New and exciting learning initiatives for the food industry are few and far between but one has caught the imagination. Last night on the 22nd October 2015, the IFSTAL programme was launched from the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Oxford. IFSTAL is the acronym for Innovative Food Systems And Learning and is intended to be a community for graduate students and researchers from a variety of disciplines who have a keen interest in addressing the issues that affect food systems.
The idea originally developed and sponsored by Dr. John Ingram was to meet head-on those challenges that prevent the global population receiving sufficient nutrition. No mean feat ! The programme will give access to leading thinkers and key opinion leaders (KOLs) in the field and across supporting institutions. Not only is the University of Oxford actively participating in the programme, but a host of other universities too have offered their resources including City University (London), the University of Reading, the University of Warwick, the Leverhulme Centre for Integration Research in Agriculture and Health, The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the University of London’s Royal Veterinary College and SOAS. It means there is potentially, an extremely large cohort of potential participants in the programme. It could mean students interested in ecological impacts to the politics of food production might be involved.
The whole programme is supported and sponsored by HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council For England).
It will provide a learning resource for postgraduates with focus on various skills, a Summer school and workplace opportunities for students who wish to develop their food systems knowledge. It also provides industry with the opportunity to develop and expand their programmes associated with sustainability and their ‘green’ credentials.
The programme will operate by offering a series of live lectures during the academic year. This is backed up with interactive resources through a ‘virtual learning environment’ (VLE). The VLE will include a host of different gateways to learning, quizzes, vox pops, blog items, wikis and other informative items to stimulate cross-departmental thinking on the subject.
All participating institutes have a university-wide coordinator and senior academic involved to develop IFSTAL in response to feedback from participants and organisers.
More information is available from the web-site www.ifstal.ac.uk or questions can be answered by the local IFSTAL Education Coordinator- Bex White who is contactable on rebecca.white@ouce.ox.ac.uk
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