Food Literacy for All is a community-academic partnership course at the University of Michigan supported by the Sustainable Food Systems Initiative, PitE, SEAS, and our local community partners. The speaker series will be co-led this winter by Julius Buzzard (Executive Director of Growing Hope) and Amanda Edmonds (UM Program in the Environment faculty).

From January to April, Food Literacy for All will feature dynamic sessions each Tuesday evening (6:30-7:50 PM) that address the challenges and opportunities of diverse food systems. This year, we will hear talks about changemaker chefs, seed rematriation, student food movements, soil science and politics, city urban agriculture directors, labor practices in the meatpacking industry, and much more.

See the schedule and register for free as a community member on our website. As a registrant, you can attend the sessions that interest you/fit your schedule.

The University of Michigan (UM) Sustainable Food Systems Initiative (SFSI) hosts a unique community-academic partnership course called Food Literacy for All each Winter semester. Structured as an evening lecture series, Food Literacy for All features different guest speakers each week who address diverse challenges and opportunities of both domestic and global food systems. The course aims to ignite new conversations and deepen existing commitments to building more equitable, health-promoting, and ecologically sustainable food systems. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Food Literacy for All transitioned from a primarily in-person format to an entirely virtual format. Currently, the course is in a hybrid format with all classes livestreamed as Zoom Webinars and some in-person classes open to students and the community. The course is free and open to the public. University of Michigan students can enroll in the course for credit each Winter semester.

From 2017-2025, more than 1,500 University of Michigan students had taken Food Literacy for All for credit, over 6,000 community members have engaged with the class, and nearly a thousand people participated in in-person events held in partnership with the course in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and Detroit. In addition, nearly 74,000 people from across the U.S. and around the world have engaged with the recorded YouTube recordings. The course has had lasting impacts on student learning, community perspectives, and partnerships that have formed among past Food Literacy for All speakers. 

Overall, Food Literacy for All is a model for innovation and collaboration. The lasting impacts of the course, including the community-centered hybrid learning format, community connections, relationship-building, diverse or new understandings of sustainable food systems, and personal, academic, or professional growth it has inspired, demonstrate the unique significance of the course for UM students and community course participants from around the world.

The following information is taken from a compilation of five post-course surveys, four university teaching evaluations, registration forms, YouTube Analytics, and Zoom Webinar reports. Please see the bottom of this webpage for more detailed methods.