Student Nutrition Association Updates

On March 24, the Student Nutrition Association and Alpha Epsilon Delta, the pre-health professions honors society, hosted Dr. Tomi Dreibelbis as a guest speaker for National Nutrition Month. Dreibelbis is the Culinary Medicine Course Director and Instructor of Public Health Sciences at Penn State University College of Medicine. She created the interprofessional culinary medicine course at Penn State College of Medicine for medical and other health professional students. Dr. Dreibelbis was joined by medical student Amy Hoffman to discuss the practice of culinary medicine and the program at Penn State. Forty students from a variety of majors attended via Zoom. Many thanks to Nutritional Sciences senior Grace Joseph for organizing the event and to Keally Haushalter (SNA President) and to Samuel DeMatte (AED president) for co-sponsoring it.

The Student Nutrition Association (SNA) continues to grow and succeed in bringing students together despite the pandemic. The Family Mentoring program, in which current members are paired up with new members to serve as mentors, created a new theme each month for their Mentor Family Get Together. Activities included theme-related games or movies viewed via Zoom.

Throughout the semester, SNA made great strides in their efforts to create a healthy cookbook for college students, which will feature easy to make budget-friendly meals for students. SNA is hoping to have the cookbook ready for sale in the fall.

Speakers for SNA's monthly meetings included Associate Teaching Professor Coleman-Kelly who spoke about the different options after graduation, such as the supervised practice programs and David Cassiday and Professor Ross who spoke about the different opportunities available within the Nutritional Science program.

To help everyone through the final stretch of the semester in April, SNA hosted Kerry Bestwick, owner of PYP studio, who walked members through a meditative breathing and yoga session. To wrap up the year, SNA celebrated their seniors and where they are headed as well as the accomplishments of all members throughout the year!