Hoaithi Dang

GFI Fellow - Class of 2015

Undergraduate Student, Applied Mathematics Environmental Emphasis
UC Merced

Project

Eat Local! Eat Fresh!

Description

“Eat Local! Eat Fresh!” is a campaign that encompasses UC Merced’s commitment sourcing local food to students. It actively promotes the benefits of local food through transparency, design and education. By integrating an essential part of everyday life such as food into the general education undergraduate curriculum Core 1 for first-year students, we hope to accomplish and foster a new culture of sustainability at the university.

Goals

To educate undergraduate students on the positive effects of eating local and the cycle of food production. A big goal was working with Tom Hothem, the director of Core 1, to work on implementing this new subsection. Analyzing student attitudes toward local food will be slated for next year, as a pre-survey and post-survey will determine how effective the Eat Local! Eat Fresh! campaign is.

Future Plans

I hope to continue working on this fellowship project throughout my undergraduate career. The campaign material has been started on and the surveys are ready to go, but I hope to be involved in implementing and marketing this campaign to students the following year. I definitely believe that with more time, this fellowship project could have a significant impact on the UC Merced campus and serve as a best practice model for other UC campuses as well.

Mentors

Jason Souza and Tom Hothem