Students develop life skills in this culinary lab
Students work at their stations on blueberry muffins in the Culinary Creations Lab in the Student Innovation Center on Monday morning. The lab is part of hospitality management's baking and pastry class. Photos by Christopher Gannon.
The Student Innovation Center helps students develop what's next and its Culinary Creation Lab allows time to provide them with important life skills.
The lab is available to rent -- $93 for four hours and $187 for eight -- outside of College of Health and Human Sciences class periods. All students can use the equipment in the lab, something not possible for non-majors at other kitchen lab locations across campus. Those interested -- from campus groups to instructors -- can email Matt Haynes, apparel, events and hospitality management program specialist, at mrhaynes@iastate.edu.
The culinary lab is one of six spaces in the building colleges helped plan to better serve their students.
Erica Beirman, culinary food science program coordinator in the College of Health and Human Sciences, used a grant to develop a culinary boot camp she leads in the lab. Students from all majors can learn essential culinary techniques while considering nutrition, food safety and strategies to reduce food waste. Students also tour a grocery store to plan a menu, understand food labels and learn to stretch a tight budget.
"I teach an American food and cultures class, and I asked my students what they make to eat in their dorm or apartment," Beirman said. "A lot said they just made a big pot of rice and chicken and ate that all week. Incorporating a fruit or vegetable into a meal does not have to be hard."
Offerings like the boot camp and other culinary preparation courses provide students with opportunities and ensures the lab is used frequently.
"Normally, when you are designing a space, you set the program and decide what is going to happen in the space," Beirman said. "That was not the idea with this lab. The idea was to be flexible for all types of things, which made it a little challenging."
The lab accommodates 24 students for the boot camp, which is expanding to two sections next fall because of its popularity. Last fall, each student received a chef knife, cutting board, thermometer and glass meal prep dish to keep after completing the eight-week, two-credit course.
The layout
Located on the third floor, the lab features 12 stations with basic kitchen equipment, including an induction burner. The lab has two large convection ovens, an induction range, freezers, refrigerators and kitchen tools from bowls to mixers and blenders. Several large screens hang from the ceiling on which instructors share information with students.
Students Izzy Mentzer (front) and Sammie Saucedo place blueberry muffins into a convection oven in the Culinary Creations Lab in the Student Innovation Center on Monday morning.
Courses in the lab
Beirman enlisted alumni and entrepreneurs to teach several courses the food science and human nutrition department conducts in the lab. Courses range from one to three credits.
Jessica Anderson, an alumna and owner of Jess Desserts in Des Moines, leads a baking workshop focused on the fundamentals of baking and desserts. It covers a range of techniques from simple cookies to more complex pastries and breads.
Karla Boetel, food science and human nutrition professor of practice, returned to campus to teach after working as the executive chef for ISU Dining in the early 2000s. Boetel teaches a pasta course where students learn how to make rolled, stuffed and cut pasta. Boetel demonstrates how to make each pasta, and students use the second half of class to prepare their own. They can eat it there or take it with them.
"I want to make it very approachable for them," Boetel said. "By the second week, you can see there is excitement and they want to learn about the dishes."
Emily Nienhaus, another ISU alumna working at the Better Homes and Gardens test kitchen in Des Moines, taught a course focused on international cuisine, flavors and food sources.
"All of those offerings filled up very quickly," Beirman said. "Bringing in instructors with real-world experience helps students learn from their successes and the things that did not work."
Many students in the courses would like to start their own full-time or side business, she said.
Outside of the food science and human nutrition department, hospitality management teaches a baking and pastry course in the lab where students get the realistic experience of working in a bakeshop, restaurant or bakery. A non-alcoholic beverages and café operations course focuses on hot and cold beverages, and those students pitch beverage concepts to SPARKS Café in the Student Innovation Center. The family and consumer sciences education and studies program also uses the lab to prepare students to teach in a food lab setting.
Statehouse showcase gives in-person look at ISU innovation serving Iowans
The annual ISU Day at the Capitol will be held Tuesday, March 4. Archive photo by Christopher Gannon.
The Iowa State Capitol rotunda will be decked out in cardinal and gold on Tuesday, March 4, for the annual ISU Day at the Capitol.
President Wendy Wintersteen will lead a group of more than 40 faculty, staff and students representing 17 Iowa State programs that demonstrate how Iowa State innovation serves Iowans by building the state's economy, supporting its nation-leading agricultural industry and preparing students for future careers.
Legislators, statehouse staff and other visitors will get a close-up, in-person look at the following ISU programs:
- Kent Feed Mill and Grain Science Complex, a hub for research and training that support Iowa's grain, feed and livestock industries.
- Iowa Nitrogen Initiative, a public-private partnership using trials on private farms to build tools to help Iowa farmers make the best decisions possible about nitrogen management.
