The 7th season of Edible Education 101 has rushed by and comes to a close next week, with special guest Michael Pollan, the founding faculty leader of this special course. The focus of the final class meeting is aimed to help our students translate their learnings, passions and intentions and shape them into personal and collective action plans to support a healthy, sustainable and just food system. Throughout the semester we have challenged our students to develop rigorous food systems intelligence. We’ve encouraged them to strengthen their “super powers” of “transparent vision”—the ability to peer beneath the opacity of the marketplace to ask challenging questions of food system stakeholders and seize the connections, tensions, opportunities and challenges in this dynamic era of food.

We are also delighted to invite a number of Berkeley alumni to share their personal paths from “campus to profession” during the final class meeting. Our featured alumnus is Liz Carlisle, a multi-talented food leader, and recent author of the wonderful book “Lentil Underground”.

Michael Pollan has been writing books and articles for the past twenty-five years about the places where nature and culture intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in the built environment. He is the author of Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (2013) and of four New York Times bestsellers: Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual (2010); In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (2008); The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006) and The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (2001). The Omnivore’s Dilemma was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by both the New York Times and the Washington Post. It also won the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, the James Beard Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Pollan is also the author of A Place of My Own (1997) and Second Nature (1991).

Mr. Pollan was named to the 2010 TIME 100, the magazine’s annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people. In 2009 he was named by Newsweek as one of the top 10 “New Thought Leaders.” A contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine since 1987, his writing has received numerous awards: he was a finalist for the National Magazine Award in 2009 for best essay; he received the James Beard Award for best magazine series in 2003; the John Burroughs prize in 1997 for best natural history essay; the QPB New Vision Award for his first book, Second Nature; the 2000 Reuters-I.U.C.N. Global Award for Environmental Journalism for his reporting on genetically modified crops; the 2003 Humane Society of the United States’ Genesis Award for his writing on animal agriculture; the 2008 Truth in Agricultural Journalism Award from the American Corngrowers Association; the 2009 President’s Citation Award from the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and the 2009 Voices of Nature Award from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Liz Carlisle is a Lecturer in the School of Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences at Stanford University, where she teaches courses on food and agriculture, sustainability transition, and environmental communication. She holds a Ph.D. in Geography from UC Berkeley and a B.A. in Folklore and Mythology from Harvard University, and she formerly served as Legislative Correspondent for Agriculture and Natural Resources in the Office of U.S. Senator Jon Tester. Recognized for her academic writing with the Elsevier Atlas Award, which honors research with social impact, Liz has also published numerous pieces for general audience readers, in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Business Insider, and Stanford Social Innovation Review. Recently, she is the author of the book Lentil Underground, which chronicles the sustainable agriculture movement in her home state of Montana.