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October 19, 2022
In this series, we’re sitting down with the Swette Center-affiliated faculty to catch up on food systems, innovation, and what makes a good meal. See the rest of the series on our Food Systems Profiles page.
Read on for an interview with Sarah Martinelli, Clinical Associate Professor, College of Health Solutions at Downtown ASU.
October 19, 2022
October 18, 2022
“Now more than ever, youth need to become self-directed, life-long learners. This means we need to alter how we teach and what we teach to unlock their full potential.”- Anu Bidani
Investing in future generations is what sustainability is all about, and STEM Minds is getting right at the heart of it. STEM education suffers from particularly imbalanced student demographics. Women and people with disabilities are especially underrepresented, which is why Anu Bidani shifted the paradigm so that as many children as possible can experience the value and wonder of STEM studies. STEM Minds is the inspiringly successful product of her dedication.
October 17, 2022
Do you have a sustainability update for your community that you would like shared? Email us at sustainablecities@asu.edu. We love local updates!
October 16, 2022
Arizona State University’s Sustainable Purchasing Research Initiative (SPRI) is recruiting a new PhD student to begin in fall 2023. The student will work with Dr. Nicole Darnall and a team of SPRI faculty and students who are focused on assessing sustainable purchasing implementation, impacts, and transitions. The goal of this research is to create actionable knowledge about the conditions that enhance sustainable purchasing effectiveness. The deadline for applications is November 27, 2022.
October 12, 2022
ASU's Full Circle, a publication focusing on news from the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, recently highlighted one of our star faculty members, Al Brown!
October 6, 2022
On September 22, 2022, students from 3 classes traveled to the Town of Clarkdale for the first in-person visit in two years. Joined by Clarkdale leadership and staff, students met with Town Manager Susan Guthrie, Community Development Director Ruth Mayday, and Mayor Robyn Prud'homme-Bauer to brainstorm for their projects.
October 5, 2022
On September 14, 2022, ASU Project Cities hosted its first in-person kick-off event since the start of COVID. Over 50 undergraduate and graduate students from 5 Peoria projects joined their project leads and Peoria executive leadership to learn more about the community they are working with this semester and plan for the coming semester.
September 29, 2022
The study, recently published in Ecological Monographs, outlines the results of considerable data gathered on the physiology of South American locusts, and demonstrates that species distribution models that consider physiology in addition to temperature may reshape what we can expect to see as climate change continues. ASU PhD Jacob Youngblood using a net to capture locusts in a field. Jacob Youngblood, recent ASU biology PhD graduate and first author on the study, uses a net to capture South American locusts. Photo courtesy of Jacob Youngblood
"One unique aspect of our study is that we combined many different research approaches, including field observations, laboratory experiments and computational modeling,” said Jacob Youngblood, recent ASU biology PhD graduate and first author on the study.
“To combine these approaches, we assembled a diverse team of researchers, which included physiologists, ecologists, entomologists and agriculturists. Collaborating with such a diverse team enabled us to study the effects of climate change on multiple aspects of locust biology."
The international team included researchers from ASU’s Global Locust Initiative: Assistant Professor Arianne Cease, President’s Professor Michael Angilletta and Professor Jon Harrison from the School of Life Sciences, and postdoc Stav Talal from the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation, as well as innovators and collaborators in South America.
September 29, 2022
As governments worldwide have begun embracing Sustainable Public Purchasing (SPP), researchers note that we lack a broader conceptual framework that articulates the motivations for public organizations to adopt SPP. SPRI faculty, Shirly-Ann Behravesh, Nicole Darnall, and Stuart Bretschneider address this gap by undertaking a significant literature review and content analysis to develop a cogent framework of SPP adoption. The resulting theoretical framework reveals four critical macro-themes associated with SPP adoption: capacity, culture, stakeholders, and institutional setting.
September 29, 2022
“The empowerment and support of women leaders are crucial to our continued survival as a planet. I feel very proud as a female entrepreneur who has navigated her own way through the challenges of adversity and come out on top despite the odds.”- Priyanka Srinivas
Priyanka Srinivas started Live Green in 2018 with the vision to provide sustainable alternatives to the mainstream products of the food industry. She experienced the challenge of finding truly nutritious food first-hand due to so many concerning ingredients and practices behind much of what is available on grocery store shelves. In the last four years, the Live Green Company has been working to create a growing variety of plant-based, healthy products, and is now ready to start eliminating all of the synthetic ingredients and processes.
September 28, 2022
Nicole Darnall, SPRI's director and co-founder, is one of 28 members selected for GSA inaugural Acquisition Policy Federal Advisory Committee. In this AZ Central article, Joan Meiners interviewed Darnall following the committee's first meeting. The goal of the committee is to identify opportunities "for creating global change" by leveraging the spending power of of the federal government. In the article, Darnall and other key members talk about their hopes and expectations for the work that the committee will do going forward. Click here to read more.
