In the last decade, many U.S. “land-grant” agricultural universities (including UC Berkeley) have turned a reflexive lens on the fact that their institutions marginalize certain community members. These schools have begun to ask how inequities within their food and agriculture education perpetuate food systems injustices in the U.S. more broadly. This research project critically evaluates these nascent institutional efforts by examining how agriculture schools use pedagogical practices to improve equity and inclusion outcomes. We will build Python code to web scrape online course catalog descriptions at all 112 federally-funded agriculture schools to assess their pedagogical methods and types of food systems topics taught. This is a team-oriented, learning-by-doing project designed to draw on the skills and expertise in data science and social justice.