- ISU Creamery, an on-campus facility producing and selling ice cream and cheese to give students valuable experience.
- Digital Ag Innovation Lab, an ag-tech research group passionate about solving industry problems, now housed at a new 85,000-square-foot facility in the ISU Research Park.
- Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, the world-class food-animal lab critical in safeguarding Iowa's $32.5 billion livestock industry and the nation's food supply.
- Production Animal–Veterinary Early Acceptance Program, an initiative to recruit and retain veterinary students interested in practicing food-animal medicine.
- Egg Industry Center, a source of science and research for the nation's egg producers.
- Ames National Laboratory, a global leader in the discovery, synthesis, analysis and application of new materials, chemistries and analytical tools.
- Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, a team devoted to helping Iowa's farmers and industry leaders better understand the impact of issues that affect them.
- Center for Industrial Research and Service, a partner for Iowa companies with complex problems, from adopting new technologies and enhancing productivity to attracting talent and developing leaders.
- Pappajohn Center for Entrepreneurship, providing hands-on training, support and experiences to Iowa's next entrepreneurs with a variety of programs, including highlighted student businesses that benefited from the CYstarters accelerator.
- Manure and Nutrient Management Lab, a research group devoted to the science of manure, including its management, use as fertilizer and environmental impact.
- Army, Navy and Air Force ROTC, the three Reserve Officer Training Corps units continuing Iowa State's long history of military training and education.
- Iowa Soybean Research Center, a partnership with industry and farmers that helps coordinate research, teaching and extension related to soybeans.
- America's Small Business Development Center Iowa, a source of free, confidential, customized and professional advice to business owners across Iowa.
- Iowa Beef Center, the university's extension team for cattle production has helped beef producers save more calves with a series of interactive clinics.
- Iowa Pork Industry Center, a program that provides Iowa's more than 5,000 swine producers with accurate and timely information.
University presidents visit education appropriations group
Iowa's three regent university presidents met with members of the Legislature's education appropriations subcommittee Monday afternoon to summarize their appropriation increase requests for the year that begins July 1 and answer legislators' questions. Most of the questions related to compliance with state law and recent federal executive orders.
President Wendy Wintersteen's request mirrored her September request to the Iowa Board of Regents: $11.8 million in new funds for seven Iowa State initiatives that focus on enhancing Iowa's rural economy and supporting Iowa businesses.
The seven requests for additional state support in fiscal year 2026 are:
Enhancing Iowa's rural economy
1. Incremental operations funding for the Agricultural Experiment Station ($3.75 million) and Cooperative Extension ($1 million) to help maintain the state's agricultural competitiveness and explore opportunities for growth. She noted that ag-related businesses contribute about 22% of the state's gross domestic product. Three proposed focus areas are: workforce development and entrepreneurship, digital and precision livestock and crops, agricultural economics policy and training.
2. New support ($4 million) to open four manufacturing hubs in partnership with community colleges and create new pathways for students and manufacturing employees to complete in-demand four-year and advanced degrees. Funding would upgrade existing training centers with advanced technologies and update and align curricula, led by the Center for Industrial Research and Service and the colleges of Engineering and Agriculture and Life Sciences. The name for the concept is MakeIowa: Advancing our Manufacturing Pipeline.
3. New support ($1 million) for scholarships to assure in-state College of Veterinary Medicine tuition rates for up to 10 students/year accepted into the ISU Production Animal-Veterinary Early Acceptance Program established in 2023 -- a novel way to recruit more veterinarians to serve in rural Iowa. Upon graduation, the scholarship would be forgiven if a veterinarian worked for five years as a food animal veterinarian in rural Iowa.
4. Incremental support ($250,000) for livestock disease research, to leverage even more external research funding and combat threats to the state's livestock industry. Every $1 the Iowa Livestock Health Advisory Council invests leverages $10 in external funding.
Supporting Iowa businesses
5. Incremental operations support ($1.5 million) for the new Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (VDL), particularly its new Biosafety Level 2 facility. Current appropriations and the lab's fee income can't cover this expense. About 16% of the VDL's operating budget comes from state appropriations (the rest is test fees), compared to an average 48% at other VDLs. This is the largest food animal-focused VDL in the nation, with 1.6 million tests annually.
6. New support ($250,000) for staff and operations in entrepreneurship, for example, competition prizes, travel to national conferences and competitions for students and professional mentoring for faculty.
7. Top-off funds ($36,005) to reach a total of $3 million annually ($1 million each) for the three state bioscience platforms based at Iowa State (biobased products, vaccines and immunotherapeutics, and digital and precision agriculture), getting to the funding goal established in 2017 when the initiative launched.
