Health Behavior & Nutrition Sciences

M.S. in Human Nutrition (Class of 2020)

B.S. in Dietetics

"I grew up with two cancer survivors as parents, and what this really opened my eyes up to was all of the healing and incredible qualities of food. Not only can it prevent chronic diseases, but it can also speed up recovery. It can set you up for a really healthy life.

College students glamorize not sleeping and not eating, and it’s really sad. You want to glamorize getting eight hours of sleep at night and eating five servings of fruits and vegetables in the day, but a lot of college students don’t necessarily know how to cook. College prepares you for getting a great job, building a resume and interpersonal experiences, but you can’t succeed in any of that if you are not leading a healthy life. I love teaching students about realistic ways to eat healthily and showing them that you can have a healthy body and a healthy mind through food.

I’ve taught cooking classes for almost every large organization on campus. I’ve done sorority retreats, finals week de-stressors, UD Residence Life & Housing classes, general UD classes that students can take for credit and also cultural cooking classes through UD Hillel. It’s one thing to learn about how to eat healthily but it’s another when you get the opportunity to cook the food yourself. In all of these classes, you get to eat - and that’s what draws college students in.

I’m a second-year master’s student in the Human Nutrition program at the University of Delaware, and I also did my Bachelor of Science degree here in Dietetics. I’ll be graduating with my master’s in 2020.

I love how food brings people together. I love how it can be social, educational and scientific. Food has so much potential to heal, prevent disease and make people happy. I think more people need to learn how to use food to their advantage. Just the idea that I can change one person’s life through food inspires me. To use my passion to teach people something about food and nutrition, and help them live a healthy life in order to go off and do whatever they aspire to do - that makes me really happy."