College of Health Professions Dean Laura McKnight Reflects on 26-Year Career
The retiring dean for the College of Health Professions says she is grateful for all that she has seen and accomplished throughout her 26-year career at ISU. As a faculty member and program director of dietetics for 24 of those years, Laura McKnight has seen many changes in the education of nutrition and dietetics. In her more recent stint as dean, she has had the opportunity to work with several other health science programs housed in the College of Health Professions to promote curriculum change, program growth and faculty development.
Having come up the ranks through the Dietetics Program (now titled the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics), McKnight has seen a lot of changes to the program offerings at Âéśš´ŤĂ˝AV in the health professions.
âISU has a reputation for providing excellent education programs in the health professions,â McKnight said. âOur competitive and rigorous programs yield outstanding graduates to provide health services to the residents of the state of Idaho and beyond.â
A graduate of ISU herself, Mcknight was asked, âWhy dietetics?â She confessed that she didnât originally intending to go into dietetics. Her original plan was to be a radiographic technologist, but she ran into an⌠issue.
âI love medicine, but Iâm squeamish,â McKnight said. âSo when I was doing my rotations for radiographic science and would have to go to surgery or something, the room would spin and I just didnât do well. So I thought Iâd go back to dietetics because I loved food and nutrition, and I had a lot of the prerequisites.â
It was a surprise to find out in her dietetic internship at the VA in Salt Lake City and later in her first job as a clinical dietitian that sheâs still be around blood, especially working with patients on dialysis. Even up to her last day of teaching, she required forewarning if her students were going to show something graphic in a presentation.
Throughout her career in dietetics, she has seen more diversity in the program with more men and minorities entering the field. Dietetics has always been attractive to nontraditional students as well as those exposed to nutrition therapy through diseases such as diabetes and Celiac Disease. McKnight says the field has migrated from a home economics-esque program to a greater focus on the healthcare and science side, which has increased the rigor of the program.
Of course, there is still the basic need of teaching students how to cook. Micknight used to tell her students, âIn teaching others, we need to remember that people eat food - not nutrients.â
Teaching Introductory Food Science, Meal Management, and Foodservice Management courses for years, McKnight and now-faculty member and former student, Char Byington, remark that many come into the program not having many - if any - cooking skills.
McKnight shared a fond memory of teaching a cultural meal segment in the foods lab, then housing ten kitchens, filled with students preparing foods from different cultures. She smelled something burning and ran to discover students trying to boil oil in order to fry plantains.
âI carefully picked up the pan of smoking oil to put it in the sink to contain the smoke and prevent burns, but accidentally bumped the faucet in the process, causing the water to drip into the hot oil and burst into flames.â
Though she grabbed the fire extinguisher, the resulting plume of smoke caused smoke alarms to blare and the building to be evacuated until the Pocatello Fire Department gave everyone the all-clear. The students learned two important lessons that day: oil shouldnât be heated to a boiling point, and hot oil and water donât mix.
âFrom then on, we nixed deep-fried foods,â McKnight said, laughing at the memory.
The original foods lab designed in the early 1970s has recently been remodeled into a state-of-the-art food science lab. Alumni, including McKnight herself, will always have memories of the avocado green carpet and orange, yellow and green countertops. The lab is used for the teaching of introductory foods (teaching basic food science skills), experimental foods (teaching ingredient modification to change the nutrition profile - low fat, low salt, gluten free, etc.) and a teaching kitchen for the campus and the community.
Char Byington, dietetic internship director for ISU, said there have also been changes in nutrition counseling. Dietitians approach nutrition counseling from a motivational interviewing and behavior change theory approach. In hospitals, dietitians are seen as a healthcare provider, often having diet order writing privileges. Barb Gordon, faculty member and chair of the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, remarked on the practice of combining visits with a physician to provide counseling to a patient. She also explained that dietitians now conduct nutrition-focused physical exams on patients to help identify signs of malnutrition.
ISU has offered the Bachelorâs of Science in Dietetics since the early 1970s and a Dietetic Internship since the early 1990s. Meeting the new professional accreditation standard of a masterâs degree for entry-level practice by 2024, a new Masterâs of Science in Nutrition is now offered both in conjunction with the Dietetic Internship and stand alone for those registered dietitians and nutritionists wanting to come back and earn a graduate degree.
McKnight, with the food service management side of dietetics as her area of expertise, said one of the most important things she used to try and convey to her students was that management principles like budgeting, human resources, communications, needs assessment, program planning and marketing were âtools for a tool boxâ that they would continue to draw from throughout their career.
âWhether youâre going into clinical, community or food service, if youâre in it long enough, youâll find yourself using these tools,â McKnight said. âStudents would come back to me years later and say, âyou were right.â So, of course I loved that.â
University administrators clearly felt that management was a forte for McKnight as she worked her way from adjunct instructor to dean in her 26-year career at Idaho State. McKnight said she routinely drew from the management toolbox herself during her time as dean of the College of Health Professions.
Byington congratulated McKnight on her achievements, and said she - and her sense of humor - will be missed.
âI know Laura as an instructor, having been a student, too,â Byington said. âHer humor just came out all the time when we needed it. You have to be able to laugh at yourself and at the circumstances, and Laura was great for that. Sheâs also a really good to work with on a team.â
McKnight said she would like to be known for her advocacy of students and faculty. Her favorite part of the job has been running into former students and learning what theyâre doing, how passionate they are about their profession and what theyâve been able to accomplish.
âItâs such a pleasure to see them from their first day to when they graduate later, and see their self-confidence and their knowledge and what theyâre able to do.â
McKnight is excited to celebrate her retirement on Wednesday, January 15, from 4-7 p.m. in the newly-updated Albion Hall Foods Lab. She has a lot of trips planned with her husband, intending to enjoy retirement even more than she enjoyed her career.