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A new college student may be a little leery of signing up
for a biology or accounting course. But what student wouldn't
warm up to a class called Chocolate Science?
At UGA, food science professor Rob Shewfelt developed the
chocolate class to entice students into the world of food
science. A freshman seminar, the class meets just
one day a week for one hour.
"Freshmen are so great to work with because most of
them are genuinely interested in learning, particularly when
you find a topic, like chocolate, that turns them on,"
Shewfelt said.
In FRES 1010, students get an introduction to college coursework,
senior faculty, and an intimate setting. The class is graded
on a pass/fail basis where students are simply required to attend
and participate in order to pass. For their class project, they collectively design and manufacture a new chocolate product,
including the design of the package and its label and an advertisement that will be posted on
the class website.
And they do eat chocolate. "Every class, we taste at
least three different types of chocolate," Shewfelt said.
Chocolate motivates the students to sign up. But what's Shewfelt's
motivation for teaching it?
"Our state needs more food science graduates," he
said. "Virtually every food company in Georgia has one
of our graduates working for them and we need more graduates
to meet the food industry's demands."
Shewfelt hopes the chocolate class will persuade students
to consider becoming food science majors or tell their friends,
who might then consider food science as a major. The class
is beneficial to other majors too, especially business students.
The class textbook is "Emperors of Chocolate" by
Joel Glenn Brenner. It details the long-standing rivalry between
the M&M Mars and Hershey companies.
"Using this book I can teach the students about business
issues such as marketing, corporate culture and consolidation,
as well as social issues such as child slavery in cocoa harvesting,"
Shewfelt said.
"They learn there are many, many steps between harvesting
and packaging," he said. "And they learn about the many ingredients that go into chocolate."
Shewfelt uses chocolate, too, to teach students the more serious
aspects of food science including the complex steps required
to manufacture food, the tests necessary to make sure chocolate
is safe to eat, nutritional problems associated with overconsumption
of chocolate, and how new and unusual chocolate products are
developed.
Building
the New Learning Environment
The new learning environment is an academic and intellectual
community on the campus of the University of Georgia humming
with the vibrancy of the true college experience—bright
and talented students working with brilliant faculty formally
in the classroom and informally over a cup of coffee or lounging
in the greenspace which stretches from one end of campus to
the other. It is a place which recognizes that new information
technologies are transforming traditional academic disciplines
and embraces those opportunities. |
Freshman
Valerie Underwood and professor Rob Shewfelt get to eat chocolate
every week in his Chocolate Science freshman seminar.
