Student-driven focus on research and learning creates success in school and after.
“Food” is a more-or-less dull word—that is, until you talk to professor-scientist Barbara Rasco, of the food science and human nutrition department. With biochemical engineering and law degrees in addition to a Ph.D. in food science, she teaches food processing technology, food product development, and food law. And she’s a nationally sought-after lecturer in food safety and food defense.
Rasco co-teaches a number of classes. Benefits to students, she says, include giving them more people to go to for assistance and help, and offering multiple perspectives on the material. And there are times when students have two professors in the classroom at the same time.
So what is “food processing?”
It isn’t the science of using that machine you find in kitchens. Her class “talks about all of the technologies, the underlying science—the chemistry, the microbiology, the engineering—that’s involved in getting food from the farm all the way to the consumer in a safe form that has high quality, that people like, and that’s nutritious.”
The department works with food producers to design and build “functional foods,” foods that are marketed because of special nutritive properties. Orange juice with added calcium is an example of a functional food designed to add dietary calcium in a bio-available form for women.
Hands-on learning
Students in Rasco’s department have developed a number of interesting products, such as Load, a sports drink which is now stocked in grocery stores. Other student products include:
- A peanut sauce that can be manufactured on a space station for astronauts
- Special twisty cheese for kids that make calcium fun to eat
- An award-winning, gluten-free dessert product called “Almond Dingers” that provides a safe treat for people with wheat allergies
- Dairy drinks and ice cream containing pro-biotics (bioactive components with beneficial nutritional and health properties)
How about a little Caramel Cashew ice cream?
You’ll find that and many more flavors, plus internationally renowned, award-winning Cougar Gold cheese, at Ferdinand’s Ice Cream Shoppe in the WSU Creamery, which is part of the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition. In a unique WSU version of hands-on learning, students from food science and human nutrition are involved in every aspect of Ferdinand’s business, from creating products to selling them in the on-campus store to telemarketing. They gain both pocket money and marketable skills. Earnings from Ferdinand’s and the creamery also go into scholarships, other student benefits, and support for dairy science research.
Students have many hands-on opportunities: internships, both paid and unpaid;
- student clubs;
- product evaluation teams;
- and product development work in teams and in classes.
The range of real-world experiences makes students highly employable, getting them good jobs with large and small food companies when they leave WSU.
Students on the nutrition side go into clinical practice, food service management both for people with special dietary needs and in the community at large, educating the about nutrition and health, for example diabetes and heart disease sports medicine; medical school; and even law school. Some have chosen work in international work in public health.
Or into business. As a result of a business plan developed in one of Rasco’s classes, one student launched a business in Bellevue, Washington, a gourmet kitchen where people can come in and make meals to take home, or where the alumna creates custom meals for customers that they can take home to cook and serve to meet special dietary needs.
Caviar, anyone?
Aquaculture is another area where Rasco’s scientist side is at work. She helps local producers in California and southern Idaho who raise indigenous sturgeon in a sustainable fishery so that endangered fish across the world will, hopefully, face less fishing pressure. US sturgeon produces an excellent black caviar that can be marketed worldwide.
National food defense
The Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition is currently assisting the industry develop preparedness plans in food defense and bio-terrorism. Most of their current work, Rasco says, is “on the regulatory compliance and preparedness side of things, helping companies to have plans and strategies in place so they can make it harder for their products to be targeted by terrorists.”
Undergraduate research
Undergraduates have many opportunities in Rasco’s department. Examples include food microbiology; special projects with companies such as Cravens Coffee; horticulture (berries, grapes, for instance); product development in the dairy program; and many more.
One more reason why this professor is world-class
She says that figuring out how to help students get where they want to go in life is the best thing about teaching. “It’s not the money. Most of my colleagues in the department could make a lot more money doing something else, but we’re not doing that because we like what we do.”
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