I’ll never forget my first job interview following the completion of my doctorate degree in food science from the University of Minnesota.
I sat before my potential new employer ready to answer questions about my about my thesis, dissertation and the research work I was part of the previous four years.
Instead, just about every question focused on me being part of a team that won a contest sponsored by the dairy checkoff.
Our low-carb ice cream took first, and it dominated my interview discussion.
- What exactly did you create and how did you go about doing it?
- What were the technical challenges you had to solve to make the product a reality?
- How can you commercialize it?
There were many other questions and when they finally ended, I had gotten the job.
This experience illustrates how crucial it is for food and dairy science majors to have real-world experiences beyond the college classroom. Participating in this competition provided just that for me and my classmates. It required conceptualization and working through a variety of variables and challenges, and the competition obviously carried a lot of weight with the people sitting across from me in my interview.
I often think about this experience as I now oversee a similar new product competition on behalf of National Dairy Council. We recently crowned a winning team of students from Utah State who created a tasty beverage for gamers – the theme of this year’s contest. Along the way, they cracked the code on using acid whey, normally an unusable byproduct from the production of cottage cheese and yogurt.
Like previous years, there were many worthy winners, but our judging team, which includes dairy farmers and dairy company professionals, settled on the Utah students.
While there are no assurances their “Moba Boba” beverage, which contains 92 percent dairy, will ever reach the marketplace, you can never say never. Every year, this contest generates publicity, and you never know what catches the eye of a processing company or maybe inspires innovation.
But there is another objective that I am excited about and that is using this contest to keep the focus on dairy and fostering a possible future workforce for our industry. This is needed more than ever as we’re seeing an influx of companies that produce non-dairy alternatives, including some that are made in laboratories. There are far more of them than when I competed in the contest in 2004 and you’re seeing them claim their products are better. Like the dairy industry, they are seeking to hire the best and brightest minds coming out of college.
It is so refreshing to hear the way students from this year’s competition spoke about our industry, including our farmers, and seeing the many unique ways they use ingredients to create innovative dairy.
It’s hard to say how many of these students will accept employment with a dairy company upon graduation. I do know that since 2012, we have had more than 500 dairy and food science students be part of this experience and quite a few have gone on to make dairy their career choice.
While our checkoff priority always will be to grow sales and build trust of dairy, I think another important goal is to help foster a future workforce of talented dairy scientists and innovators.
Our product competition is a great way to help assure this happens.
To learn more about your national dairy checkoff, visit www.USDairy.com or send a request to join our Facebook group. To reach us directly, send an email to TalkToTheCheckoff@dairy.org.
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