COVID-19 in Context: A Deans’ Forum on Living with a Pandemic - March 15, 2021

When COVID-19 transformed our world just a year ago, the fields of medicine, public health, and biomedical research all mobilized as part of the international crisis response. Yet those disciplines are not the only ones with important contributions to offer. The pandemic is multifaceted, and a full range of expertise is needed for essential insights into both its immediate and enduring impact. In this series of virtual events, Virginia Tech experts present on their research fields and other activities related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This session featured two assistant professors from the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics: John Bovay, who specializes in food and agricultural policy, and Jonathan van Senten, who works from the Virginia Seafood Agriculture and Experiment Station in Hampton, Virginia. Van Senten’s primary focus is on aquaculture, aimed at understanding and quantifying the costs and impacts of the regulatory environment at the farm level. Anna Zeide, an associate professor of history and the founding director of the Food Studies Program in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, also participated. She studies food as a way of understanding environmental change, dynamic cultural practices, consumer behavior, technology, health, and justice. The fourth panelist, William Becker, is an associate professor in management from the Pamplin College of Business, who researches emotions related to organizational behavior, turnover, leadership, organizational identification, and human resources management. Laura Belmonte, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, chaired the session.