The Food Studies Program has been able to enter advantageous funding and partner agreements with The Kellogg Foundation, The University of Georgia (UGA), Princeton University, The University of California-Berkeley and our newest partner, The Schmidt Family Foundation. Scholars can spend summers interning with our partner institutions and earn paid experience.
UC Berkeley
The HBCU-Berkeley Environmental Scholars Program is a summer program that brings together communities from the UC Berkeley, Spelman College, and Tuskegee University interested in environmental research fields, such as agri-food systems, biodiversity, climate, and water, all with a throughline of justice. During the program, scholars conduct research with support from members of Berkeley’s interdisciplinary Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM).
Kellogg Foundation
Kellogg (now in our final year of partnership) has launched a 4-part series in 2023, Black History Every Month, highlighting the Food Studies Program and the Garden that has been posted to their various social media platforms. The Kellogg Foundation funds our Food Studies Scholars; students with interdisciplinary majors and the food studies minor who receive scholarship funding for two years along with garden immersion and research/professional development.
University of Georgia
In addition to creating innovative food curriculum, our partnership with UGA provides Spelman students, staff, and faculty the opportunity to visit Sapelo Island. The purpose is to honor the legacy of Cornelia Walker Bailey by working with her son Maurice Bailey, CEO of Save Our Legacy Ourselves -a non-profit meant to preserve the culture, traditions and heritage of Saltwater Geechee people- and the Gullah-Geechee Community of Hog Hammock.
Princeton University
The Food Studies Program received a Princeton-Spelman partnership award in the Fall of 2022. The Heirloom Garden Oral History Project is a multi-sited, oral history project on the history, traditions, and ongoing resilience of Black and Indigenous farm and garden practices such as seed-saving in the Southeast US and Appalachia. We anticipate our Garden becoming an African Diasporic seed distribution center and furthering its reputation as a learning space.