One of Professor Richard Delerins’ favorite cuisine recipes is a paleo-cuisine diet dating more than 1,200 years ago and concocted with raw fish, edible flowers, grains of paradise and edible paper from Africa, Delerins said.
With flavors such as these, appetites will be delighted at the Open House for the UCLA Center for Society and Genetics today.
Delerins, a French chef and a visiting professor, is one of several presenters who will speak at the open house to promote the center’s new academic major, expected to begin enrollment in fall 2010, said Richard Moushegian, student affairs officer of the center. Delerins’ taste test is part of the presentation for his class, “Genes, Peoples, and Cuisines,” and is a method of showing the interesting connections between society and genetics.
The Center for Society and Genetics began its curriculum during fall 2008 with a minor. Since then, 45 students have enrolled in the minor program, and 350 students enrolled in seminar and lecture classes during 2009, Moushegian said. Many more are expected to participate in the curriculum as the center becomes more widely known on campus, Moushegian said.
“(A society and genetics major) has been in the works since we’ve been in existence. When we became a center, I would say our academic mission was to develop a major and to join the big boys on campus,” Moushegian said.
The major can count toward either a B.A. or a B.S. depending on whether the students’ classes are more humanities- or scientific-focused, Moushegian said. In fact, 40 percent of the society and genetics minor is comprised of humanities students, and 60 percent includes life and physical sciences students, according to Moushegian.
The society and genetics department is interdisciplinary, meaning that the department has a committed faculty from an array of disciplines, Moushegian said. The open house will explore opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students in research, fellowships, the minor and the anticipated major.
Jillian Theil, a fourth-year political science student, is enrolled in the society and genetics minor as well as one of the center’s research apprenticeships available to undergraduates. Theil teaches weekly at a high school in Compton with a curriculum focused on genetics and its real-world consequences.
Her research apprenticeship is one of 15 apprenticeship projects, which include “Do It Yourself Biology” and “Genes and the Hidden Side of Female Desire,” offered quarterly or yearly and occasionally with a stipend, she said. Students interested in the apprenticeship are encouraged to apply even if they do not take coursework through the Center for Society and Genetics.
Theil is also cofounder and copresident of the Society and Genetics Undergraduate Organization, which has become involved extensively with philanthropy work including raising money for kids who have genetic disorders, Theil said.
“(Society and genetics is) learning about biotechnologies and the implications they have in the world today and what it means socially and culturally to be affected by genetics,” she said.
Theil appreciates the students from varying academic fields in her classes, as does Delerins, who noted the philosophy, biology, psychology and history students enrolled in his class.
His class gives insight into the development of a culture’s history and world perspective through its culinary practices, he said.
Students in Delerins’ class are treated to weekly food tastings.
Delerins has not only won prizes for his work in the social sciences, but he and two other society and genetics researchers earned a grant with which they are beginning a lunch program at Ecole Claire Fontaine, a French-American pre-school and kindergarten in Los Angeles.
As part of his research, Delerins cooks lunch for the preschoolers every Thursday to test their reactions to different variables such as vegetables and spices, while finding connections between cuisine, biology, culture and the food industry.