge of the history, current practices, and future innovations in the field of Indigenous rights. They must understand the contextual differences in rights law and policy in different places, and the institutions through which rights claims can be articulated and enforced. The course will be taught as a legal and policy primer, including in depth study of the history of Indigenous rights, key rights laws and policies in use in different parts of the world, including through the United Nations, and innovations in rights methodology by Indigenous peoples, such as the rights of non-human entities. The Indigenous rights-based content of the course will be discussed in relation to rights traditions of other groups, including people of color and people of the global majority.

This course will examine laws administered by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration with a focus on the regulation of drug development and drug sales. Topics to be covered include the new drug approval process, regulatory obstacles to generic drug competition, regulatory sources of exclusivity in drug markets including the Orphan Drug Act and the Hatch-Waxman Act, reimportation of approved drugs from abroad, internet drug sales, prescription versus over-the-counter drug sales, and regulation of advertising claims made to physicians and consumers. We will also consider the relationship between drug regulation and other laws, including patent, antitrust and tort laws. Time permitting, we will examine recent state legislative measures designed to reduce the costs of new drugs.