CFAES Connect: April 2015

Join The Ohio State University's Buckeye Room to provide strong representation from the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences alumni community.  To facilitate hearing the voice of alumni on countless Ohio State priorities, an initiative called the “The Buckeye Room” was recently launched. Some think of it as the world’s biggest focus group. The Buckeye Room – open to all alumni – is an online forum that will enable the university to better understand the perspectives of alumni, and then shape programs around those viewpoints and preferences. If you agree to participate, you will be asked a handful of questions a couple of times each month. The questions will be brief, aiming for an investment of no more than 10 minutes of your time; and you will receive frequent reports on results. We hope you will join us in The Buckeye Room. We want to hear from you!

For more information and to join:  http://www.osu.edu/alumni/news/ohio-state-alumni-magazine/issues/november-december-2014/the-buckeye-room.html

Congratulations to Sam Custer of Ohio State Extension’s Darke County office (pictured with his grandson Owen), who received the Agricultural Advocacy Award at the Darke County Chamber of Commerce’s annual Ag Day Luncheon and Program in Greenville March 25. The award is given to those who advocate for the advancement of agriculture in the community.  Custer earned his bachelors (1981) and masters (1984) degrees in agricultural education, both from The Ohio State University.

In her proclamation, Chamber President Sharon Deschambeau said:

“Samuel Custer has demonstrated extensive participation, leadership and support of agriculture. Sam assists Darke County with some of the biggest changes in agriculture — going global and technology. Darke County farmers now operate in an international market and they work in a highly technical arena providing animal comfort and care, geospatial machinery operation, and selection of seed for optimal performance with less chemicals — all while increasing efficiencies and profitability.

“Sam Custer’s local role is to bring unbiased research information from The Ohio State University to the agriculture community of Darke County and to work with local farmers to do on-farm research and share that information back with the university. This is a continuation of 100 years of work that allows farmers to meet the nutrient needs of our expanding population.”

Also during the luncheon, John Fulton of the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering presented “Big Data in Agriculture,” featuring trends in technology, data management and sustainability. His family owns Fulton Farms in Troy.

Having an unusual upbringing and exhibiting uncommon initiative and resolve, Dr. Rohini Desai Mulchandani has broken barriers throughout a remarkable, inventive career and an impactful, generous life.

Unlike many young women growing up in mid-20th century India, Ms. Mulchandani (Ph.D., 1976, food science and nutrition) had parents who gave her the opportunity to “follow her dreams,” even if that meant “losing a child to America.” At age 19, after graduating from the University of Bombay (Mumbai) with a BS (Honors) degree in chemistry and a minor in physics, she arrived in the United States in 1964 to attend graduate school.

“Getting a doctorate was actually my father’s suggestion at first,” Dr. Mulchandani recalls. He agreed to help pay for the first year of graduate school using her “marriage money” -- funds intended to pay wedding expenses of a female child. Paying for the rest of her education was left up to her.

Working as a graduate assistant, she earned her master’s degree in food science from Michigan State University in 1966. That fall, she came to The Ohio State University on another assistantship in order to earn her doctorate in dairy technology. She was a full-time student for three years, and following marriage and a five-year break, returned as a part-time student while working full time at Ross Laboratories in Columbus, the nutritional products division of Abbott Laboratories.

In order to complete the research needed for her doctoral dissertation, she worked in the lab at Vivian Hall (now a parking lot) after hours and on weekends. It was 1975.

“At the time, women were not permitted in the building after 7 pm.,” she said. So she had to assume responsibility for her own safety in order to receive the same 24-hour access to facilities as men had. She received her Ph.D. in 1976.

Her career at Ross began in 1973 and ended in 1998, with personal demands of marriage and family at times interrupting her job and her education. But she never lost sight of her goals. In the early years, as a food scientist at Ross, she worked on many product and process improvement projects. Among those products were Similac, Isomil and Ensure. In fact, her doctoral research project was an extension of one of these Ross projects to perfect an add-on heat treatment in the processing of nutritionals to improve their shelf stability. Such work experience at Ross opened doors to new product development projects.

“I entered Ross Labs as a novice food scientist and emerged years later as a product developer,” she said. “The transformation was so subtle that I didn’t realize it until a few years ago. The hands-on training I received at ‘Ross U’ was tremendous, and helped me, later on, to successfully transition into the role of ‘chutney lady’, operating a small business, where I was both product developer and business owner/operator, all wrapped in one.”

In 1998, after an unexpected layoff and official retirement in her early 50s, she founded Arjay Gourmet Foods, Ltd. On her own, she developed the chutney business, at first selling the gourmet condiments and seasoning locally at farmer’s markets, festivals and stores, and later expanding the territory, driving to numerous states east of the Mississippi River. “It was a very different life from the one I had known as a scientist. But I loved every minute of it.”

Throughout her careers, Dr. Mulchandani developed and/or commercialized 27 new products for sale in the United States and abroad, authored two patents, and won several awards both as a scientist at Ross and for her products and activities as a business owner. While she acknowledges that she accomplished this mostly through her own drive and determination, she credits her parents for their progressive parenting style in raising a daughter.

“I know that all girls in my school or college in India were not nurtured in this way,” said Dr. Mulchandani, now a grandparent herself and semi-retired from the chutney business. “Also having chosen a career in the sciences, I have worked in a ‘man’s world’ most of my life, and my strong sense of self has served me well. I am ever grateful to my parents for giving me such a healthy start in life.

“They expected nothing in return, instead instilling in me a strong sense of `paying forward.’”

Dr. Mulchandani has since made a generous donation to endow Ohio State’s Department of Food Science to partially fund activities of the Product Development teams in her name and during her lifetime, and established a legacy endowment in her parents’ names to fund, posthumously, one yearly graduate assistantship.

“I just wanted to help others the way that I was helped.”

Ohio Sea Grant and Stone Laboratory, Ohio State’s island campus on Lake Erie, said a heartfelt “Thank you” to Jeffrey Reutter, who retired from his position as Ohio Sea Grant director on March 31.

“I feel like I’ve had the best job at the university for about 40 years, but this is good timing for my retirement,” Reutter said.

With accomplishments like the creation of a STEM youth program that reaches 8,000 people every year, more than $1.3 million in endowments for scholarships and research equipment, and partnerships ranging from local communities to international collaborations, he leaves behind a legacy of successes that will benefit Ohio Sea Grant for years to come.

Reutter first joined Ohio Sea Grant in November 1972 to take over management of a project related to the construction of the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station near Port Clinton on Lake Erie. In 1977, he wrote the successful grant proposal that brought the NOAA Sea Grant College Program to Ohio State and was instrumental in its designation as the 24th state Sea Grant College in the U.S. in 1988.

Reutter had previously attended graduate classes at Stone Lab in 1971 and immediately caught the bug.