[ΦTΣ] [Foodsci] Certified Food Scientist (IFT CFS) is questionable
Wayne Iwaoka
iwaoka at hawaii.edu
Mon Apr 23 23:40:17 EDT 2012
Gary,
This comment is not about Certification of food
scientists but I needed to respond to your
comments about the 2011 Guidelines and submitting
annual reports in your message below. I believe
your comment "IFT operating without considering
the opinions of the academic leadership" is
somewhat misleading for the work that was done on
the 2011 Guidelines. I was the chair of the Task
Force that developed the IFT 2011 Resource Guide
for the Approval and Re-Approval of Undergraduate
Food Science Programs. The guidelines were
developed by a group of food science academics,
food industry personnel, and food science
students - all of whom were keenly interested in
the direction of food science education. The Task
Force went out of its way to solicit input at the
CFSA meeting in Corvallis, OR in Nov. 2009, and
also from the IFT membership at large at the 2010
annual meeting. Many of the CFSA and member
recommendations were included in the new
guidelines, however, many Task Force members did
NOT agree with the one CFSA's recommendation that
an annual reporting section not be included.
* The main reason is that several of the FS
programs requesting a 5-year re-approval from
HERB provided limited or no evidence that they
had carried out the assessment of learning they
proposed five years earlier (at initial
approval). Almost nothing was done to improve
the quality of food science education in these
programs during the 4-year period leading up to
re-approval.
* It appeared that many programs had put their
proposals on the backburner after obtaining IFT
approval and then had to scramble to report what
they did for re-approval. Thus, during the last
several years, HERB had to defer re-approval of
FS programs because of missing or insufficient
information on program or course assessment.
* The three-page form-fillable annual report was
a solution to this problem. The Task Force felt
that this would remind and assist programs to
work on sections of their proposals over a 4 year
period rather leave it to the end. Also, a
shorter Re-Approval document containing all the
annual reports was developed to make it easier
for re-approval.
I hope this provides some rationale why we had to
do something different in the 2011 guidelines.
The good intentions of 2001 guidelines didn't
work as envisioned.
Lastly, I do hope you change your mind about not
submitting annual program review information. If
others followed your suggestion, it would
definitely delay their FS programs from
developing a better curriculum for our future
food scientists.
Wayne Iwaoka
Chair, Task Force to develop the 2011 IFT
Resource Guide for Approval and Re-Approval of
Undergraduate Food Science Programs.
At 6:15 PM -0500 4/22/12, Gary Reineccius wrote:
>Hello:
>
> I had the opportunity to express my (strongly
>negative) opinions about the Certified Food
>Scientist program directly to Roger Clements a
>couple months ago when he spoke at the Minnesota
>IFT section meeting. I covered many of the
>points each of you have raised and hope that the
>emails he is receiving now might have an impact
>on this program and more broadly, the path IFT
>is taking in decision making.
>
>The process is one of IFT operating without
>considering the opinions of the academic
>leadership. I believe it was two years ago when
>Bob McGorrin presented the proposal to
>department heads (CFSA/ANDP meeting), that we
>should be providing information to the IFT HERB
>group annually instead of every 5 years. At this
>meeting, every department head spoke against
>this change and show of hands resulted in a
>unanimous vote against IFT implementing annual
>reporting. It was interesting that 2 months
>later, IFT informed all of us that we would be
>required to present some materials for HEBB
>every year from then on. At the last joint
>head's meeting (CFSA/ANDP), there was a
>presentation (by John Huff) and discussion of
>the proposed Certified Food Scientist program.
>Again, without exception, there was opposition
>to the program and now ... IFT is implementing
>the program. I am extremely concerned that IFT
>is choosing to ignore our input. If opinions
>were mixed and no clear stand was evident, IFT
>may take an action they favor, however, they
>chose to act directly contrary to our views.
>
>
>
>In my view, we should not be submitting program
>review information to HERB annually, we should
>not support the Certified Food Scientist program
>and perhaps consider boycotting IFT until
>changes are made in how IFT deals with issues in
>our domain.
>
>
>
>Gary Reineccius
>
>
>
>Professor and Department Head
>
>University of Minnesota
>
>
>
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