During her 16 years at MacEwan, Dr. Alissa Overend has taught 88 courses, supervised 16 student research assistants and developed the university’s Gender Studies minor.

Here, the Distinguished Teaching Award recipient and associate professor of sociology discusses her journey to MacEwan, food research and how she optimizes her classroom for learning.

You incorporate universal design for learning into your classroom. What does that mean?

It's removing barriers in your classroom to make the space accessible to the most students. When you can present information in different ways, you provide access to a wider variety of people. It’s the same with testing; some students do really well with written assignments, some do better with multiple choice, some do better with oral presentations and some do better with creative assignments. 

How does that principle contribute to your focus on equity, diversity and inclusion? Could you give some examples? 

A little bit of leeway goes a long way. Students are dealing with all kinds of things we know nothing about. Indigenous learners may learn better through storytelling or land-based teachings. An ESL or an additional language learner might struggle with me speaking too quickly. But if I also show an image or a video, it pulls in more students. Even practices like  flexible deadlines are good universal design for learning principles that can subtly open up the classroom.

What sparked your interest in food research? 

I was a health researcher, so I started with discussions on social determinants of health. But questions kept coming up around food insecurity, food advertising and food marketing. Not knowing what food looks like when it grows or even how it grows can make us somewhat vulnerable about what's healthy and what's not.

It comes down to asking: what is healthy? But that is contextual. It's not about not eating certain things – it's about keeping them in balance. 

You've had some community-engaged partnerships with this topic; is there one that you found particularly successful?

I loved my project on urban foraging. I was in consultation with kihêw waciston about some student-based projects that connected with food discourse. I started chatting with Terri Cardinal, and she suggested a project on berries. As a sociologist, I love that food is connected to macro level forces – to income inequality, colonialism, gender dynamics, media, politics – almost everything can be read through food. We applied for some funding through the Environmental Studies Institute, got a student researcher and looked at foraging, and combined that with Elders’ stories around traditional uses of berries. It was so incredible because the idea of food is also all around us – a lot of Edmontonians don’t realize just how much edible foods are in the river valley.

And now your research is expanding out to more of the province? 

I'm working on a project with Sheena Rossiter on alternative food networks in Alberta – farmer’s markets, community-supported agriculture, food co-ops – any of those food systems that fall outside of the big grocery stores. We are doing an analysis between Fort McMurray, Edmonton, Red Deer, Calgary and Lethbridge. We have some early data, but now we’re looking at what they tend to focus on, where they're lacking, and what that indicates about local policy and food insecurity rates. Of the five cities, Fort McMurray had very few alternative food networks. It's a shorter growing season, the population is smaller, and  it's more north, so there are transportation issues. We eventually plan to expand the study nationally. 

What led you to develop the Gender Studies minor?

It was students who were asking for these courses. They were going elsewhere to take gender studies courses, and they asked why we didn’t have that here. I spearheaded the proposal for the minor, but there was a group of us working on it and I certainly had a lot of help putting it forward. 

It’s interdisciplinary and also inter-faculty. The largest selection of courses are in the Faculty of Arts and Science, but we have a couple in the Faculty of Health and Community Studies as well. I led the minor for six years, and now I'm passing the torch – Dr. Kathryn Holland is taking it over. She'll do great things with it, and has been involved in it since the beginning. 

What did it mean to you to receive the Distinguished Teaching Award?

It means a lot. MacEwan is a place that prioritizes teaching and we have so many incredible teachers. I'm in very good company and receiving the award was humbling.