Recipient Organization
MINNESOTA CAMPUS COMPACT
2211 RIVERSIDE AVE S # 48
MINNEAPOLIS,MN 554541350
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Three urban small private liberal arts Minnesota Campus Compact member universitiesin Saint Paul and Minneapolis, MN with increasingly diverse student bodies (Institute ofEducation Science 2018) representing historically underrepresented backgrounds (Verschelden 2017), are all working to address existing and emerging food access needs on and off campus (Watson 2017).In the past year, each campus has reached out to other campuses with similar studentprofiles and food access efforts, and realized that we are all using different methods and could benefit from more coordinated intervention (Thomas-Brown 2019) around strategies to meet food needs (Cadieux and Blumberg 2014); this coordination requires a deeper understanding of the drivers ofand most effective responses tofood insecurity (Broton and Goldrick-Rab 2016; Bruening et al. 2016; Cady 2014; El Zein 2018; Silva et al. 2017, Verschelden 2017).Food insecurity among college students has been garnering attention at national and locallevels -- as many as two-thirds of college students endure hunger and face food insecurity at significantly higher rates than the general population (Goldrick-Rab et al. 2015). Yet very few studies examine food insecurity among undergraduates at private institutions (Allen and Alleman 2019; Keefe et al. in press, Nazmi 2019). Especially amongst less selective universities (such as the three collaborating on this effort), the number of students in poverty, as well as the number of students who do not receive support from their families (and instead are often expected to support families) has doubled over the past two decades, while poverty rates in US society have remained officially stable (Fry and Cilluffo 2019; Institute of Education Science 2018). During this time, the share of undergraduates who are racial or ethnic minorities has also increased dramatically (Institute of Education Science 2018) -- increasing the burden on communities who are already burdened disproportionately by predatory debt, systemic racism, and other stressors compounding the problems of food insecurity. For all of these reasons, food security has become a community concern particularly at schools with a strong social justice and communityengagement interest, such as ours (Watson 2017).University students face a stark gap in food security programs. In the context of the TwinCities, the public high school systems provide free breakfast for all students and lunch for all qualifying students; all students 18 and under qualify for food during emergency situations (such as Covid-19) -- but all of these programs cease to be available to students when they reach university. Students at private universities are often excluded, further, in food mitigation efforts and research on food insecurity, in part because they are typically considered "too privileged" to lack basic needs and their food insecurity is rendered invisible (Allen and Alleman 2019; Keefe et al. in press). Given increasing enrollment of more marginalized students and a diversifying study body (often exceeding need levels of public institutions as they become more competitive, Fry and Cilluffo 2019), we argue that conversations and efforts about food insecurity in higher education must include private institutions, and consequently seek to build collaborative efforts.Each campus has some component(s) of a comprehensive food systems approach alreadydeveloped or in pilot stages, as described more below. Our goal in this planning grant is to connect these efforts, compare successes and challenges, and build these pilot efforts out with best practice and knowledge sharing across all three campuses, and beyond, by leveraging the Minnesota Campus Compact network of 18 campuses across the Twin Cities. Our planning project is designed to support the lead of student community leaders in our campus food access efforts who are also from families, communities, and neighborhoods with food needs. We intend to build these service and advocacy efforts on our strong curricular and co-curricular foundations, including innovative curricular modules on community food systems, farm justice and food policy, and food access.We will do this by hiring student fellows on each campus to lead coordination efforts. They will support quarterly meetings with staff, faculty, students, and community partners to identify issues and opportunities for collaboration. Alongside these students, researchers will use survey and focus group methods to better understand current approaches to food insecurity on campus and understand impacts and effectiveness. Students, researchers, and the project lead will also collaborate with courses to inform and implement approaches that could include food pantries, mobile food delivery, SNAP access, gardens, community collaborations and food service partnerships.The work will ultimately culminate in a report that informs future collaborations in the Twin Cities and policy approaches that could be adopted by individual campuses, community organizations, and governments at all levels. The ultimate goal is that campuses in the Twin Cities and beyond are able to create holistic, systemic, and collaborative approaches to meeting student and community food needs in ways that are empowering and support students in successfully completing their education and becoming contributing members of their communities.?
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
0%
Applied
100%
Developmental
0%
Goals / Objectives
The overarching goal of this project is to understand how campus food access actions on three campuses are meeting existing and emerging needs of our shared student community and how those campuses can, together, and following student community leadership, build the infrastructure to meet them better.Objectives:Meet the food needs of low-income students, families, and neighbors through food distribution, community outreach to assist in participation in Federally assisted nutrition programs, and improving access to food as part of more comprehensive attempts to meet student basic needs.Increase the self-reliance of our student communities in exploring more sustainable models for providing for their food needs.Promote comprehensive responses to local food access, farm, and nutrition issues as they relate to our campuses.Meet specific food and agricultural needs on our campuses including needs relating to:Determining the infrastructure and equipment may be necessary for our student-led campus food access groups to work with community partners and food service;Planning for long-term solutions to the crisis of student hunger beyond K-12;Creating innovative educational and marketing activities that mutually benefit agricultural producers and low-income consumers by better connecting campuses to food producers and food recovery projects.Activities to Meet Objectives:Collaborate and coordinate to provide services that meet the immediate needs of students on these three campuses facing food insecurity and local K-12 schools.Hold quarterly planning workshops to create collaborative coordination systems.Seek guidance from and compensate community elders and advocates who have been involved in the rich broader ecosystem of Upper Midwest community food systems work to speak and participate in our workshops.Support student leaders to be well-connected and heard community leaders for services and other public programs that reduce barriers to food and education access.Hire student leaders on each campus for a fellowship experience to meet and create collaborations across the campuses and surrounding communities.Conduct research that evaluates and compares the successes and possibilities of our networked efforts, integrating food provision and preparation methods.Use the Whole Measures for Community Food Systems evaluation tool to review effectiveness.Use surveys and focus groups to understand student outcomes.Build food system engagements across sectors into the curriculum and co-curriculum of our campuses, building experiential components for classes in at least half of the programs on each campus.
