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      in Security

      MIT students explore food sustainability

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      As students approached the homestretch of the fall semester, many were focused on completing final projects and preparing for exams. During this time of year, some students may neglect their well-being to the point of skipping meals. To help alleviate end-of-term stress and to give students a delicious study break, the Food Security Action Team recently offered a group of first-year students the opportunity to join a food tour of Daily Table, a new grocer located in Cambridge’s Central Square.

      Seventeen students along with staff from Student Financial Services, Office of the First Year, and the Office of Sustainability led the group from the steps of 77 Massachusetts Avenue a few blocks down the street to Daily Table in Central Square. As part of participating in the program, students were given a $25 TechCash gift card to shop for grocery items during the trip. To make things even more fun, MIT staff created a recipe challenge to encourage students to work together on making their own variation of quesadillas.

      Healthy, affordable, sustainable

      At Daily Table, students were greeted by Celia Grant, director of community engagement and programs from Daily Table, who led them through a tour of the space and highlighted the history and model of the grocery store, as well as some of its unique features. Founded by former Trader Joe’s president Doug Rauch in 2015, Daily Table operates three retail stores in Dorchester, Roxbury, and Central Square, and a commissary kitchen in the Boston metro area. Two more stores are in the works: one in Mattapan and another in Salem. For added convenience, Daily Table also offers free grocery delivery within a two-mile radius of its three locations.

      The Daily Table’s ethos is that delicious and wholesome food should be available, accessible, and affordable for everyone. To achieve these goals, Daily Table provides a wide selection of fresh produce, nutritious grocery staples, and made-from-scratch prepared grab-n-go foods at affordable prices. “All of our products meet strict nutritional guidelines for sodium and sugar so that customers can make food choices based on their diets, not based on price,” says Grant.

      In addition to a large network of farmers, manufacturers, and distributors who supply food to their stores, Daily Table often recovers and rescues perfectly good food that would have otherwise been sent to landfills. Surplus food, packaging and/or label changes, and items with close expiration dates are often discarded by larger grocery stores in the supply chain. But Daily Table steps in to break this cycle of waste and sell these products to customers at a much lower cost. 

      The pandemic has uncovered how difficult it can be for individuals and families to budget for necessities like utilities, rent, and even food. Daily Table seeks to create a more sustainable future by providing access to more well-balanced, nutritious food. “Even before the pandemic, it was challenging for families on limited incomes to meet the nutrition needs of their families. Post-pandemic, this challenge has now encompassed even more households, even those that have never before been challenged in this way,” says Grant. “As winter moves through, and inflation increases, the need for more affordable food and nutrition will rise. Daily Table is prepared to help meet those needs, and more.” 

      Food resources at MIT

      Downstairs at the Daily Table Central Square store, MIT staff members led a discussion about the components of a sustainable food system at MIT and beyond, shared advice on how to budget for food, and offered tips on how to make grocery shopping or cooking fun with fellow classmates and peers. “Shopping at Daily Table provides an experiential case study in solving for multiple goals at once — from the environmental impacts of food waste to healthy eating to affordability — an important framework to consider when tackling climate challenges.” says Susy Jones, senior sustainability project manager in the MIT Office of Sustainability.

      The group also discussed budgeting expenses, including food. “By taking students to the grocery store and providing some small but meaningful tips, we provided them the opportunity to put their learning into practice!” says Erica Aguiar, associate director for financial education in Student Financial Services. “We saw students taking a closer look at prices and even coming together to share groceries.”

      MIT senior and DormCon Dining Chair Ashley Holton shared her grocery shopping strategies with the group, and how she utilizes resources available at MIT. “Having a plan before you enter the grocery store is really important,” says Holton. “Not only does it save time, but it helps you avoid potentially getting more than what your budget allows for, while also making sure you get all the food you’ll need.”

      This program, along with many others, is part of MIT’s larger effort on fostering a more food-secure and sustainable campus for all students. Food Security Action Team members, including students, staff, and campus partners, are striving to achieve this goal by ensuring that there continues to be a well-organized and coordinated action around food security that can be implemented effectively each year. For example, to make shopping at Daily Table even easier, MIT has made it a priority to ensure the store accepts TechCash.

      No MIT student should go hungry due to lack of money or resources, and no student should feel like they need to be “really hungry” to ask for help. MIT offers several other resources to help students find the nutrition and other support they need. In addition, the Office of Student Wellbeing launched their DoingWell website, which offers programs and resources to help students prioritize their well-being by practicing healthy habits and getting support when they need it.

