5/15 Class

We had a guest speaker yesterday; he visited from the National Dairy Council's American Dairy Association Mideast division, which is based in Columbus. The details:
Name: Mike Simienski
Agency: American Dairy Association
Funding Source/ Program Type: Affiliated with the Nat'l Dairy Council; paycheck comes from the milk farmers and Dairy Check-Off (for every 100 lbs milk sold, council receives $0.15)
Purpose/Mission: There are 4 categories of nutrition communication- health professionals, food service and retail, NFL/ corporate sports promotions, and schools and media.
Goals include to promote nutrition education and health through dairy, targeted mostly to kids and their lifestyles. Promotions include "staying healthy on the run," which focuses on healthy snacking in a busy lifestyle.
Program Plans, Monitoring, and Evaluation: Dairy Management Inc. oversees all, and is essentially a huge umbrella. Under this comes the National Dairy Council, US Dairy Export Council, and American Dairy Association; then the Drink Milk and the Got Milk campaigns.
Role of the Nutrition Professional: Four dietitians are currently on staff; Mike's background includes advertsing and so he does a lot of promotional work. Travelling to schools, etc. and portraying the healthy message associated with dairy is one of the best parts of the dietitian's job; room for research as well.

In addition to a guest speaker, we attended the Research Fair at the Convo... I can't believe I will be presenting my own research there next spring.
Some fantastic work has been done at OU. It was great seeing Ally and Emma's posters; I remember a lot about Emma's from 532 last quarter. I remember Ally's research from Celia and Crystal's presenting during 626 in the Fall. I always saw Ashley Kevesdy's poster, as well as several OU-COM and Rec and Sport Science poster's- both school's my own thesis is affiliated with.