Beyond the Bench: Building Business Skills Into Food Science Curricula

Michelle Frame, president and founder of Victus Ars Inc., often brings on food science majors to intern at her boutique food development laboratory each summer. She recalls that one summer, as she and her team were trying to work out an issue for a client, one of her interns muttered that she didn’t understand why Frame and her colleagues were struggling to come up with a solution. The company in question should just bake the item for an additional 10 minutes, she told them. Problem solved! This, Frame contends, illustrates the trouble with too many of today’s food science graduates: They lack the critical business skills necessary to help them manage real-world problems that companies face.

“It didn’t occur to her that this company was working with band ovens. In order to increase baking time, it would require about 50 more feet for the oven—and that would mean cracking through a wall in their facility and adding a new building,” Frame says. “She was thinking like a research and development (R&D) scientist. She thought she had a simple fix to the problem, but by just adding on some bake time, she had actually added millions of dollars to the project. And this is something I see with so many new food science graduates. They lack the business skills to think beyond the technical issues of a project and how what they do impacts the overall business.”

Frame is not alone in her concerns. Food scientists who are working in the field understand that success requires more than just strong technical skills. Today’s graduates also need to be well versed in critical business skills, including communication, project management, networking, accounting, data analysis, and more. Joseph Awika, head of the Department of Food Science and Technology at Texas A&M University, says that a rigorous science focus has long been the standard for food science curricula across the country. With the majority of students heading straight into industry positions outside the laboratory after graduation, however, he says students benefit when they have the opportunity to develop strong business chops while still in school.

“At A&M, most of our students don’t go to graduate school to pursue a master of business administration (MBA) after getting their bachelor’s. They go into industry, and more than half, based on the surveys we get back from graduates, end up in technical sales positions. That is a business-heavy job,” he says. “Even the students who end up in product development or quality or safety positions still benefit from business skills as they often end up on career paths that will ultimately lead to supervisory roles within the company.”

Even the students who end up in product development or quality or safety positions still benefit from business skills as they often end up on career paths that will ultimately lead to supervisory roles within the company.

As colleges and universities continue to hear back from industry partners and former students about what they’d like to see from tomorrow’s graduates, leading food science programs across the country recognize the need to help students hone their business competencies. This will not only help new graduates better succeed in the workforce but will also prime them to drive future innovations across the food and beverage industries.

But despite a clear need to find ways to add business proficiencies to an already stringent course load, the question remains: How well are food science programs bridging the gap between food science and business knowledge?

Overcoming the Challenges of Tradition

Adding business classes to existing food science curricula is not without its challenges. To start, most food science programs rely on IFT’s Higher Education Review Board guidelines to help inform their undergraduate food science and food technology programs. This guidance outlines minimum foundational content requirements in general chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry, biology, microbiology, human nutrition, calculus, and physics, as well as expected standards to cover in food chemistry, food microbiology, food safety, food engineering and processing, sensory science, quality assurance, and food laws and regulations. Recognizing the need for a well-rounded preparation for the world of work, it also includes standards for data and statistical analysis, critical thinking and problem solving, food science communication, and professionalism and leadership.

Dojin Ryu, director of the Division of Food, Nutrition, and Exercise Sciences at the University of Missouri, says it is difficult to cover all of the key subject areas within the framework of a typical undergraduate schedule. “In my day, it was common to require 140 credit hours before you could graduate. Today, however, 120 hours is usually standard,” he reflects. “We have the challenge of maintaining scientific rigor while trying to educate our students and yet add in these different areas of study to ready them for work in the industry.”

While Texas A&M offers two food science and technology bachelor’s degrees—a food industry option and a food science option—Awika says the food industry track barely diverges from the traditional food science option.

In my day, it was common to require 140 credit hours before you could graduate. Today, how-ever, 120 hours is usually standard.