      “In my own cost-analysis comparison of staple grocery items of all the local grocery stores, no other store comes close to being able to offer what Daily Table does for the prices it does. It’s really remarkable to learn and experience just how Daily Table is changing the food system,” says Holton. “Its model is one of the many ways that will continue to foster a more food-secure community where everyone — including MIT students — can access affordable, nutritious food.” More

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      in Environment

      The language of change

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      Ryan Conti came to MIT hoping to find a way to do good things in the world. Now a junior, his path is pointing toward a career in climate science, and he is preparing by majoring in both math and computer science and by minoring in philosophy.

      Language for catalyzing change

      Philosophy matters to Conti not only because he is interested in ethics — questions of right and wrong — but because he believes the philosophy of language can illuminate how humans communicate, including factors that contribute to miscommunication. “I care a lot about climate change, so I want to do scientific work on it, but I also want to help work on policy — which means conveying arguments well and convincing people so that change can occur,” he says.Conti says a key reason he came to MIT was because the Institute has such a strong School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (MIT SHASS). “One of the big factors in my choosing MIT is that the humanities departments here are really, really good,” says Conti, who was named a 2021 Burchard Scholar in honor of his excellence in the Institute’s humanistic fields. “I was considering literature, writing, philosophy, linguistics, all of that.”Revitalizing endangered indigenous languages

      Within MIT SHASS, Conti has focused academically on the philosophy of language, and he is also personally pursuing another linguistic passion — the preservation and revitalization of endangered indigenous languages. Raised in Plano, Texas, Conti is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, which today has fewer than 50 first-language speakers left.“I’ve been studying the language on my own. It’s something I really care about a lot, the entire endeavor of language revitalization,” says Conti, who credits his maternal grandmother with instilling his appreciation for his heritage. “She would always tell me that I should be proud of it,” he says. “As I got older and understood the history of things, the precarious nature of our language, I got more invested.” Conti says working to revitalize the Chickasaw language “could be one of the most important things I do with my life.”Already, MIT has given him an opportunity — through the MIT Solve initiative — to participate in a website project for speakers of Makah, an endangered indigenous language of the Pacific Northwest. “The thrust at a high level is trying to use AI [artificial intelligence] to develop speech-to-text software for languages in the Wakashan language family,” he says. The project taught him a lot about natural language processing and automatic speech recognition, he adds, although his website design was not chosen for implementation.

      Glacier dynamics, algorithms — and Quizbowl!

      MIT has also given Conti some experience on the front lines of climate change. Through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, he has been working in MIT’s Glacier Dynamics and Remote Sensing Group, developing machine learning algorithms to improve iceberg detection using satellite imagery. After graduation, Conti plans to pursue a PhD in climate science, perhaps continuing to work in glaciology.He also hopes to participate in a Chickasaw program that pairs students with native speakers to become fluent. He says he sees some natural overlap between his two passions. “Issues of indigenous sovereignty and language preservation are inherently linked with climate change, because the effects of climate change fall unequally on poor communities, which are oftentimes indigenous communities,” he says.For the moment, however, those plans still lie at least two years in the future. In the meantime, Conti is having fun serving as vice president of the MIT Quizbowl Team, an academic quiz team that competes across the region and often participate in national tournaments. What are Conti’s competition specialties? Literature and philosophy. 

      Story prepared by MIT SHASS CommunicationsEditor, Designer: Emily Hiestand, Communications DirectorSenior Writer: Kathryn O’Neill, Associate News Manager More

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Environment

      Climate and sustainability classes expand at MIT

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      In fall 2019, a new class, 6.S898/12.S992 (Climate Change Seminar), arrived at MIT. It was, at the time, the only course in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) to tackle the science of climate change. The class covered climate models and simulations alongside atmospheric science, policy, and economics.

      Ron Rivest, MIT Institute Professor of Computer Science, was one of the class’s three instructors, with Alan Edelman of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and John Fernández of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. “Computer scientists have much to contribute to climate science,” Rivest says. “In particular, the modeling and simulation of climate can benefit from advances in computer science.”

      Rivest is one of many MIT faculty members who have been working in recent years to bring topics in climate, sustainability, and the environment to students in a growing variety of fields. And students have said they want this trend to continue.

      “Sustainability is something that touches all disciplines,” says Megan Xu, a rising senior in biological engineering and advisory chair of the Undergraduate Association Sustainability Committee. “As students who have grown up knowing that climate change is real and witnessed climate disaster after disaster, we know this is a huge problem that needs to be addressed by our generation.”

      Expanding the course catalog

      As education program manager at the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative, Sarah Meyers has repeatedly had a hand in launching new sustainability classes. She has steered grant money to faculty, brought together instructors, and helped design syllabi — all in the service of giving MIT students the same world-class education in climate and sustainability that they get in science and engineering.

