Student Jill Allen works with Chef Drew Patterson as part of a “real world” assignment for interns at Ohio State University Medical Ctr.

“I think child nutrition programs in the last five years have become exponentially harder to manage from a business standpoint,” says Kathleen Glindmeier, director of nutrition and wellness for Paradise Valley (AZ) Schools. “If ever there was the need for people who have the specific skill set, it's now. But if we don't start training them when they're young, it's much harder to come into this when you're mid-career. So it's really important that we get them right out of college and help them get that strong foundation.”

The Trouble in Academe

“It's unusual to find a dietitian who starts his or her career in management and stays there,” Lafferty concedes. “Students tend to go into food/nutrition and dietetics because of their love of nutrition and how nutrition relates to health. In our membership demographics in the American Dietetic Association (ADA), we've found that RDs typically enter practice as clinical dietitians, and only after some years of experience do some tend to then migrate into management positions such as clinical nutrition service management or foodservice management.”

Lafferty says part of the reason for the lag in interest at the start of careers is the lack of encouragement at the academic level, and part is due to the emphasis the profession puts on clinical careers.

Management is a part of the core competency that every dietitian has to obtain to become an RD, Lafferty explains, but it's not a big component of the education anymore. “When ADA began in 1917 the real issue was feeding patients in hospitals and the management component was huge,” she says. “But as nutrition has become more of a science, we have gotten away from that.”

Lafferty notes that the issue is starting to be noticed. “I recently served on a brainstorming group at ADA on how do we pull management back in,” she says. “So ADA is now looking at it, too.”

Another factor at the academic level: a reduction in faculty specializing in dietetic management. Lafferty notes that membership in the Food Service Systems Management Education Council (FSSMEC), an organization composed of faculty members who teach the management component of dietetics in programs, has shrunk dramatically in recent years.

The result is that required management courses increasingly are taught by faculty whose PhDs are in nutrition or nutrition-related fields, not food systems management.

“They teach out of the textbook, not their own knowledge or experience,” Lafferty says. The result, she says, is that students are often turned off by rote, bland courses.

“Finding qualified faculty who have the academic credentials as well as the experience credentials to teach these courses in dietetics is tough,” she concedes.

Too true, agrees Kevin Sauer, a PhD candidate who teaches in the Dept. of Hospitality Management & Dietetics at Kansas State. He “didn't know the management side even existed” when he was completing his dietetics degree, he says.

Sauer went on to a full career in foodservice management in several onsite segments, experience he uses liberally when teaching. “I know I make an impression because former students come back and tell me about how they remember the things I said,” he offers.

There is also the dilemma of how to fit more management content into an already rigorous dietetic curriculum. “One of the discussions we've had in ADA is that management truly is advanced practice for dietitians,” Lafferty says. “So, possibly, we need to continue with our current curriculum at the entry level, which already has a management component, but then offer a focus on management at an advanced level for those who decide on management later in their careers.”

Some schools continue to emphasize management more than others. Take the program at Kansas State, where many of the active dining program managers also teach courses in the university's coordinated (undergraduate) dietetic program. That gives them the opportunity to pass on a real-life perspective on the industry and to communicate their enthusiasm about their jobs.

“We can work with students as educators and not just as workers,” says Molt. “It's the first time the students have been in a class where they are expected to use management skills and not just working skills and a lot of them really like that opportunity. We also try to teach students that even clinical can become management at some point in their careers. After all, there are a lot of clinical managers in hospitals, and promotions usually are into management roles. In our part of the world, many students go out into facilities where they find they have to be both clinical and management.”