Stories Through Research Wrap-Up: Food for Student Self-Fulfillment

In our first Stories Through Research session, our team shared some of the many important insights that we learned and explored in ‘Food for Student Self-Fulfillment: Examining the Role of Food Insecurity on Campus’. By deeply understanding how present food insecurity is on campus and in higher education, while also centering student experiences and needs, our communities can understand how we can make steps to ensure that all students can experience food security during their studies.  

What We Learned: 

What we learned through this project is that when aligned with their basic needs, eating experiences can satisfy students’ hunger and support their wellbeing, leading to their self-fulfillment. This happens through:  

• Finding Food Identity: How the identity of students, their individuality and background, plays a dynamic role in student food choices and vice versa. 

• Managing Balance Imperfectly: Students manage food and school as an imperfect balance during which they strive for, but do not always achieve, their ideal. 
• Gaining Food Know How: How students expressed wanting to know more about their food options, resources, and supports on campus.  

Through these themes, there are design principles and next steps that we can all incorporate in our communities to ensure that food security is possible for all. You can learn more about the principles, along with a checklist of how these principles might come to life, in our report: Food for Student Self-Fulfillment: Supporting Student Food Experiences 

You can also learn more about the project in a recent blog post: Food Security: the Key to Student Self-Fulfillment, where we also share a range of research, resources, and organizations that are doing incredible work to support communities experiencing Food Insecurity. Through ongoing community consultations and further project work, we hope that this work begins conversations and new possibilities to support students in higher education and beyond.  

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Last-minute registration is still available for our remaining Stories Through Research sessions!