Professor studies sustainability
During most of his adult life, Stu Shafer, professor of sociology, has maintained two careers - one as a certified organic farmer of fruits and vegetables and one as a JCCC professor.
As social movements around food and sustainability have emerged, Shafer proves the ideal scholar to talk about their convergence. He asks how the human species will deal with serious questions about sustainability in the 21st century.
"This is a question not only of whether and how much we eat, but what we eat and how we produce it," Shafer said. "How we address those questions affects not only our personal health and well-being, but the health and well-being of the planet."
In class, Shafer tries to bring sustainability efforts to the home front - raising our collective conscience about the possibilities of offering more locally grown food, linking local people with local food producers and recycling food wastes.
He also teaches two new classes related to his areas of research and experience. Commercial Crop Production is a three-hour credit class designed to teach prospective, beginning and experienced market farmers to be productive and ecological. The class is part of the sustainable agriculture entrepreneurship certificate program.
He also teaches Sociology of Food, a three-hour credit class that deals with how people's relationships center around food. The sociology course addresses issues of culture - identity, power and ecology - through the focus of food.
"In studying the ways food is produced and consumed, we also discover the ways food shapes and expresses relationships among people," Shafer says.
Shafer has a bachelor's degree in English and environmental studies from Western Michigan University, a master's degree in sociology from the University of Kansas and an ABD (all but dissertation) in sociology from the University of California, San Diego.
Hands-on experience includes more than 30 years in cooperative groceries, homesteading and the organic farming movement, as well as 10 years of experience in the community-supported agriculture movement.