“This track differs by just a couple of courses—and the differences are more imaginary than real,” he says. “The vast majority of our students are actually on this industry track, and it’s simply because they don’t have to take a second organic chemistry class. That’s really the only advantage to them.” That’s why, Awika says, it is imperative that food science programs look closely at what their students need in order to benefit most once they take an industry position.

“A good curriculum would be one where we could find some balance. There would still be good science, but there would also be a group of more business-oriented electives in business marketing, economics, communications, and business analysis,” he says. “The problem is [that] trying to make these kinds of changes is met with a lot of resistance because so many in our field believe you cannot be a food scientist unless you stay with all of the traditional science classes.”

Preparing Students for the Real World

Many food science programs have found creative ways to add more business skills, ranging from communications to entrepreneurship, to their programs. North Carolina State University, for example, has two food science program tracks: one science-based and one focused on technology, which provides business classes like public speaking, marketing methods, international finance, and human resource management. K.P. Sandeep, head of the school’s Food, Bioprocessing, and Nutrition Sciences Department, says there have been these two different options for longer than he’s been in residence.

“Some students are interested in R&D and product development. They want those hands-on technical laboratory skills in food safety, quality assurance, and product development,” he says. “Other students are interested in creating a business and developing entrepreneurial activities in the food industry. So, our technology concentration allows them to learn those important business-related skills, including business models, communications, and marketing skills.”

While there can be internal rumblings within the department that one path is inherently easier than the other, Sandeep is circumspect about those perceived differences. After all, engineering may come across as more challenging than art to some (and vice versa), but if the student is learning the skills required to support the career they want, does it really matter in the long run?

“Each person is taking the relevant coursework to support what they want to do, so if there is that perception, they only encounter it for a short time internally,” he says. “They are gaining the knowledge they need for the career they are interested in pursuing.”

Iowa State University used to have a dual track program, says Terri Boylston, Curriculum Committee chair and associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, but the university has since moved to a single curriculum.

“There was probably a difference of as many as 10 credits between those two options. We wanted our students to have more flexibility in how they could tailor fit their program based on their interests. So instead of having a science and a business track, we now have professional electives,” she says. “Instead of saying that every student has to have six credits in business, we want to give students the opportunity to pick courses that best fit their individual interests.”

When it comes to ensuring that students are gaining the necessary business skills, Boylston says that professors work hard to integrate business skills directly into all of their required courses, with specific emphasis on their capstone course, Food Product Development.

“This class pulls together all of the basic food disciplines. Students will work with teams to come up with new product ideas and go from the benchtop to the pilot scale during the course of the semester,” she says.

“We rely on our alumni to serve as [a] board of directors for the students, meet with them at midterm, and give them industry perspective about things like feasibility, marketability, logistics, and other key business objectives,” Boylston continues. “By the end of the class, they’ll have done scale-up, shelf-life studies, developed labeling information, nutrition facts panels, the whole works, and while it’s not exactly like what happens in industry, it gives our students a good idea of what to expect.”

Other programs are also looking for ways to integrate business offerings into existing coursework. Purdue University has its Food Entrepreneurship and Manufacturing Institute (FEMI), an innovation hub that attracts industry partners from all over the country. Senay Simsek, head of the Department of Food Science at Purdue, says FEMI gives students an opportunity to work on real-world industry problems while still at school and learn key business skills in context.

“Student teams work with these companies to come up with solutions to a wide range of industry problems. They write up reports about what they come up with and they present those results,” she says. “Those students gain invaluable experience writing for industry clients, working in teams, giving presentations, and coming up with feasible approaches to deal with an issue. This kind of experience translates into the business world.”

Other programs hope to provide business skills through industry mentorship programs, workshops, internships, food science clubs, and business development days. Others are working to add new minors to their existing programs. Sandeep is particularly excited about an upcoming entrepreneurship minor that North Carolina State University plans to roll out.

