UNC Capstone Project 2022-23

Every year, UNC-Chapel Hill Masters in Public Health students engage in a “year-long, group-based, mentored, service-learning, field experience. The course focuses on building skills specific to these service-learning projects and provides students with opportunities to discuss and generalize learning from their Capstone project experiences.” In SY2022-23, five MPH students joined FIG for a year-long exploration of the values at the root of school food programs, what experts in the field see as challenges and opportunities related to those historical values, and how applying new values to school food could lead to radically different programs and outcomes in the school food space.

Below are links to some of the products these MPH students created in collaboration with FIG, academic mentors, and school food professionals. The visioning document, in particular, will guide some of FIG’s questions and projects beginning in SY2023-24.

FIG is grateful to the five students for the hard work, curiosity, creativity, and joy they brought to this work.

  • The literature review began with an overview of the U.S. school food system. After an iterative process of identifying values and their accompanying rationales and refining based on feedback, the authors selected the overarching values of national security, efficiency, and centralized oversight to frame the work. The literature review findings and a discussion of the values and their ongoing impacts in the modern school food context. Read more.

  • Building on the existing literature, we sought to understand the extent to which food school systems are equitably serving all stakeholders and the ways in which these systems can be improved. We interviewed key informants involved with the school food system, such as school nutrition staff and associated administrators, working in local, state, and national capacities. By engaging with the literature and the people working within the system, we present a more comprehensive picture of school food as it exists today. Read more.

  • What if students were partners instead of customers? Then the school food system would... Read more.

Kids enjoying scratch cooked food in a school cafeteria