Research Assistantship Plants Seeds of Change

For PhD student Bhakti Verma, her research assistantship is more than food for thought.

As a public engagement research assistant, Verma has spent the fall and spring semesters working to improve access to healthy food and nutrition education in the Urbana School District, and to develop a system for evaluating the district’s implementation of a state-wide school wellness policy.

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The assistantship is a model of collaboration both in creation and execution—developed in partnership between the College of Education and the Humanities Research Institute (HRI), Verma’s work engages with not only the Urbana School District, but also the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District and Sola Gratia, a non-profit, community-based farm that is building a farm-to-school program.

In fall 2023, Verma was part of the group drafting a new request for proposal (RFP) for the school district’s food service program. “An important part of my assignment was to work on the RFP in order to be more intentional about including farm-to-school engagement, local produce, and culturally relevant food in schools.” She conducted surveys and reviewed RFPs from other districts across the United States to help develop the list of criteria and a rubric that will be used to evaluate the FSMCs.

And while those criteria are important to the process, it was equally important to Verma that she experience the subject firsthand. So, she went back to school to do what students do every day—eat lunch in the cafeteria. After visits to the middle school and high school, she reflected on the positive (such as healthy options and good variety at the high school) as well as places for improvement, particularly in the eating atmosphere. “There is definitely room for improvement in making the lunch hall environment more friendly and inviting for the students,” she observed.

Verma’s spring 2024 efforts have focused on evaluating the implementation of a wellness policy that was mandated for public schools by the Illinois State Board of Education. She hopes to interview a spectrum of people including current students and school staff, for example, to uncover what initiatives are happening and to gauge awareness around them.

“The partnership between HRI and the College of Education has exceeded all expectations,” said HRI Director Antoinette Burton. “Thanks to the collaborative energies of Traci Barkley (director of Sola Gratia) and Bhakti’s commitment to the wellbeing of schoolchildren, the research that has resulted has real-world impact rooted in humanities mindsets.”

Verma will continue with the assistantship into next academic year. As she looks ahead to fall 2024, she hopes to spend more time in the schools researching the culture of the cafeteria. She sees that “culture” in the broadest terms—not just the physical space or the food itself, but a web of interconnecting pieces that include individual students’ ties to ethnic (including food-based) tradition and the impact of truly home-grown, locally based ingredients and cooking from scratch.

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Such concerns may seem far from Verma’s original background in education—and her particular interest in children’s literature—but she sees the connective thread through it all. Verma recalled how, as a teacher in her home country of India, she advocated for more culturally relevant material for her young students. One particular example involved food, but in the form of a beloved book by Eric Carle.

“The Very Hungry Caterpillar, while very cute and fun,” she said, “was far removed from the context and lived realities of the children whose worlds included biryani and halwa and not salami and cherry pie, for example.” Verma advocated for the inclusion of books that were written by Indian authors, whose stories and references would better connect with the children she was teaching. After gaining experience teaching and then working as a self-employed consultant for curriculum, Verma’s growing interest in research and theory brought her to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s PhD program in the College of Education.

So, what attracted her to the public engagement research assistantship? “I come from a home where food and nutrition were talked about a lot and were valued a lot,” she explained. “There's a saying in in Marathi—अन्न हे पूर्ण ब्रह्म (food is God, or food is next to God). It’s a kind of reverence that is associated with food.” When she saw the posting and its relationship to wellness and food, she was excited to make a contribution in that space while also forging relationships in the local community.

“The College of Education and HRI created this assistantship to enable graduate students to develop research directly addressing community-driven priorities,” said Emily Stone, director of public engagement at the College of Education. “Bhakti has listened to her community mentors, advancing their priorities while also pursuing her academic goals, showcasing the potential of community-engaged research to connect campus and our local community.”

And while Verma’s post-degree path is not clearly delineated just yet, she is excited to be practicing applied research. “I would much rather see something changing based on research than talk more academically about it,” she explained. “I appreciate this RAship because it gave me an opportunity to leverage my strengths and interests and helped me to be a part of the community here. I am very grateful for this opportunity for the meaning-making it facilitates for me in a new context.”

Verma knows that working within organizations and systems can be complex, but that her efforts can contribute to positive change over time. “Once this is shared with enough people, I think that there'll be some movement. Because these are systemic things, and they're going to take some time to get into motion, but I'm really glad that I get to be a small part of it.”