Value of an Iowa State degree
Wintersteen told legislators that 93% of the spring 2023 graduating class was employed or continuing in school within six months. Among those graduates, 44% graduated without any debt. And a lot of those graduates remained in Iowa:
- 65% of resident students (2,343 students)
- 24% of non-resident students (458)
- 31% of international students (175)
She referenced a Wall Street Journal article that said graduates from public universities need to earn at least $50,000/year, on average, in their first decade after college for their degrees to pay for themselves. She said Iowa State graduates have a great return on their investment when measuring salaries.
ISU degree pays off
|
Post-graduation |
Average salary |
|
Year 1 |
$45,891 |
|
Year 5 |
$63,370 |
|
Year 10 |
$81,082 |
Help others pronounce your name with this Workday feature
Names can have a mind -- and a sound -- of their own. Consider Tonya. Some with that spelling prefer "TONE-yuh," others "TAWN-yuh." Or, maybe Snowdown looks pretty obvious, but its owner goes by "SNOW-done." Is that a hard G or soft G to start Gilley? Workday offers a task that lets employees and students submit an audio clip, a phonetic spelling or both for the accurate pronunciation of their name. If you own one that's prone to miscues, consider taking two minutes to add a pronunciation guide to your Workday profile. Your colleagues, who want to be respectful, might be grateful for the guidance.
To date, just over a hundred faculty and staff have used at least one piece of the voluntary feature, said Lukas Miller, assistant director, human resources. Students also may set up a pronunciation guide for their name in Workday. Here's a summary of a help article on using the pronunciation feature in Workday:
- In the top search bar in Workday, enter name pronunciation and select the change task that appears.
- (Make sure you've allowed microphone access to the myworkday website in your browser security settings). Click on the blue microphone icon to audio record your name pronunciation. If you opt to redo it, click on the trash icon to first delete the audio file you don't want to use.
- In the text field, type the phonetic pronunciation of your name. UPPERCASE LETTERS indicate which syllable(s) receive the emphasis.
- If you use both features, make sure the audio and phonetic pronunciations match each other -- and represent how you want your name to be pronounced.
- Hit the submit button to save your pronunciation(s).
To find this information on an employee or student's Workday profile, simply type their name in the Workday top search bar and navigate to find their record. If they've provided a pronunciation tip, you'll see the phonetic pronunciation and/or the sound icon under their name.
ISU Theatre puts on a spelling bee
If you've ever wanted to compete for a spelling bee championship, you may get your chance when ISU Theatre presents "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee."
The Tony Award-winning musical follows a group of wonderfully unique and impassioned adolescents -- and audience participants -- in a spelling competition. The joyful night of comedy and quirk features a fun and feisty score, and celebrates the pursuit of victory and the gift of being true to oneself. This musical contains adult content.
"This show is wacky and out there in the best way," said Claire Thede, who plays the role of a spelling bee participant. "It is absolutely hilarious while still hitting home with touching moments."
Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, March 6-8, and 2 p.m Sunday, March 9, in Fisher Theater. All tickets are general admission ($25 for adults, free for youth and ISU students). Tickets can be purchased online via Ticketmaster, through the Iowa State Center ticket office (Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.) or at the door. Free youth and student tickets can be obtained at the door or in advance through the Iowa State Center ticket office.
Guest artist Mary Jo DuPrey returns
Mary Jo DuPrey, award-winning Los Angeles theater director and a renowned vocal coach, is in residence at Iowa State this semester and directs the show. DuPrey returns to Iowa State after directing ISU Theatre’s "Night of the Living Dead! The Musical!" in 2022.
DuPrey was the personal touring voice teacher for singer and songwriter Jon Bon Jovi and coached Daveed Diggs for his Tony Award-winning Broadway performance in "Hamilton." A faculty member at UCLA from 2006 to 2017, DuPrey has directed and acted in countless plays and musicals.
"Watching students grow in terms of their acting and their vocal capabilities -- some of the students who were underclassmen are now seniors -- and you can see the work they've acquired," she said. "It's also a whole slew of new people. It's a fun mix. I'm just having such a great time with the cast. The students are all so hardworking and positive and playful and dedicated to getting the result."
Thede is working with DuPrey for the second time.
"In the last two years, I have carried so much she taught me on all the other projects I've been part of since then," Thede said. "Even though I worked with her so closely before, she is always full of surprises. She brings an energy to the space that makes us want to work hard while also making the rehearsal room feel like a playground for an actor."
An immersive, delightful experience
Before each show, the cast and creative team will interview audience members interested in participating on stage. DuPrey said participating in "Spelling Bee" becomes a lifelong memory for some people.
"It's so funny and so delightful," Duprey said. "People have had this experience and talked about it for years with their friends -- 'You remember when we went to see that show and you ended up in the show?'"
Arts and events
Follow a group of impassioned adolescents -- and audience participants -- in "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee." Performances are March 6-9.
