Lilli Scott is a second-year student in the Master of Public Affairs program. A native of Fort Madison, IA, Scott received her undergraduate degree in Environmental Policy and Planning from the University of Iowa in 2023. We talked with her about the capstone project she’s doing via IISC.

Your capstone project is in partnership with Iowa Valley Resource Conservation & Development (IVRC&D). How did this project come about?

I’ve been getting involved with Iowa Food Systems Coalition, a network of farmers, policymakers, and others who are working to increase local food consumption while helping rural communities. Through this I met Giselle Bruskewitz, the Senior Program Director at IVRC&D. She informed me that they had just received grant funding to pursue a potential project with the University of Iowa focusing on expanding the market for local CSAs.*

It seemed like a perfect fit for a capstone project, so I let IISC know, and they connected. A big reason why I chose the UI’s Public Affairs program is because of the capstone. It’s a chance to get real world, direct experience while earning your degree. IISC is such an important bridge between the campus and Iowa communities.

Can you tell us more about the project?

We’re just getting started. This semester we’re focused on research and creating a memorandum of understanding with IVRCD. What I understand now is that they want to increase the number of CSAs shares at the local level. University of Iowa employees are a great audience for this, so we’re investigating how and if the university could offer vouchers to help employees access local foods.

What’s exciting to you about this project?

I am very interested in food systems—it’s where I’d like to work. For the project specifically, my team members and I want to keep diversity and equity front and center. We’re doing literature reviews now and finding that the most common CSA participants are well educated, higher-income women. We want to figure out how to get healthy local food to other kinds of people in our community. 

How did you get interested in food systems?

Partly, it’s from growing up in a rural community and being surrounded by agriculture. As an undergraduate, I took Introduction to Sustainability. I was really interested in climate change but assumed I’d need to be in the sciences. Through the class I discovered planning and policy, which eventually led me to the Public Affairs program. 

Learning how climate change impacts communities helped me see that it’s at the local level that you can do something. Commercial ag is such a big factor in climate change, and as an Iowan it’s an obvious place to plug in. 

What experience have you gotten so far in this area?

This summer I interned with SILT [Sustainable Iowa Land Trust]. I tabled at farmers’ markets in Polk County and talked with farmers about the future of their land. SILT is dedicated to helping get farmland into the hands of beginning farmers and others who haven’t been able to afford it. I was able to work directly with the head of the organization and shadow her at board meetings, learn about grant cycles, and other nonprofit work. This is definitely the area I’d like to work in after I finish my MPA this spring.

*According to the USDA, “Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), one type of direct marketing, consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a farm operation so that the farmland becomes, either legally or spiritually, the community's farm, with the growers and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production.”