by Linda McCandless
Geneva, NY - The Cornell Institute of Food Science (CIFS) broke away from their labs and offices on Monday, August 19, to hold a day-long retreat at Camp Edgemere, in Ovid, NY. Twenty-six attendees, including faculty and research associates, focused on program areas previously identified in the Institute's Strategic Plan, in an attempt to make them fully functional across the Institute. Dean Daryl Lund addressed the group after lunch.
The five program areas are Healthfulness and Safety of Food, Food Quality & Usefulness of Food Components, Value-Added Food Products & Processes, International Food Science and Sustainability of the Food Supply (to be renamed: "Managment of Food Processing Residuals") .
"We expect this to be an annual retreat," said Mark McLellan, Director of the Institute and chairman of Food Science & Technology (FS&T-Geneva) , who organized the event with Dennis Miller, Associate Director and chairman of Food Science-Ithaca. "We are very excited about the sense of integration and collaboration that will come from this. It helped us organize ourselves to take the program areas that the Institute is responsible for to the next step of implementation."
The Institute was formed in 1970 to coordinate activities pertaining to food science and technology at Cornell University. CIFS includes Food Science-Ithaca, FS&T-Geneva, and faculty from other Cornell units, including Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Chemical Engineering, the Division of Nutritional Sciences, and the Hotel School. This retreat was a first for the Institute.
McLellan noted that the format followed the same that former president Frank Rhodes set up in the Leadership Development Program at Cornell. In the morning, individual breakout sessions by program area were followed by reports to the group as a whole, followed by open discussion. In the afternoon, breakout sessions, wrap-up, and discussion focused on initiatives in Food Safety Outreach, the Food Engineering & Manufacturing Research Consortium, the CIFS Cornell Associates Programs, Long Range Cornell Food Science Curriculum Issues, and the Food Venture & Process Technology Group.
"This format allowed us to get a lot done in a short amount of time. Many issues were aired and some will need contined work to address," said McLellan.
The next step will be to rewrite parts of the Strategic Plan - "an expected outcome," according to McLellan, who characterized the retreat as a unifying experience. "We hope that each of the program areas that the CIFS is responsible for will continue to meet through the year and evolve with an action plan and implementation of activities to address the strategies that were developed in this effort."
At the retreat, Dean Lund spoke on "The Role of Food Science in the Future Land Grant System." Land grant institutions are under intense scrutiny from national and state organizations to see whether they are as viable a service entity as they were when they were first established back in 1862, said Lund. Re-examination centers around questions of accountability and impact.
In order to position the college for the future, Dean Daryl Lund launched an information-gathering initiative this past spring to identify program areas across the entire College of Agriculture and Life ScienceÑincluding Geneva. At the retreat, he said the next step is to evaluate the programs for quality, relevance, and relative stage of development. This will be followed by the effort to leverage support from state and federal sources. The College Advisory Council will be involved in program evaluation.
"As a viable College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Institute of Food Science, our biggest challenge is to recognize the changing conditions in the marketplace, as well as changing social and demographic issues, look at the interconnectedness, and be a crucial player," said Lund.
Lund noted that there are several ways a strong CALS contributes to society: we provide an educated work force; we are a key player in economic development for the state, and we are involved in research, education and extension on issues relating to environmental quality and quality of life. According to the dean, the Institute of Food Science already makes substantial contributions in each of these areas.
McLellan suspects that the issues examined in the CIFS retreat are very similar to what the rest of the college will have to do as they get beyond the program description phase and look towards implementing these programs as as self-directed, fundable collaborative faculty initiatives.
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