Course Overview
Available for credit to students across all UCs, Plant Futures: Introduction to Plant-Centric Food Systems fosters interdisciplinary connection while providing a systems-view exploration
of both the challenges and emergent solutions and opportunities within our current food system.
By the end of the course, students will:
Understand how food intersects with multiple disciplines and scales of impact
Build confidence and community as ethical, systems-minded leaders
Articulate their personal “why”
for joining the plant-centered movement
Develop an Institutional Change Proposal rooted in local impact
Course Values
This course is guided by three core values that frame learning as both inner and systemic transformation:
Systems Entrepreneurship
Connecting personal, public, and planetary health with animal welfare, diversity, and equity.
Ethical
Leadership
Merging activism and entrepreneurship to benefit a broad and diverse range of stakeholders
Creative Transformation
Reimagining commerce, education, and community engagement as acts of cultural and ecological stewardship.
Across disciplines, from public health and environmental studies to business, policy, and the arts, few educational spaces center plants, food systems, and cultural wellbeing as interconnected levers for change. Traditional curricula often silo topics like nutrition, sustainability, and policy, leaving out the emotional, cultural, and intergenerational dimensions of how we eat and relate to the Earth. This fragmentation limits students’ ability to see themselves as part of systemic transformation.
Foundations of a Plant-Centered Future responds by offering a multidisciplinary and intergenerational learning environment that grounds food systems education in personal reflection, community wellbeing, and collective action.