Dairy Processing - May/June 2024 - 77

Exposure to new research helps
companies fuel their own innovation
without having to conduct the
research on their own. "
Dairy manufacturing short courses are designed for
industry employees from research and development, quality
assurance and manufacturing roles. Undergraduate and
graduate students can also attend these courses at their
university (without college credit) to enhance their own
knowledge base.
Some of these universities also provide online short
courses and certificate programs designed especially for
people that don't have the flexibility to leave their jobs for an
in-person short course. Outside of the universities and dairy
centers, there are other dairy organizations that offer training
for an even wider range of participants.
DI360
One of those training courses is the Dairy Ingredients 360
Training Course (DI360) developed and introduced by the
American Dairy Products Institute (ADPI) in 2017. This
course, which started as an in-person event, covers similar
topics to those that many of the university short courses offer,
but without the hands-on experience or such a deep dive
scientifically.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this course shifted to
an online course in 2021 and will continue as an online
training course into the future. This comprehensive training
course, taught by 25 subject matter experts, 10 of whom are
members of ADPI's Center of Excellence with experience
from academia and industry, is a course in which even nontechnical
people from an organization can understand and
learn. As a result, the course hosts attendees from sales,
marketing, procurement and finance, as well as technical
people from the dairy industry.
Though DI360 includes sessions on manufacturing of
cheese, cultured products, butter, dairy ingredients, functional
and nutritional properties, and safety/quality, it also covers
pricing, markets, exports, supply chain, risk management,
sustainability and more.
This year, Dairy Farm Practices, taught by an expert from
the National Dairy FARM Program at National Milk Producers
Federation (NMPF), was added to the course, truly making
it farm-to-fork training. You might ask why a training course
that focuses on dairy topics that are considered " post-harvest "
would add a session on farm practices. More and more of our
dairy industry employees don't grow up on farms, much less
dairy farms. In general, it means we are all further away from
our food, which can translate into misinformation about dairy
farm practices and environmental concerns.
ENGAGING STUDENTS
Another group of people that can benefit from dairy industry
training is university students. Over the years, a few university
students have taken DI360, but like university short courses,
they have not received college credit for their participation.
That situation changed on Jan. 16, 2024, through a
collaboration with Kansas State University. Through this
collaboration, DI360 is now offered as an online course called
" Introduction to the Dairy Ingredients Industry, " a three-credit
course available to undergraduate students. The course is
listed as a food science class, but any student can enroll in the
course. Students from other universities can also enroll in the
course and transfer the credits to their own university.
The benefits of offering this course as a part of a college
curriculum are many. We are seeing universities lose their dairy
faculty and therefore they also lose the dairy courses that they
teach. Even if a university has one dairy faculty, that one person
can't teach every dairy related topic. Because freshmen can
enroll in the course, it will give them valuable knowledge and
maybe even lead them to a career in the dairy industry.
Even if they don't choose to work in the dairy industry,
they have improved their dairy knowledge and learned
the " real facts " about how the dairy industry works. As
consumers, they can also help to debunk the misinformation
they hear about dairy. The course will be offered again
in the fall semester of 2024 for both industry and Kansas
State participants.
Offering this training course to college students is
important for the future of the dairy industry. Continuing to
invest in your own employees by giving them opportunities
to take training courses will only make the dairy industry
stronger in the years to come.
The American Dairy Products Institute (ADPI) is a
national trade association representing the dairy industry.
The dairy-centric organization aims to connect, engage and
educate its members.
DAIRYPROCESSING.COM | MAY-JUN 2024 77
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Dairy Processing - May/June 2024

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