Small EL: Exploring Campus Food Insecurity

This Small EL activity engages students in a field experience at the Campus Food Hub, where they volunteer alongside staff and community members by preparing meals, stocking shelves, and assembling food hampers. The activity helps students understand the realities of food insecurity on campus by connecting course concepts with direct community engagement. Through teamwork, discussion, and reflection, students examine local food systems, consider the impacts of food insecurity, and learn from those working on the front lines of food support. The experience fosters collaboration, critical thinking, and civic awareness while connecting academic learning to community issues.

• Activity Setting: Field Trip
• Time for activity: 1-2 hours in class
• Assessment Approach: Participation
• Assessment Type: No formal assessment for this activity
• Weight in Final Grade: 0%

Learning outcomes

1. Students develop an understanding of local food systems through direct experience.
2. Students make connections between hands‑on learning and academic concepts.
3. Students work together as a team on a food‑related topic.

Course description

A theoretical and experiential introduction to food cultures as processes and products of communication. Examines how food is constructed and represented through text, film, television, art, and tourism. Political and economic constructions of food culture, security, and sustainability will also be explored.

This is a course description from the UCalgary Academic Calendar. 

What worked well?

Leaving the classroom helped students understand course concepts in a new way, and even a simple visit to the Campus Food Hub broke the routine of classroom learning.

What challenges did you encounter?

The Campus Food Hub is a small space, so the instructor needed to split the class into two groups.

How might students redo/try out or apply these skills in future opportunities?

Many students planned to volunteer with the Campus Food Hub after learning about its work.

• Format for reflection: In-class discussion
• Graded: No

Sample reflection prompt

"Students discuss what challenged them about volunteering with the Campus Food Hub."

This activity is a good reminder that experiential learning doesn't need to be big to be real. A couple of hours at the Campus Food Hub gave students direct, embodied contact with the very system the course asks them to think critically about and that kind of contact is hard to manufacture from a reading alone. The fact that several students kept volunteering after the activity ended, with no grade attached to any of it, says something about what happens when you lower the barrier to entry instead of raising the stakes.

None of this required a semester abroad or a major curricular overhaul but rather just a willingness to leave the classroom for an afternoon and trust that the connections would follow. The space constraint we ran into (splitting the class in two) is a logistics problem, not a reason to hold back. If you're teaching a course that touches on food systems, equity, or community or really any topic where students would benefit from seeing the theory operating in the world I'd encourage you to look for a version of this in your own context.

• Campus Food Hub — UCalgary's on-campus food security program; the site instructors would contact to arrange a class visit
• Food security | Current Students — a broader look at ongoing food security supports available to students beyond the one-time visit
• Wittman, H., Desmarais, A. A., & Wiebe, N. (Eds.). (2011). Food sovereignty in Canada: Creating just and sustainable food systems. Fernwood Publishing.
• Levkoe, C. Z. (2006). Learning democracy through food justice movements. Agriculture and Human Values, 23(1), 89–98. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-005-5871-5
• Tarasuk, V., & Mitchell, A. (2020). Household food insecurity in Canada, 2017–2018. PROOF: Research to Identify Policy Options to Reduce Food Insecurity. https://proof.utoronto.ca/