Reporter Volume 25, No.20 March 10, 1994

By MARK WALLACE
Reporter Staff

These days, information about nutrition is something more and more
people want, and taking courses in UB's Nutrition Program is an
excellent way to get it.
	The program enrolled about 2200 students in its general
education nutrition courses in 1993, a number that is greater than
half the size of the whole incoming freshman class, says Atif Awad,
director of the program.
	"The subject is very popular now," Awad says. "We have so much
demand that the Provost gave us money in the fall of 1993 to add a new
section of 250 students."
	The Nutrition Program currently offers two master's degrees,
in Clinical Nutrition and Nutrition Science, and is in the process of
applying to get a Ph.D. program, Awad says. "We're the only graduate
program in nutrition in the SUNY system," Awad says, "and the only one
in Western New York." The program does not have an undergraduate
major, Awad says, although about 100 students enrolled last year in
advanced nutrition courses for undergraduates.
	The Nutrition Program was the recent recipient of a $45,000
grant from the Allen Foundation in Michigan to support research
activities and guest speakers for a three-year period. "The Allen
Foundation saw that we do a very good job in educating students in the
field of nutrition," Awad says.
	The program currently has only one graduate TA, Anita Young,
who says that undergraduates find the basic nutrition course very
helpful. "The students seem excited by what they learn," Young says.
"It's a practical course that's very useful. We teach subjects such as
understanding the cardiovascular system, that people have heard about
through the media but don't really know about. Students will often
talk to me about how to better their health, using resources on campus
in conjunction with what they're learning in the course."
	Despite the program's success, however, the huge number of
undergraduate students puts a strain on its fairly limited resources,
Atif Awad says. "With our small faculty (five full-time, several
part-time) we try to meet graduate and undergraduate demand," he says.
"We need as much support as we can get from the administration."
	Anita Young adds that the most common frustration of students
in the basic nutrition course is the huge size of the classes. "The
greatest thing we could do is get more money so we could teach more
sections of the course," she says.
	The quality of the program's laboratories, which are located
in Hayes Annex D, separate from the program's offices, also needs
improvement, Awad says. "The physical plant of Hayes D is very bad,"
Awad says. "If you have equipment that needs a controlled atmosphere,
it's impossible to have it there. We need to move, to have our
laboratories and offices together."
	Despite these difficulties, demand for nutrition courses
remains very high, Awad says. "Part of student interest comes from the
fact that the media is very interested in health right now," Awad
says. "But the program's popularity is also due to the fact that we're
good at what we do."