KANSAS CITY, MO — As the baking industry scrambles to fill a dwindling labor pool, thinking outside the box — and looking outside the usual spots — is becoming a common occurrence.
Meanwhile, STEM educators are helping their students consider new secondary education and career pathways.
Some programs, such as Overland Park, KS-based Blue Valley Center for Advanced Professional Studies (CAPS), part of the national CAPS network, are tapping into industry-informed curriculum to provide real-life applications for STEM-related education.
During the National Consortium of Secondary STEM Schools Professional Conference held in Kansas City in November, Jennifer Bauer, Blue Valley CAPS business development specialist, and Joe Whalen, biosciences instructor at Blue Valley CAPS, joined Jennifer Lindsey, VP of global marketing for Corbion, in outlining the benefits of industry partnerships with educational institutions.
The Blue Valley CAPS program, which operates under Overland Park’s Blue Valley school district, uses a project-first mentality.
“We start off with the project, then we basically say, ‘Alright, what gets this student excited? What are they curious about?’” Whalen said. “We spend purposeful time working with students to find out what really gets them going and help them develop a project. Then we get them connected with people from industry or the research world to engage in that project.”
Although Blue Valley CAPS is part of a specific school district, it’s not tied to the district curriculum; rather, it’s tied to university coursework.
For Bauer, the curriculum is project-focused, and that requires revising as needed.
“It’s a constant process,” Bauer said. “It’s small wins, trying things out with small groups and then understanding what parts are scalable and what parts aren’t.”
The most important element of that, Bauer suggested, is a willingness to take risk.
“What we should be doing is sticking our neck out a bit to prove a concept to see if it’s viable before we roll it out,” she said.
“There’s a thought, widely, that STEM doesn’t need to focus on food because we already have access through culinary arts, and you can buy food at the grocery store and prepare it at home,” Lindsey said. “But developing that food to get it on the shelf — and to make it safe to consume with the proper nutritional profiles and that also tastes good — that involves a tremendous amount of science.”
In this curriculum development, the program relies on outside stakeholders including post-secondary institutions, prospective students or even business partners. It starts with need identification before identifying who needs to get involved.
One such stakeholder for Blue Valley CAPS is Corbion; Lindsey was on the advisory board in 2010 when the Blue Valley CAPS building opened. There were no classes related to food, mainly because there was an assumption that the business of food was culinary, not a STEM subject.
With Lindsey’s help, that assumption has been blown apart, and the Future of Food program has flourished.
“There’s a thought, widely, that STEM doesn’t need to focus on food because we already have access through culinary arts, and you can buy food at the grocery store and prepare it at home,” Lindsey said. “But developing that food to get it on the shelf — and to make it safe to consume with the proper nutritional profiles and that also tastes good — that involves a tremendous amount of science.”
Supply and demand is not only out of whack in terms of supply chain for consumer goods. It’s also off-kilter for workforce and higher education in overall food manufacturing.
In some respects, the food industry can “catch” STEM students as they fall out of other STEM-related disciplines. But why not snag them before they enter other programs at all? This is where industry-informed curriculum comes into play.
In 2013, Blue Valley CAPS implemented a food science STEM track with a core advisory team that could inform the program from “real world” applications, including Corbion’s Lindsey, along with a fell colleague, a food scientist and microbiologist from K-State and a culinary arts instructor.
Since then, the course has gone through constant iterations and refinement, not because it wasn’t working but because that’s the spirit of the scientific method.
“One of the key tenets of our school — of all course designs — is to make sure you’re responsive to the needs that are out there,” Whalen said. “Are there new industry trends or societal shifts that we need to be responding to? Are we taking in what the students are experiencing?”
As with any program, it’s important to remember who the customer is. But in an industry-driven environment, who is that, exactly?
Ultimately, it’s the students. The program is industry-driven, but the students are the key to keeping the industry alive.
“That leaves the big question as, ‘If you build it, will they come?’” Bauer pondered. “It’s up to you to go out into the market, especially where there’s low awareness.”
Bauer identified careers in food manufacturing as “low awareness, high impact.”
The solution lies within the application, and that’s how the awareness can be generated … and retention achieved. And that breeds innovation.
“I have a phrase: ‘At the intersections is where innovation occurs,’” Lindsey said. “Science for the sake of science is cool, but it has to offer a benefit. So, understanding science and how we can deploy it in business and in the ‘real world’ is key, especially for young talent.”
That may not be more evident than in food science, especially in food manufacturing. And when the industry brings this awareness to students at the high school level, it opens the door for an all-new labor pool that’s brimming with innovation.
“It’s about helping them understand our responsibility to society at large,” Lindsey said. “And that includes the science and all that’s involved to deliver safe, healthy food. Many of us take it for granted, but safe food is still an issue. In this industry, we believe we have a responsibility to deliver that.”
