Among the many great courses taught at Teachers College, none has been more of a touchstone across generations than “Nutritional Ecology,” taught for the past several decades by Joan Gussow, Mary Swartz Rose Professor Emerita of Nutrition & Education.

“The life-changing course for me and I’d dare say 98 percent of Nutrition Program graduates, was the Nutritional Ecology class taught by Joan Gussow,” alumna Kate MacKenzie (M.A. ’02) said last year when she was named Director of the Mayor’s Office of Food Policy, New York City’s top nutrition post. “The complexity of the food system exposed and really terrified many students. It was mind-blowing to learn about corporate consolidation in the food system, factory farming and the implications of population growth on food supply. And it was learning how the deck is stacked against so many people, in so many ways, that has motivated me to do this work.”

The life-changing course for me and I’d dare say 98 percent of Nutrition Program graduates, was the Nutritional Ecology class taught by Joan Gussow.

— Kate MacKenzie (M.A. ’02), Director of the Mayor’s Office of Food Policy, New York City

This past October, in one of the course’s major highlights, Gussow, called the matriarch of the eat locally, think globally food movement by The New York Times, brought her current crop of students to her home in Piermont-on-Hudson, an hour north of New York City, where she gave them a tour of her spectacular garden and then spoke to them about sustainable agriculture, the true meaning of “organics” and our planet’s uncertain future.

We proudly bring you “What On Earth: Feeding the Soil to Save the World,” a master class with the one and only Joan Gussow.