Exciting news! And a rant...

I found out last week that I was accepted into the PhD program at Ohio State University!! My program is called Rethinking Early Childhood and Elementary Education (RECEE), and I am focusing on Science Education. I'm especially interested in integrating food and cooking skills into the curriculum to increase student interest and help children learn how to feed themselves healthfully and (hopefully) decrease the prevalence of obesity and other health problems.

I was able to meet my advisor, who is fantastic, and she is already introducing me to people and wants to get started writing a paper for publication! Very exciting that she is so knowledgeable and supportive!

Somewhat related to my exciting news, I unpacked my lunch today at work and one of the Research Assistants (undergraduate or newly graduated students who work on our project) commented that my lunch looked delicious. I thought that was funny, as I had been thinking that I put it together in a rush this morning and it wasn't as good as usual. I started talking to two of our RA's, and they mentioned that they didn't know how to grocery shop and plan meals and/or cook for the week on a tight budget. Well, since I practically have a PhD in that subject, I offered to give them some tips.

This got me thinking about the need for a real-life budgeting, grocery shopping, meal planning, cooking class for college students. I'm talking about hands-on skills where we plan what we want to eat and can afford, go to the store, then cook. How can we expect them to figure out how to do all of these "grown up" things if we don't teach them how to do it? I have 12 years of cooking classes through 4-H, a bachelor of science degree in agriculture, and decades of interest in cooking (and eating good food) to help me navigate this tricky subject. Yet we don't teach our young people cooking or homemaking skills any more (not academic enough-and who has the funding for that!) and then wonder why they eat at Taco Bell every night? Gee, I don't know why everyone in America is overweight, has diabetes and/or high blood pressure!

So, my plan is to talk to the RA's tomorrow and offer to teach them how to grocery shop and cook on a budget. Something informal, like once a month at my house. I'm also talking to my advisor about the possibility of putting together a General Studies class for college credit, and maybe conducting some research with college students. We have a Human Nutrition program through our Extension Education Office-maybe they have some extra money?