From lab to lunch

FarmUs, dining center collaboration serves up career-ready food scientists

TD

ake a bite out of a sandwich between a tomato basil parmesan sub bun offered in one of Kansas State University’s dining halls and you’ve just eaten the product that features elements of an applied learning experience.

The soft bun has a red hue that hints at its flavor of sun-dried tomatoes combined with basil and parmesan cheese. It started as an idea by a K-State student in the FarmUs program and was developed into a regular product being served at Derby and Kramer dining centers.

FarmUs — a farm-to-campus collaborative — involves interdisciplinary product development and undergraduate research experience by K-State students. Through the Research and Development of Food Products capstone course, students develop, prepare and test recipes in small batches and then scale them up to be made and served in the dining centers.

“FarmUs has really elevated how we teach product development to the students and has given them another way to experience that next level of hands-on pilot scale development,” said Kelly Getty, professor of food science and co-principal investigator of the FarmUs program and capstone course.

This experience for students of gaining valuable authentic skills before they graduate is one of many practical applied learning experiences , an imperative of the Next-Gen K-State strategic plan.

Mixing up food science and food service

The FarmUs program started at K-State in 2021 with funding for three years from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Federal State Marketing Improvement Grant. The project’s initial goal was to promote the usage of two Kansas grains — sorghum and wheat — to students through new food items available at on-campus dining.

Getty and Kelly Whitehair, former assistant director of dining support services for Housing and Dining Services and co-principal investigator for the FarmUs grant, further developed the program to include the hands-on product development and research angles.

Kelly Getty reviews a recipe with students in the Research and Development of Food Products course.

“Through FarmUs, our students get to see the connection from the field to the table, and that it can be for everyone to be involved in,” Getty said. “Food doesn’t just come from the grocery store.”

At the beginning of each semester, students in the Research and Development of Food Products course tour the dining centers’ kitchens and train on the commercial-size equipment. Within the first two weeks of class, the students are tasked to come up with recipe ideas. They then present their concepts to an advisory board, made up of faculty, alumni and industry partners, that selects approximately four products that are feasible for the dining centers to serve, Getty said.

The collaboration with Housing and Dining Services is led by Kristi Baonga, menu management and support services administrator.

“It’s important for us to collaborate on projects like this and use the Housing and Dining Services facilities to support research,” Baonga said. “The students I’ve met through this project do so much work to develop their product. In my role developing the menus for the dining centers, there’s still a handful of recipes from the FarmUs program that we regularly use, and I’m happy to continue what the students took time to create.”

Items from the FarmUs program that are served at the dining halls include sorghum lemon blueberry muffins, milo mac and jack, sweet potato breakfast muffin tops, and multigrain subbuns. This year’s class of 11 students are working on dishes with global flavors such as a sushi bowl, biryani chicken, horchata chia pudding and “secret” teriyaki chicken.

From lab to lunch: Scaling up products for use in dining centers

Once the four products are selected for the year, the recipes and ingredients are increased so they can be served in quantities for the dining center. For students like Aidan Cairns, the scaling up process is where she was first involved in the FarmUs program.

Cairns, an August 2025 graduate with a master’s in food science, El Dorado, started at K-State as a food science minor. As an undergraduate, she took the research course in food science and then the product development class where she experienced the intensive hands-on development and scale-up portions of the program.

“Being part of the program and this experience led me to not only change my major to food science, but also get my master's degree in food science, because I wanted to focus more on food product development,” she said.

For Cairns, a major project was scaling up the tomato basil parmesan sub bun. She not only got hands-on experience using commercial-size equipment such as mixers and ovens, but also in adjusting formulations, recording and interpreting results.

“I started with the initial recipe from one of my classmates who had the idea,” Cairns said. “I used the recipe that was made during the recipe’s primary development and decided if there was anything we wanted to change. Scaling up affects the formulation, so I had to figure out how to improve the product and make sure that it maintained the quality that it had when it was at a smaller scale.”

Connecting students with the campus community and industry

A final part of any project’s success is the collection of consumer feedback. Students in the product development course can use the dining center to offer samples of their recipe to the students who eat there every day, Baonga said.

“We have approximately 1,200 students coming in and out of our door for lunch service, and they can stand right at the door and let them taste it,” Baonga said. “They get the feedback that they need for their research, but it also exposes all the students that are eating in the dining centers to that research, and they get to taste something new, and then at the same time learn what other students are doing. Most of the students eating with us are freshmen, so they're still new to K-State, and are exposed to opportunities that they might see later in their college career.”

The program also introduces students to industry partnerships. The FarmUs consortium members include the Kansas Department of Agriculture, Kansas Wheat, Engrain, Center for Sorghum Improvement and Nu Life Market.

Rachel Klataske, K-State alumna and senior director of business development at Nu Life Market, a sorghum supplier based in Scott City, also served on the program’s advisory board.

Klataske said this experience was both personal and rewarding.

“It was a full-circle moment for me,” Klataske said. “I graduated from K-State with a bakery science degree and then I started my career in product development for a cereal company. I really enjoyed getting to meet the students and try the products that they came up with and then see what the reception was of the recipes they developed in the dining halls. Our partnership jump-started things for sorghum at K-State, and we're still working closely with Housing and Dining Services.”

Serving up career-ready graduates

For Cairns, the FarmUs program was the catalyst to her becoming more focused in food science.

She credits her FarmUs experience with helping her land a food development job with Newlyweds Foods as an associate scientist.

“I’ve really found my passion,” Cairns said. “The FarmUs program has given me a lot of great experience when talking to potential employers. I now have experience developing new products and overcoming difficulties in the product development process like working individually to further a project.”

Getty notes that in addition to being prepared for careers after graduation, the students feel a sense of personal accomplishment at the conclusion of the course. “They are very proud of what they have done,” Getty said.

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