Anderson Bears the Torch for Public Health
Anderson Bears the Torch for Public Health
Anderson Bears the Torch for Public Health
As a public health nutrition advocate, the College Scholars Program at the University of Tennessee greatly enhanced my educational, professional, and personal journey to be where I am today. Thus, I am honored to share my story and contribute to the College Scholars newsletter as an alumna.
I graduated from UT Knoxville in May 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in College Scholars with an emphasis in food security and public health nutrition. Now in graduate school, I often get the question of my background and what I studied during my undergraduate degree. While I quickly assess how much time a person has to listen while I craft my response, I don’t believe I can ever sufficiently encapsulate the true power of interdisciplinary curriculum through the College Scholars Program.
My particular major allowed me to weave together my passions for food systems, nutrition, and public health. While I started my freshman year with a major in nutrition, I was quickly disillusioned by the siloed approach to food and wanted to think more systematically about the access, utilization, and consumption of food within systems of power locally and globally.
This is what led me to design my interdisciplinary major in food security and public health nutrition. My program sought to examine the intersection of nutrition-related disease and health disparities, within which systems of privilege and oppression interact to influence the ways people access, afford, and consume food. Through courses in sociology, food policy, anthropology, and public health across the disciplines at UT, I studied the plethora of factors that influence food choices and health outcomes in human nutrition, while supplementing my program with minors in Spanish and international agriculture and natural resources.
Faculty mentorship and completion of the senior project is an integral component of the College Scholars Program that attracted me to take my learning to the next level. I was privileged to receive strong support, guidance, and encouragement from Betsy Anderson Steeves, who was an associate professor in the Department of Nutrition. With the support of my mentor and faculty members on my thesis defense committee, I conducted independent research using qualitative methods on the lived experience of food insecurity for UT students.
My College Scholars thesis gave me invaluable skills in qualitative research methods and culminated in presentations at conferences on the local, state, and national level; providing evidence and advocacy for the opening of a food pantry on campus; and the publication of a manuscript titled “Navigating Hidden Hunger: An Exploratory Analysis of the Lived Experience of Food Insecurity among College Students.”
After graduation, I wanted to continue my passion for international engagement and leverage my Spanish speaking skills, so I lived in central Mexico as a Fulbright Scholar with the Fulbright-García Robles (COMEXUS) program. I was selected as a Fulbright English teaching assistant in Puebla City, Mexico, where I taught at Centro de Capacitacion para el Trabajo Industrial Number 08. At this polytechnical school, I taught students aged 15 to over 50, all of whom were passionate about learning English and highly engaged in binational cultural exchange.
I found myself learning more from my students than teaching, as I immersed myself fully in the celebratory culture of Puebla that is rich in gastronomic heritage, indigenous traditions, and holidays like Dia de los Muertos.
Outside of the classroom, I was active in planning sustainability events and teaching art lessons to children at a local community theatre, and I even painted a mural to commemorate my institution’s 60th anniversary. My interest in international food policy and using research and advocacy to promote sustainable food environments in Latin America was informed by my experiences in Mexico, a place and people that will forever be imprinted on my heart.
