New Paper: Resilience strategies for academic centers focused on food systems transformations
Experiences at Nine Universities
Since the inception of the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems in 1989, several new centers have come, changed leadership, transformed, and some have closed. This article tells the stories of several sustainable agriculture and food systems centers and institutes across the US, and suggests ways to make our organizations stronger.
CIAS researcher Michelle Miller initiated this work by proposing a series of webinars to hear from several academic leaders on their experiences, as part of her work with the Inter-institutional Network on Food, Agriculture, and Sustainability (INFAS). Lauren Gwin, Oregon State University and soon Erin Lowe joined the effort to organize webinars, review and summarize the transcripts, and write the original manuscript. We then invited webinar presenters to participate in summarizing their stories and what we learned.
The result is a paper that provides insight on how centers are differently structured, funded, and governed and how they add value to their institutions. Community collaboration on and off campus, knowledge co-generation, leadership development, project coordination, research and technical support are some of the many functions centers fulfill. Their leaders face similar challenges to sustain these activities, such as gaining support from new administrators and faculty; retaining supportive faculty; and securing sustained funding as support waxes and wanes. Established centers are most vulnerable when they attempt to transform and administration and faculty are in flux.
The paper is open source through the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development, Lyson Center for Civic Agriculture and Food Systems. Tom Lyson was Professor of Development Sociology, Cornell University.