Listed below are sample resources to help you plan your educator event. You may alter these to fit your needs and can pick and choose which elements fit best with the event you are leading.

Sample Agenda and Presentations

To customize the materials for your event, download the documents to your computer.

• Agenda 
• Food Science Presentation Sample (pptx)
• IFT/Feeding Tomorrow Overview and Presentation Outline Sample (pptx)

Sample Experiment Demos

• “How Do You Taste?” Demo
• Raising Agents Demo
• Skittles Demo
• Beverage Creation Demo

Listed below are some helpful associations to contact in order to begin your search for educators in your community or to potentially help you advertise your event. It is also recommended that you contact local schools and school administrators in your area directly to reach local science educators.

• National Science Teachers Association
• National Association of Teacher Educators for Family and Consumer Sciences
• Association for Middle Level Education

Below is a sample invitation for educators

• Sample Invitation

Helpful Tips for Inviting Educators to your Event:

• Be sure to look at local school schedules to ensure that your event doesn’t conflict with a school event. Teacher Institute days or early dismissal days could be good opportunities for your presentation as these are often intended for professional development for educators.
• Check whether you can offer Continuing Education Hours/Credits for attending your event, which could be an incentive for teachers to attend your program.
• If you are having trouble connecting with educators, call school districts directly.
• Farm Bureaus are also a good place to get connected with, as agriculture programs frequently overlap with food science.
• Be sure to start long before your event and do follow ups with educators to ensure retention.
• Consider creating an RSVP list using a free service such as Eventbrite.com to get an accurate headcount of educators and collect contact and grade information.
• Student teachers are also a great way to reach future educators. Consider presenting in a lecture for pre-service teachers at a local university.

Below are links to resources that could help you engage your audiences in conversations about the science of food, and at the same time give them ideas to do the same in their classrooms!

Careers in Food Science

• Learn more about the different career opportunities available for student interested in exploring food science and technology related fields.
• Hear directly from those who work in food science and the different jobs they have!
• Video resources include:
  • “Food Science: Making Food Fun” 3:09 mins
  • “Amy DeJong & Maya Warren: PhD Students in Food Science” 3:36 mins
  • “Cory Bryant: FDA and Food Safety” 3:57 mins
  • “Fu-hung Hsieh: Food Science Professor” 3:39 mins
  • “Brian Thane: Food Packaging Professional” 3:46 mins“Michele Perchonok: Food Scientist at NASA” 3:38 mins

Why Food Science Matters

• Explore why is food science essential? And the positive impact iT has in ensuring our food supply is safe, nutritious, and sustainable.
• Video resources shared include:
  • “Availability of Food” 1:47 mins
  • “Food Safety” 2:08 mins
  • “Sustainability” 1:33 mins
  • “Nutrition” 3:06 mins
  • “Special Foods” 1:35 mins

K–12 Teaching Resources

• Classroom lessons designed to introduce students to food science through experiments geared to specific grade levels
• Virtual Experience: Discover how milk becomes ice cream—and the (food) science behind it—with a journey through real facilities of ice cream production
• Distance learning resources

Careers in Food Science

• This handout provides an overview of the various careers in food science using data from IFT’s salary survey

Take-Home Experiments

• Additional easy experiments for students to do at home

K-12 Classroom Resources

• A large library of demos and experiments for use in the classroom

Food Facts

• A variety of videos and information for quick food facts

IFT-Approved Undergraduate Food Science and Food Technology Programs

• Universities that have food science and technology departments or programs that offer curricula and options that the IFT Higher Education Review Board (HERB) has determined meet the IFT Undergraduate Education Standards for Degrees in Food Science. To be eligible for Feeding Tomorrow Scholarships, students must be enrolled in one of these programs.

If you have any questions about the material presented or how to utilize it, please email [email protected] for assistance. In addition, many IFT members assisted in the creation of this toolkit and would be happy to lend assistance.

Feeding Tomorrow Fund offers a limited number of funding grants per year for IFT divisions, sections, chapters, members, task forces, and work groups. Funding requests may range from $500 - $5,000 and will be approved by Feeding Tomorrow Fund on a monthly basis. If you are interested in receiving funding to assist in your educator event, please email [email protected] to receive more information about submitting a concept paper for review.