“Innovation is becoming more important in the food industry,” says Sandeep. “We have put a lot of effort into identifying the skills needed to support entrepreneurship. We have an entrepreneurship division at the university, and we have been in contact with them to come up with foundational courses that relate to budgeting, business ideas, and how to flesh out concepts to ensure a business will be viable. A lot of those skills can be taught in a single course, and we are working on creating a course in our department that is specific to food entrepreneurship.”

Graduating to Business

As Awika noted, there are some food scientists who are loath to give up on the scientific rigor of the curricula used in traditional food science programs. For those who are interested in more exacting business coursework at Iowa State University, Boylston says, they can always apply to a special program that will allow them to achieve both their bachelor of science in food science and MBA in five years. Yet, she acknowledges, only a few students take advantage of this program each year.

“Students apply their junior year and take a mix of both business and food science classes for those last two years,” Boylston says. “It’s a great opportunity for students, especially for students who are very interested in working on the business side of food. These courses cover marketing, accounting, finance, management, and leadership skills.”

Sometimes good scientists aren’t always good managers.

Chapman University does not offer a bachelor’s degree program in food science, only a master’s level degree. Lilian Were Senger, program director for the Faculty of Food Science, says that Chapman offers a dual food science master’s (MS)/MBA program, which has been growing in popularity.

She explains that the program is a collaborative effort with Chapman’s Argyros College of Business and Economics, and that it “gives our students a way to get oriented with competitive advantage, financial accounting, and other key business skills before getting on the job. We’ve found that it really gives people a leg up before they start managing people. Because sometimes good scientists aren’t always good managers.”

Maria Khalil, who graduated from the Chapman MS/MBA program in 2020, says she felt that the business classes helped her immensely, not only as she started to consider her career options after graduation, but once she started work as a food safety specialist at Jack in the Box and Del Taco. “This program really expanded my view of what a career in food science could be,” she says. “I realized there were so many possibilities outside the lab, specifically leveraging technology and data to help make more informed business decisions. That was really attractive to me and helped me find a role that fits.”

The Need to Keep Evolving

Take a look at any food science job posting and you’ll see more than scientific requirements. Chances are, you’ll also see calls for communication, innovation, collaboration, and project management competencies. Simsek says that the field of food science is a dynamic one. Food science programs must keep up, evolving their curricula to meet both scientific and business needs, in order to continue attracting top quality students and to prepare them for the careers that will exist once they graduate.

“The trends are changing every day,” she says. “We need to make sure our students are up to date with the latest needs and that we are providing them with the right hands-on experiences so they can go into industry with confidence.”

As programs continue to listen to alumni and industry partners, it’s clear that they must continue to integrate both science and business into their programs. Awika says it will become increasingly important, as both science and technology continue to advance, that the field, as a whole, takes a step back and thinks long and hard about what it is a food scientist really does as they contemplate future changes to their curricula.

“Do the typical food scientists we train need to have organic chemistry I, organic chemistry II, calculus, and analytical chemistry? As we think about how to answer that question, we need to consider what it is we are trying to prepare these students for,” he says. “We need to move with the times. Maybe, when food science programs were originally conceived, students were all working to become fundamental scientists. They were going to create new foods. They were going to do a lot of basic science. But today, I don’t know that the typical food science graduate is always going to work in a lab. It will likely depend on the school and the program. So, we should reconsider what our curriculum needs to look like and think about ways we can keep the core science but also integrate the industry and business needs so that our graduates can be most successful moving forward.”

Frame, for her part, agrees. She hopes to see future summer interns with stronger business chops—who have at least a basic understanding of concepts like cash flow, balance sheets, capital expenses, supply chain, and profit and loss statements. She believes it’s what will allow future students to drive true innovation across the food industry.

“We need more people with a food science background in leadership positions,” she says. “If we can find ways to get food science students these skills, we can make that happen. We can help them get into the room where decisions are being made. And we need them to be in the room where decisions are being made, where strategies are being developed. This goes beyond helping businesses become more profitable. This is also about helping the food industry become healthier and more sustainable over the long run—and bringing consumers higher quality, nutritious products while still driving positive effects to the business.”ft