Welcome to NC-FEW
Worldwide, there has been growing interest in research, education, and discourse around the Food-Energy-Water-Nexus (FEW-Nexus), which serves as a framework to describe and aid in addressing complex coupled human-natural systems and the most significant global challenges of today and tomorrow. These challenges provide a rationale for sustained, systemic, and interdisciplinary educational efforts focused on food, energy, and water systems in a wide array of educational contexts. The National Collaborative for Research on Food, Energy, and Water Education (NC-FEW) is an emergent, transdisciplinary community of educators and education researchers from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and food, agriculture, natural resources, and human sciences (FANH) fields. Through community-building activities, NC-FEW promotes cross-fertilization between participants from diverse disciplinary and departmental backgrounds through sustained network- and capacity-building over multiple years. This community-building endeavor is grounded in the fundamental assumption that NC-FEW can intentionally emerge as a networked improvement community through which to systemically foster and understand STEM and FANH teaching and learning about the FEW-Nexus.
NC-FEW 2.0: What are we up to now?
Next steps for our network, what we are calling NC-FEW 2.0, are being directed by a new Steering Committee. Building on past NC-FEW efforts, the steering committee is charged with initiating and sustaining new efforts to foster collaboration across disciplinary and institutional boundaries and cultivating educational practices that help learners understand and address the complex socio-ecological challenges of the FEW-Nexus.
The NC-FEW 2.0 Steering Committee members are:
- Nirav Patel (Co-Chair)
- Brian Shmaefsky (Co-Chair)
- Sonya Ahamed
- Bhawani Venkataraman
- Doug Lombardi (past NC-FEW K-12 Working Group chair)
- Hui-Hui Wang (ex officio, NC-FEW co-director)
- Hannah Scherer (ex officio, NC-FEW Director)
NC-FEW 2.0 Curriculum Convening
Advancing FEW-Nexus Education as a Field: Developing a Shared Blueprint for Curriculum and Assessment
Friday, October 2, 2026 | 12:00 to 2:45 PM Eastern | Virtual via Zoom
2.0 Curriculum Convening Visit this page for more information on this event.
Synthesis of NC-FEW Efforts and Outcomes: 2019-2025
As a culmination of the 2019-2025 NSF grant-funded period for NC-FEW, this synthesis report includes an introduction that sets up the need for NC-FEW, central NC-FEW activities, the NC-FEW vision for FEW Nexus-based education, stories from each of our working groups, research and practice briefs that were presented at the 2025 NC-FEW conference, our experiences fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, and recommendations for future practice and educational research in the FEW Nexus. The aim is for this document to serve as a durable record that documents the work of the collaborative during this period and as a resource to others interested in FEW Nexus-based education and/or interdisciplinary collaborative networks.
Synthesis of NC-FEW Efforts and Outcomes: 2019-2025 (Acrobat (PDF) 12.3MB Sep25 25)
Suggested citation: National Collaborative for Research on Food, Energy, and Water Education. (2025). Synthesis of NC-FEW Efforts and Outcomes: 2019-2025. https://serc.carleton.edu/nc-few/index.html