Abstract

To fulfill the needs of the food industry for future food and agriculture students with skills and knowledge needed to produce healthy products for the marketplace, a cross-discipline program is necessary. The proposed course incorporates interdisciplinary teams of sophomore students to focus on healthy products for children. A treatment with comparison group design was used to measure gains by a subject knowledge assessment (SKA). The course includes culinary demonstrations, industry interviews, department and lab tours, field trips, faculty consultations, and product development labs. Food technology, nutrition and packaging science teams work ideation to packaging to create healthy children’s products while gaining knowledge in each subject area regardless of their chosen major. The SKA was used to evaluate the mean percent difference value (MPDV) of food science, nutrition, packaging science, and general product development knowledge gained through the course. SKA results indicated that the MPDV were significantly different (α=0.05) between the treatment and comparison groups in overall score and in every subject area score except packaging science. After establishing a cohesive, replicable framework for implementing this course in food and agricultural sciences, the goal is to disseminate the curriculum to other universities to make product development education accessible nation-wide.