      Her work has given Meyers a bird’s-eye view of MIT’s course offerings in this area. By her count, there are now over 120 undergraduate classes, across 23 academic departments, that teach climate, environment, and sustainability principles.

      “Educating the next generation is the most important way that MIT can have an impact on the world’s environmental challenges,” she says. “MIT students are going to be leaders in their fields, whatever they may be. If they really understand sustainable design practices, if they can balance the needs of all stakeholders to make ethical decisions, then that actually changes the way our world operates and can move humanity towards a more sustainable future.”

      Some sustainability classes are established institutions at MIT. Success stories include 2.00A (Fundamentals of Engineering Design: Explore Space, Sea and Earth), a hands-on engineering class popular with first-year students; and 21W.775 (Writing About Nature and Environmental Issues), which has helped undergraduates fulfill their HASS-H (humanities distribution subject) and CI-H (Communication Intensive subject in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences) graduation requirements for 15 years.

      Expanding this list of classes is an institutional priority. In the recently released Climate Action Plan for the Decade, MIT pledged to recruit at least 20 additional faculty members who will teach climate-related classes.

      “I think it’s easy to find classes if you’re looking for sustainability classes to take,” says Naomi Lutz, a senior in mechanical engineering who helped advise the MIT administration on education measures in the Climate Action Plan. “I usually scroll through the titles of the classes in courses 1, 2, 11, and 12 to see if any are of interest. I also have used the Environment & Sustainability Minor class list to look for sustainability-related classes to take.

      “The coming years are critical for the future of our planet, so it’s important that we all learn about sustainability and think about how to address it,” she adds.

      Working with students’ schedules

      Still, despite all this activity, climate and sustainability are not yet mainstream parts of an MIT education. Last year, a survey of over 800 MIT undergraduates, taken by the Undergraduate Association Sustainability Committee, found that only one in four had ever taken a class related to sustainability. But it doesn’t seem to be from lack of interest in the topic. More than half of those surveyed said that sustainability is a factor in their career planning, and almost 80 percent try to practice sustainability in their daily lives.

      “I’ve often had conversations with students who were surprised to learn there are so many classes available,” says Meyers. “We do need to do a better job communicating about them, and making it as easy as possible to enroll.”

      A recurring challenge is helping students fit sustainability into their plans for graduation, which are often tightly mapped-out.

      “We each only have four years — around 32 to 40 classes — to absorb all that we can from this amazing place,” says Xu. “Many of these classes are mandated to be GIRs [General Institute Requirements] and major requirements. Many students recognize that sustainability is important, but might not have the time to devote an entire class to the topic if it would not count toward their requirements.”

      This was a central focus for the students who were involved in forming education recommendations for the Climate Action Plan. “We propose that more sustainability-related courses or tracks are offered in the most common majors, especially in Course 6 [EECS],” says Lutz. “If students can fulfill major requirements while taking courses that address environmental problems, we believe more students will pursue research and careers related to sustainability.”

      She also recommends that students look into the dozens of climate and sustainability classes that fulfill GIRs. “It’s really easy to take sustainability-related courses that fulfill HASS [Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences] requirements,” she says. For example, students can meet their HASS-S (social sciences sistribution subject) requirement by taking 21H.185 (Environment and History), or fulfill their HASS-A requirement with CMS.374 (Transmedia Art, Extraction and Environmental Justice).

      Classes with impact

      For those students who do seek out sustainability classes early in their MIT careers, the experience can shape their whole education.

      “My first semester at MIT, I took Environment and History, co-taught by professors Susan Solomon and Harriet Ritvo,” says Xu. “It taught me that there is so much more involved than just science and hard facts to solving problems in sustainability and climate. I learned to look at problems with more of a focus on people, which has informed much of the extracurricular work that I’ve gone on to do at MIT.”

      And the faculty, too, sometimes find that teaching in this area opens new doors for them. Rivest, who taught the climate change seminar in Course 6, is now working to build a simplified climate model with his co-instructor Alan Edelman, their teaching assistant Henri Drake, and Professor John Deutch of the Department of Chemistry, who joined the class as a guest lecturer. “I very much enjoyed meeting new colleagues from all around MIT,” Rivest says. “Teaching a class like this fosters connections between computer scientists and climate scientists.”

      Which is why Meyers will continue helping to get these classes off the ground. “We know students think climate is a huge issue for their futures. We know faculty agree with them,” she says. “Everybody wants this to be part of an MIT education. The next step is to really reach out to students and departments to fill the classrooms. That’s the start of a virtuous cycle where enrollment drives more sustainability instruction in every part of MIT.” More