Project Methods
Efforts:Four workshops annually across network to discuss, compare, and plan food provisionNew resources and strategies to help reduce food insecurity in the student and neighboring community and prevent food insecurity in the future by:a. Developing creative service models to sustain student led student serving food resources across our shared student-shed;b. Advocating for more coordination of food services between our higher ed institutions and K-12-serving and other public programs to reduce barriers to access; orCollaborative comparison and analysis of successes and possibilities of our networked efforts, using research to support further collaborative planning for food provision and preparation methods that are integrated in the curriculum and co-curriculum of our campuses.Evaluation:The PIs will be responsible for implementing the Data Management Plan, and for ensuring that all relevant project personnel are informed of and follow the plan. During the first year, the two Hamline co-PIs will work with the three other partners and their libraries to share Data Management responsibilities, creating a contingency plan for possible staff turnover and reciprocal data access. All procedures required by Hamline's Institutional Review Board will be followed. In addition to the provisions below, the PIs will adhere to any and all measures that are intended to maintain the integrity of data collection, sharing, and storage, such as Responsible Conduct of Research training and Conflict of Interest policies. As part of the process of this project, Augsburg and St. Catherine Universities will adopt qualitative and quantitative data collection strategies currently being used at Hamline. The Hamline co-PIs will train them in the data management plan at that point and expand the data management protocol to all three campuses, as appropriate, in negotiation with their libraries and repositories at the time. All three universities adhere to FERPA and will ensure that students' education records are kept private.I. The following will be collected or produced during the course of the project:The data generated through the proposed work will consist of quantitative and qualitative data,specifically:a yearly Food Access Survey (previously implemented at Hamline University 2017, 2018,2019, and 2020, with an added section on Covid-19);Focus Group data (previously collected at Hamline Fall 2019); andemergent reporting on quarterly gatherings and related Campus Compact community of practice work, organized via two assessment tools: Whole Measures for Community Food Systems and A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System.Data Formats, Storage, and DisseminationHuman Subject DataThe proposed project will generate a substantial amount of human subjects data, including:Yearly Food Access Survey + Covid-19 questions to be implemented across three campusesAudio-recorded interviews and focus groups (including transcripts) with students from allthree campusesAll participant data will be shared only under rules specified by the Hamline University IRB and only when properly anonymized. Most survey data is collected without identifiers. All records linking participant data with specific data IDs or any personally-identifiable information will be kept on an encrypted file available only to trained project personnel. Similarly, anonymized aggregated survey responses (in CSV format, consulting the Hamline Libraries for repository assistance) will be made available upon publication of results. Interview and Focus Group audio recording will be transcribed from mp3 to plain text format. Only the transcripts will be retained after transcription, as raw audio recording may contain identifiable data. Interview quotes will be anonymized but may be disseminated in a non-aggregated manner (i.e., quoting a participant to provide rich examples of lived experience; consent processes account for this). Statisticalroutines and post-processed data will be retained in a version control system hosted by the Hamline University Library Repository. For this project, informed consent statements will use language that will not prohibit data from being shared with the research community in the manner described above.II. Standards for using data and metadata format and content:When it is practicable, the PI intends to collect, transmit, and store study information in open and machine-readable formats, rather than in closed formats or on paper. Digital data will be saved and stored electronically on password-protected servers and via cloud data storage at Hamline University. At Hamline, servers are maintained by the ITS Department, and have multiple layers of protection within a secure campus network. Cloud data storage (e.g., Google Drive) will be used to foster collaboration between the PIs, campus leads, and student researchers. Hamline secures data stored on Google Drive using VM security software. Only relevant project personnel will be invited to the Google Drive folder and documents.III. Access and sharing of data:The primary goals of this project are to serve low-income and food-insecure students of our institutions, their families, and neighbors; research will be supporting the advocacy and service goals of the project, and priority will consequently be given to regular updates on our progress, data collection, and meaningful interpretation at quarterly convenings and emailed invitations to them. However, concurrent goals are to learn from each others' experiences and from our evaluation research, and our engagement with Campus Compact is designed to help disseminate our findings and engage a larger network for research and learning on the emerging questions as they arise. As part of this process, all significant findings that inform the campus food security community objectives will be promptly prepared and submitted for publication. The PIs will keep a larger national community of invested scholars and students engaged with the work efforts by providing regular updates during annual and virtual meetings of the Agriculture, Food,and Human Values Society and the North American Food Systems Network, as well as the local and regional communities represented through the Twin Cities' food policy councils and MetroFood Access Network. Primary data, field notes, and other supporting materials generated by this work will be made available to other researchers and professionals upon request.IV. Re-use, redistribution, and the production of derivatives:Digital datasets archived for public access will be uploaded to Hamline's institutional repository, DigitalCommons, which is maintained by Hamline's Bush Library. By uploading the data, all data will be available for re-use and re-distribution with proper acknowledgement of their originators. Researchers and practitioners in diverse fields will be able to have access to, readily reuse, and redistribute the data.V. Data storage:Data will be stored on Google Drive. Should any new technologies be developed that improve upon, or create more assurances for the security of the data, samples, or other study products than the aforementioned media, the PI will utilize such new technologies. Data that are collected in a paper format will be scanned by student researchers, so that an electronic version can be created. These substitute records will undergo periodic quality control reviews, and reasonable safeguards will be made to guard against alteration, and to ensure that the data remain readable. Research data and other records will be retained for a minimum of three years after conclusion of the study.