Dear Friedman School Community,
Here are updates from the past month on progress toward the Friedman School’s Anti-Racism Action Plan:
Culture & Environment
- We celebrated Chinese New Year with a cooking class on 10 February. There is a recording of the event in case you missed it. Many thanks to Yongyi Pan for teaching us how to prepare tangyuan (a traditional dessert), Ingrid Zhou for such entertaining background on Chinese New Year, and Aarti Singh for organizing the event! Also thanks for the Friedman School’s Social Justice, Inclusion, and Diversity Committee and Slow Food for hosting! A photo of my tangyuan is below, although I need some practice — the filling was not supposed to spill out!
- We celebrated Black History Month with a lecture by alum and registered dietitian Franciel Ikeji on 24 February. Franciel is the Nutrition Advisor for WANDA, Women Advancing Nutrition, Dietetics, and Agriculture. She gave an engaging talk on several Black women who have made a major impact through food and nutrition. There is a recording of this event in case you missed it.
- Please see the latest student profile of Maryan Isack on the Friedman School homepage. These profiles showcase the diverse backgrounds, interests, and achievements of our students. Please send yours! Orsolya Szabo collates these, and she is looking for more. You can send her 3-6 paragraphs, along with a photo, that highlight such things as which program and year you are in, interests and involvements as they relate to your program, as well as your achievements. This is an opportunity for us to get to know each other and celebrate the diverse backgrounds and interests of our students. Send your stories to Orsolya at Orsolya.szabo@tufts.edu.
- The Speaker Series welcomed Dr. Melanie Nadeau on 16 February. Her talk, “An Indigenous Perspective for Conducting Community Driven Research, Evaluation and Tool Development in Tribal Communities” offered plenty of food for thought on conducting authentic community-engaged research.
Education
- To conclude Black History Month, students in the course NUTR-393, Data Visualization and Effective Communication reflected on one of a collection of famous hand-drawn infographics on African-American life in the 1900s created by W.E.B. Du Bois. Read about it in the Course Spotlight!
Compositional Diversity
- AMAZING news — Friedman School alum and Tufts Trustee Liz Cochary Gross has endowed a new professorship! The Friedman School Professorship for Nutrition Equity will go to a new faculty member who will focus on topics such as nutrition equity, nutrition and food security, food justice, and health disparities.
Public Impact
- On 7 February, the House Hunger Caucus in collaboration with the Friedman School hosted a virtual congressional briefing, “Food as Medicine: Spotlighting the Power and Innovation of the Private Sector to Improve Nutrition” that focused on how private sector innovations are leveraging food and nutrition to improve health, advance health equity, and lower healthcare costs in communities across the country. Dean Mozaffarian served as the moderator.
University-Level Activities
- Please complete the Campus Climate Survey, if you haven’t already. It will be open until Friday, March 4, 2022. Please let me know if you haven’t received a link. The survey will be repeated over time and will be an important part of understanding where Tufts currently is and assessing the impact of the anti-racism initiatives going forward.
- University funding is available for programmatic initiatives to help facilitate implementation of the recommendations that arose from the five workstreams of the University’s Antiracism Initiative. Friedman School community members may apply for funds for School-specific initiatives. To ensure alignment with both University and Friedman School action items and with Friedman School strategic priorities, proposals must be developed in collaboration with the Dean and ADDI. Please see attached for more information.
My attempt at tangyuan:
EVENTS
3 March 2022: Tufts Documentary Screening of “A Tale of Three Chinatowns” with Q&A Discussion. Curious about Boston’s Chinatown, its history, and its path with Tufts? Join us for a Zoom webinar screening of the documentary A Tale of Three Chinatowns. This will be followed by a Q&A discussion tailored specifically towards Tufts and Chinatown, with panelists including Executive Producer/Director/ Writer Lisa Mao, Professor Andrew Leong, Executive Director of the Chinese Progressive Association Karen Chen, and Tufts Medical Center physician Jenny Hong Gao.
Documentary screening: 6pm
Q&A discussion: 7:30pm
Location:Zoom webinar, registration required, sign up here:https://tinyurl.com/tuftschinatown
Please direct any questions to: tuftschinatowndoc@gmail.com
Co-sponsored by the Tufts Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association (APAMSA), Asian Dental Organization (ADO) at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine, Tufts Office for Multicultural Affairs, Tufts Associate Provost/Chief Diversity Officer, Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life, and Tufts Office of Government and Community Relations.
3-5 March: 15th Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy’s Research and Data Symposium for Food and Nutrition Diverse Perspectives in Nutrition Science Research. The symposium creates a forum where students, researchers, academics, and young professionals can share, discuss, and explore diverse opinions, experiences, and expertise on emerging topics in nutrition and public health sciences. This year, our symposium will be FULLY VIRTUAL, and REGISTRATION IS FREE FOR ALL to attend. We hope to build on the success of last year’s symposium, where 920 registrants residing in 50 countries and affiliated with 221 organizations and 158 universities were in attendance.
Sara C. Folta, PhD
Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion
Associate Professor