South Dakota State University’s Department of Dairy and Food Science has been an industry-leading program in the United States for more than a century, says Dr. Londa Nwadike , David A. Thompson endowed department head and professor. Starting with the founding of the Dakota Agricultural College in the 1880s, Dairy Science officially began as a department in 1907. SDSU went on to make its first commercial ice cream in 1910. The Davis Dairy Plant is an on-campus, 17,900 square-foot dairy processing facility where students transform milk into cheese, butter, and SDSU Ice Cream . “Our curriculum utilizes the dairy plant to apply information learned in class in a real processing setting, providing on-the-job training for a future career in food safety, operations, research, development, process engineering, or other fields while making marketable dairy-based foods for campus and the surrounding areas,” said Dr. Nwadike. Dairy Manufacturing student and Valley Queen Cheese Company intern Raul Berrones Pedraza says seeing the in-depth processes of making products and the classes at SDSU have equipped him to be able to make impactful differences in the world, like saving water or possibly making a new product. Written by Maddilynn Kallsen + Photos by John Snyder DEPARTMENT OF DAIRY & FOOD SCIENCE SOUTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY 605 STOPS BY
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