As the University looks ahead to next semester, Chancellor Carol L. Folt on April 30 previewed the new two-year academic theme of “Food for All: Local and Global Perspectives,” which focuses on resolving food issues throughout the world.
“The idea is: how can we look at food the way we looked at water in terms of both local and global perspectives?” Folt said. “There is the same goal — that big idea — about how the University can serve society and educate at the same time.”
Folt introduced the upcoming theme during a lecture to an audience of nearly 90 students, faculty and community members at the William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education. The presentation occurred just a week after she capped the University’s previous academic theme, “Water in Our World,” with a lecture about the harmful effects of mercury and arsenic on humans and ecosystems.
The presentation was the final lecture in a month-long series titled “What’s the Big Idea? Food for Thought,” which featured four Carolina researchers discussing their work on food culture, history, sustainability and regulation from local, regional and global perspectives.
“It has been an incredible month,” said Rob Bruce, director of the Friday Center. “Tonight, we are thrilled to have a special session with Chancellor Folt. She’s going to close the ‘What’s the Big Idea’ series, but in another sense, she is really going to open us to a larger discussion that is going to happen across the University as this campus embraces a new academic theme.”
The theme officially kicks off in August and will examine wide-ranging topics from food cultures and nutrition, to food security, world hunger, agricultural economics, resource management, sustainable development, climate change and international trade.
“Carolina came about this idea of having pan-university themes to address big issues of the day,” Folt said. “…These are issues that we really need to think about and figure out how we’re going to be part of a solution.”
UNC-Chapel Hill’s Global Research Institute proposed the food theme. During the two-year period, the institute will recruit a group of experts to campus to provide the Carolina community the chance to engage with some of the world’s leading scholars on the topic.
During her presentation, Folt said the new theme will stretch across all disciplines as students, faculty and staff explore resolutions to global food problems.
The academic theme provides an opportunity for people in programs across the campus to work together to create solutions through interdisciplinary research. For example, the tools needed to evaluate problems such as obesity, Folt said, are found outside just one discipline.
“We can’t do this just as scientists,” she said. “This absolutely reminds us that we need to work with social scientists and humanities because these are often issues of individual choice and decisions that are not based just on facts.”
Through team research and collaboration, Folt said, the Carolina community has the capabilities to create solutions to crucial food problems.
“If you’re going to be great, you’re going to take on those great issues,” she said. “We have the talent and the ideas. We’re going to do it, not just to solve the problems but also prepare students in problem solving and reaching to do things that are global.”
By Brandon Bieltz, Office of Communications and Public Affairs
Published May 1, 2015