Exploring Food, Energy, and Water Systems

Faculty Supervisors: Erica Smithwick and Jason Kaye 

Course: GEOG 510 Landscape U

Students: Adrian Benedetti, Nastaran Tebyanian, Stephanie Freeman, Paulo Soares, Nate Allred, Paniz Mohammadpour, Tim Mateer, Lauren Dennis 

Semester: Spring 2020 

SDGs: 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production, 3 – Good Health, 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities 

Nexus thinking emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the interconnectedness of Food-Energy-Water systems for more sustainable resource management. “Stewarding our planet’s resources” is one of the five thematic priorities in Penn State strategic plan that emphasizes Penn State leadership in climate change mitigation and sustainable management of food, energy and water resources. However, the current management of food, energy and water systems at Penn State does not fully utilize the potential of a nexus approach. This project aims to shed light on the current state of FEW systems at PSU-UP and find actions that can foster FEW sustainability in the future. Two rounds of university stakeholders’ engagements facilitated a co-creation process that helped both forming our research questions and addressing them. Main methods used in this project were the qualitative analysis of interviews as well as content analysis of other universities’ sustainability programs.