September 28, 2022
“We believe that our future relies on technology and we want our kids in MENA to be future leaders! The 21th century skills require a new set of skills for kids, so it's not just about engineering and coding, it's about teaching the new generation critical thinking, entrepreneurial thinking, problem solving, etc.” - Afnan Ali
2022 WE Empower Finalist, MENA Region
Afnan Ali, the founder and the general manager of Eureka Tech Academy, is an electrical/communication engineer who received a diploma in social entrepreneurship. Based in Jordan, Ali is the founder and the general manager of Eureka - the first online tech academy for children and youth in the Arab World. In 2018, her enterprise was selected by MBC, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Harvard Arab Conference as one of the best enterprises in the Arab World. Ali started Eureka because she hopes that it can inspire and prepare “ a new generation of tech entrepreneurs in the MENA region to build Silicon Valley in MENA.”
September 28, 2022
“We believe in economic empowerment, accessibility, and employment opportunities” -Samantha Snabes, co-founder and CEO of re:3D INC, United States of America
With experience as a volunteer, a firefighter, a NASA employee, and an officer in the Air National Guard, Samantha Snabes is a women entrepreneur using her unique lived experiences to inform and scale her business. . Snabes, CEO of re: 3D, set out to “decimate cost/scale barriers to 3D printing” and in doing so has created the capacity for jobs, education, and provided new outlets to reverse the negative impacts of climate change. In 2013, Gigabot was born as the first true affordable 3D printing machine to give access to people all around the world, and to tear down the barriers between wealth and technology. Aligning with UN SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure , UN SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, and UN SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production re:3D is providing the opportunity to create accessible products from plastic waste in a commanding and sustainable way whilst creating jobs that supply high end tech training.
September 28, 2022
The Town of Clarkdale, Arizona is a historic community nestled in the Verde Valley. Human resource management is a constantly evolving practice that focuses on the management of people in a way that fosters professional development and employee well-being.
September 27, 2022
Tomorrow, the White House is hosting the first conference in over 50 years that focuses on food, nutrition, and health. With the ambitious goal of ending hunger and diet-related disease by 2030, President Biden and his team of Cabinet Secretaries, including Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, have released a national strategy today. It includes five pillars addressing the challenges we face in meeting the stated hunger and nutrition goals. Check out the strategy here.
September 22, 2022
Joan Meiners from Arizona Republic interviewed SPRI co-founder Nicole Darnall about her appointment with the U.S. General Services Administration's (GSA) inaugural Acquisition Policy Federal Advisory Committee. This committee will include up to 30 members from nonprofits, academia, the private sector, and more. Darnall spoke about her expectations for the committee, "radically retraining the federal purchasing workforce, using technologies that have not been used before, reaching out to vendors and purchasing providers that we haven’t worked with previously, and this is going to require massive re-orientation." Click here to read more of the interview on AZ Central.
September 22, 2022
Nicole Darnall has been selected for the U.S. General Services Administration's inaugural Acquisition Policy Federal Advisory Committee. Selected from over 100 nominees, Darnall will work with this committee to increase sustainable purchasing within the federal government through regulatory, policy, and process changes "to embed climate and sustainability considerations in Federal acquisition."
Darnall has been interviewed for two different Arizona Republic articles to talk about her upcoming work. You can read more here and here on AZ Central's website. Click below to read more on GSA's website.
September 9, 2022
As the public sector constitutes the single largest marketplace across the globe, accounting for 24% of U.S. GDP, it imparts significant sustainability consequences, affecting environmental, social, and economic outcomes. The public sector also creates enormous opportunities to leverage its purchasing power to advance sustainable public procurement and sustainability in general. However, at the local level, only one-quarter of U.S. cities have adopted sustainable public procurement, and of these, only about half indicate that their efforts have been successful.
September 1, 2022
We are thrilled to introduce Arizona State University’s Food Policy & Sustainability Leadership 2022-2023 class. This is our fourth cohort of students for this graduate program and every year it continues to grow. With a commitment to shaping food and farm policy in the public interest, this cohort of leaders hail from across the country including Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Washington D.C., Washington state, and Wisconsin.
To create the inclusive, diverse and resilient food systems of the future, we need bold and knowledgeable change agents to transform public policy. These rising stars represent business, nonprofit, and academia, modeling the community necessary for food system transformation. They’re passionate about reducing food waste, regenerative and organic agriculture, and local food systems. They’re dedicated to school food reform, racial equity, and food sovereignty.
They are the future of food.
Meet the Leaders:
