Contact: Maridith Geuder
MSU Food Science Club officers Neil Bogart and Jelena Stojanovic with some of the jellies, jams and honey members produce annually.
Using more than three tons of Mississippi-grown blueberries and native muscadines, a group of enterprising Mississippi State students is turning jams and jellies into improved professional skills--and funds for their activities.
Approximately 40 members of the university's Food Science Club annually produce 8,000 individual jars of muscadine and blueberry jellies and preserves, as well as Mississippi raw honey. The eight-ounce jars are sold through campus retail outlets, as well as online at http://www.msstate.edu/org/food_sci_club/.
The effort last year grossed approximately $50,000 to fund club speakers and member attendance at professional meetings, said incoming club president Neil A. Bogart of Starkville. The senior food science and technology major and certified chef said this year's goal is 15,000 units.
"We basically run a small business," Bogart said.
Typically, members gather on fall Saturdays at the Ammerman-Hearnsberger Pilot Food Processing Laboratory on campus. "We don't work on Saturdays with home football games, but we put in some long days otherwise," he said.
It's a hot, heavy job. Jars and lids must be sterilized, berries must be cooked using 50-pound bags of sugar and just the right amount of pectin, and the final product must be sealed and labeled.
"They'll work 8-10 hours a day," said assistant professor Wes Schilling, the club's faculty adviser.
Schilling, who has worked alongside students, said the process becomes "very labor intensive once the product reaches the correct sugar concentration.
Within a 15-minute span, they'll have to fill hundreds of jars."
Jelena Stojanovic, a native of Serbia-Montenegro and last year's president, said the students are "learning firsthand about industrial food production on a small scale." The food science doctoral student also said the project provides an opportunity "to use skills we learn about in our classes" to produce food items that will be sold as far away as Canada.
Under Bogart's leadership this year, the Food Science Club is adding a sugar-free line of its products. "Because diabetes is a growing problem in our state and nation, including in my family, we felt we should develop a line of products to meet this need," he explained.
Formed in 1975, the MSU Food Science Club received a charter the following year from the Chicago-based Institute of Food Technologists, an international nonprofit scientific society. The club has made and packaged jams, jellies and honey ever since.
In addition to participation in jam and jelly production, the club requires that members contribute to one community volunteer effort each month. Activities have ranged from assisting at a local children's orphanage to helping rid the MSU campus of litter during a day-long cleanup effort.
Overall activities recently earned the MSU club a "Most Improved Chapter" award from the IFT Student Association. "The award recognizes the group's leadership, student involvement, fund raising, and volunteer activities," said adviser Schilling. Michigan State, North Carolina State and Rutgers universities were among chapter of the year finalists.
"The fund-raising activity is unique among student organizations in food science," Schilling noted. "Students at other universities are wowed."
For more information, telephone Neil Bogart at (662) 325-8764.