Congratulations to CRFS Research Awardees for Summer 2024

Congratulations to the recipients of the CRFS Research Award for Summer 2024! Every spring semester, the UA Center for Regional Food Studies (CRFS) offers up to 3-5 awards of $500 to any UA graduate or undergraduate student in support of food-related research or educational activities over the summer months. Funds can be used to cover tuition costs or other expenses related to the successful completion of planned academic work related to food. Read about this year's awardees below.

CRFS 2024-25 Student Awardees

Talitha Neesham-McTiernan

Title: Investigating the Impact of Agrivoltaics on Crop Nutritional Quality in Semi-Arid Environments

Bio:
Talitha Neesham-McTiernan is a second year PhD student in the Department of Geography, Development, and the Environment at the University of Arizona. Talitha is studying the potential of agrivoltaics, a novel technology integrating solar panels and agriculture, to enhance food security and resilience in the face of climate change. With a background in environmental science and physical geography, Talitha is passionate about understanding how innovative agricultural practices can contribute to sustainable food systems in semi-arid environments. Her research integrates quantitative analysis with community perspectives to evaluate the suitability of agrivoltaics in various settings, aiming to understand how the unique microclimate created by these systems can be of benefit in a changing climate.

Project Summary:
The CRFS award will support Talitha's research investigating the impact of agrivoltaics on crop nutritional quality in semi-arid environments. This summer, she will collect and analyze crop samples from agrivoltaic and control (traditional open field) conditions at Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona, to understand how the altered microclimate influences nutrient concentrations. The findings will inform strategies to maintain or enhance crop nutritional quality in agrivoltaic systems, contributing to the development of resilient and nutrient-dense food systems in an era of climate change. 

Joy Yu-Rong Liu

Title: Aquaponics for Indigenous Food Security and Community Health

Bio:

Joy Yu-Rong Liu is a graduate student of aquaculture and aquaponics in the Department of Environmental Science. Focusing on aquaculture’s environmental and socio-cultural sustainability, Joy aims to develop methods and solutions for the wider aquaculture and aquaponics communities and industries worldwide, especially in arid regions. Through interviews and participant observation with home, backyard, and commercial aquaponics and hydroponics producers, traders, and consumers in southern Arizona, Joy’s work will establish a baseline understanding of the community conception of aquaponics and fish as food in the local food system and evaluate the role and accessibility of traditional food among indigenous and Hispanic groups to determine how aquaponics could be integrated into the local food system to improve community health. The CRFS research award helped to reduce the cost of traveling in southern Arizona by car and expenses associated with interview arrangements during the summer of 2024 to pursue this research. 

Elise Otto

Title: Regional Field Course on Sonoran Food Systems 

Bio: 

Elise Otto (she/her) is a PhD student in geography examining extreme heat and housing in Arizona.  Her research examines the home as a unit of analysis of both climate resiliency and vulnerability in the context of political, cultural, financial, environmental, and legal frameworks that shape the role of housing in a time of increasing environmental hazards. As an educator she is interested in facilitating experiential learning for students to engage with the places that they inhabit. Elise grew up in Eastern Washington, in the channeled scablands where glacial sills deposited by the Missoula Floods and dammed rivers contribute to exceptional agricultural production of wheat, stone fruit, apples, and vegetables. 

Project summary:

The CRFS award will fund the planning and preparation for a regional field course on Sonoran food systems that will be offered in Spring 2024.  University of Arizona undergraduate students and graduate course facilitators will travel around the region over three days to meet with various food systems stakeholders. This course will provide supplemental field-based learning for geography, environmental and food studies, and other undergraduate students at the University of Arizona. The curriculum is designed to present diverse perspectives on the political and social context of regional food production and encourage critical thinking and independence amongst participants.  Funds will help the graduate student organizers (Elise Otto and Tali Neesham-McTiernan) travel to meet with collaborators and guest speakers and secure materials for the course.

Jesse Anderson

Title: A Foundation for School-Neighborhood Garden Markets and Food-Centered Community Events

Jesse Anderson is a Food Studies major at the University of Arizona. She is originally from Topeka, Kansas, and has lived in Tucson for the past 7 years. After 20 years as a classically trained chef working in a variety of hotels and restaurants, she is now a mother of two working to merge a critical food studies framework with her extensive work in the food industry to foster local, sustainable alternative food economies. The overarching goal of this project is to develop a foundation for local, self-sustaining, school-neighborhood garden markets run via collaborations between Tucson preschool and elementary schools and their surrounding communities. The CRFS award will be used to fund the preparation of several school-neighborhood garden markets operated by students at two Tucson pre-K/elementary schools in collaboration with local non-profit food justice organizations and community members. The goal of these activities is to provide a catalyst for tradition-building community events centered around food and culinary arts, such as regularly occurring, self-sustaining, student-led school-neighborhood garden markets and food-centered events that the communities surrounding these schools can proliferate well beyond the lifespan of this initial project.