Welcome to the presentation for the Bachelor's degree in Nutrition Sciences. I am the Program Director. My name is Don Stankus. I come from the area of culinary nutrition. I worked in commercial kitchens for the first 10 years of my working life, and became interested in nutrition through having a background in biology as well. My focus is in the food and cultural side of nutrition as well as working with cancer patients.
A little bit about our program, we are an accelerated three-year program. The goal is to prepare students for admittance into our Master's degree program, which is a two-year program designed to combine both the didactic and supervised practice work to leave with a degree that can allow you to sit for a Registered Dietitian examination. So what is Nutrition Sciences? Well, it kind of encompasses several different areas. It's not just the food itself, but as well as the food system where the food actually comes from, as well as the science of the food, understanding the biology of the body and how food interacts with the body itself, at the very root of the chemistry of those foods, as well as human behavior, and getting people interested in eating healthier and the thought process behind that.
Some of the coursework our students will take is areas of sports nutrition, healthy food preparation where students actually get their hands dirty and work with the food itself understanding how to make take a recipe and make it healthier, the lifecycle of the people as well, everything from preconception up to death, and how nutrition changes through those times of our lives. And then nutrition counseling where we focus on behavioral change, and hoping and helping people get interested in making those changes and how it can help hold their hand through that process.
A little bit of an overview. There are a couple of things changing within the nutrition education field that's very important to understand. January 1, 2024, our accreditors are requiring that students have a Master's degree to sit for the RD exam. This would mean that you need to take a Bachelor's degree in four years, a Master's degree internship, and then sit for the RD exam. This is a seven-year process. Well, we are proposing here, and actually, we're working towards, is we currently have the accelerated three-year Bachelor's degree in Nutrition Sciences. We're applying with the hope of accepting our first class in a two-year, which is the future education model program, which is a two-year Master's degree program with a supervised practice or internship integrated into the coursework in a two-year fashion. So this won't be a five-year program versus what traditionally would be a seven-year process for students. So we've cut two years off that process for students to keep it as quick and cost-effective for them as possible.
Clinical relationships we have an area-- we have lots of different areas we utilize and integrate into our coursework here. Everything from Yale New Haven Hospital systems, Siemens Medical Center in Bridgeport, wherever your hospitals work locations, New Vans Health, which is Western Connecticut, as well as many smaller locations around the state. Current career opportunities-- many of our students get into clinical nutrition, leaving our location which is kind of our focus, but with the addition of our exercise science program, we're getting a lot more students interested in wellness and nutrition coaching, nutrition education general, as well as our public health areas. I'd like to welcome you and thank you for your interest in our program.