MET Gastronomy Student Helps Boston Mayor’s Office Reimagine Farmers’ Markets
Andrea Catania (MET’24)
Co-founder, EquiTable
MA, Gastronomy, Food Policy Focus
What compelled you to return to school and pursue a graduate education? What is your long-term objective?
Being part of BU MET’s MA in Gastronomy program was a dream of mine for over a decade. I first learned of it in 2011, when I was wrapping up my undergrad degree at the Culinary Institute of America. At that point, I decided I’d return to school when the time was right. Throughout my time in food and beverage operations leadership, I held onto my mission of using my gifts for good. This graduate education is one step in the journey of moving my career in the direction of food systems reform and food justice.
We understand you are involved in a fellowship at Boston City Hall! Please tell us about the fellowship.
It was an eight-week fellowship with the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics (MONUM). MONUM is the City of Boston’s civic innovation and design team responsible for promoting participatory urbanism. The team works across departments and communities to explore, experiment, and evaluate new approaches to government and civic life.
Summer Fellows are assigned a project and embark on a design sprint with the goal of working to implement creative and thoughtful new prototypes to benefit the residents of Boston. I was one of a cohort of six fellows who were current grad students at BU, MIT, Tufts, Harvard and Duke. Each of us was paired with a full-time MONUM team member to support our work. Because my project was related to food access and community building, I was guided by Mark Araujo, the current food security design fellow who works closely with MONUM and the Office of Food Justice.
How did you find the fellowship?
In December 2022, I initially scrolled by a summer job posting for something called “the new urban mechanics,” believing it was probably meant for engineers or city planners, not Gastronomy students like me. But when I saw the position advertised again in the Newbury Center’s newsletter, I took a closer look. It said graduate students from any academic discipline or background are eligible to apply, so I did!
After a few rounds of preliminary interviews, I was put forward by BU’s Initiative on Cities. Then the MONUM team invited me to a four-hour group interview with 20 people during which I had three minutes to teach them something. I chose a brief history of the world’s only upside-down traffic light, located near where I grew up in Syracuse, New York, and connected it to the unconventional civic engagement of people in the Irish diaspora.
How does your fellowship intersect with your current course work?
The project I was assigned during my fellowship was called “What’s Cookin’?” and it was about reimagining what farmers markets could be. The goal was to leverage the city’s resources together with the community to help transform the markets from exclusive and transactional into more holistic spaces.
The project touches aspects of food access, equity, and the power of commensality (the practice of eating together). Here we see genuine food policy in action. As one mayor’s office staffer told me, “Policy is about how people live their lives, not just the minutiae of 1,000 pages of codes that people don’t read.”
Why did you choose MET for your graduate studies? What set MET apart from other programs you were considering?
That MET is part of Boston University is a draw, but fundamentally it was all about the Gastronomy program for me. I would have gone just about anywhere to be a part of this program. The legacy of the program and its curriculum design spoke to me from the very beginning.
Have you been able to use faculty as a resource? Is there a particular faculty member who has enhanced your experience at MET? Who and why?
Dr. Ellen Messer. I’ve taken both of her food policy courses and they have been beyond valuable. Her teaching style combined with her accomplished career makes for such an insightful experience. She never underestimates her students and drives them to keep deeply aware of current issues so that they are equipped to be agents of change.
Is there a particular course project that you would like to spotlight? How do you apply concepts you are learning in your courses at MET in your current job (if applicable)?
In History of Food (MET ML 622) (taught by Dr. Megan Elias), my final project examined how politicians leverage food to attempt to gain political capital. Because people attach value to certain foods, I argued that the public judges candidate relatability and, by extension, electability through a food orientation. The work looked at food in political spaces and considered how we are able to see cultural politics, sexism, and socioeconomic perceptions at play. Furthermore, it explored presidential foodscapes and culinary diplomacy as strategic political tools.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Since being at BU, the Newbury Center has really helped me get in touch with the many facets of being a first-generation college student. I always knew this was an aspect of my identity but didn’t have the vocabulary to articulate the implications of that until about a year ago. With the center’s support I’ve been able to attend conferences, get career coaching, be inducted into the Tri-Alpha National Honor Society, and sometimes just have a place to enjoy a snack!