Photo of students working in a lab

Undergraduate Studies

Departmental Mission Statement

To contribute to a food supply that is safe, wholesome and innovative by providing the next generation food science professionals with cutting-edge knowledge and skills in a personalized, dynamic learning environment.

Vision Statement

To be a leading food science department whose educational programs are characterized by:

  • Graduates who are leading food science professionals making significant contributions to the manufacturing of safe, wholesome and innovative foods
  • A learning environment that is personalized, experiential, and interdisciplinary
  • Faculty, staff and students who are engaged together in supportive teaching, learning, and research relationships
  • A curriculum that is dynamic, responsive, and relevant due to our strong relationships with industry, the research that we participate in, and our use of technology

Our Food Science undergraduates have:

  • Among the highest starting salaries for CALS students
  • Very high placement rates after graduation (usually 100%)
  • A choice of intern opportunities with major food companies
  • Small class sizes with a lot of contact with professors/lecturers
  • Opportunities to do an undergraduate research project
  • A program with diverse topics where the application of disciplines, such as chemistry, engineering, technology and microbiology, are taught in relation to food materials

Interested in a career in Food Science? Find out what Food Science is.

Read about some of our recent graduates and the various positions they are in after completing their studies. Hear what they do and why they choose this career path in their own words.

To find out more about our program, see our entry in the University's Undergraduate Catalog.

The College of Agricultural and Life Sciences has more detailed information about the Food Science major and more information for prospective students.

Look into something you may not have heard about yet: Food & Bioprocess Engineering.

If you are interested in some of the innovative approaches to instruction being used in the Department of Food Science, see our section in the Center for Biology Education's Innovations in Teaching web site.

Read up on the latest activities of the Food Science Club.

If you would like to receive a packet of information describing our programs, e-mail your name and address to foodsci@wisc.edu or call (608) 262-3046.

Changes to the Undergraduate Food Science Curriculum

Over the past 3 years the Food Science department has gone through a considerable amount of discussion about revising our undergraduate program. These discussions have included current and recent undergraduates, faculty and staff of allied departments/programs, alumni and our industry advisory group. During the Spring of 2007 this revised program was approved and over the next couple of years we will be making these changes. To review why and how we undertook this process we need to go back to 2003/2004. The department identified several reasons why we should embark on a revision of our program including:

  1. Results from our program evaluations (multiple years), e.g. exit interviews with seniors, alumni survey, industry advisory focus groups and employer/supervisor surveys,
  2. The desire to change to a student-centered curriculum (both program and course specific learning outcomes), a recognition that previous changes were focused on individual course content and not on how courses relate to one another,
  3. Recognition that the incoming freshman students to UW-Madison have changed (improved greatly) and finally
  4. A realization that the needs of the food industry are changing (from a historical focus on production/manufacturing to greater emphasis on functionality, wellness, biotechnology, regulatory, safety).

After a lot of discussion we agreed on a set of guiding principles for the revision of our program based on what we wanted to see when we were finished:

  1. A revised curriculum that increases the overall core technical competencies in food science, attains our program goals and the learning outcomes of our undergraduate students,
  2. A curriculum that has specific strategies for evolving and improvement (including assessment),
  3. A curriculum where we have both the food science principles and the integration of the various food science disciplines (e.g. foundation and integrated or multidisciplinary courses in junior and senior years, respectively),
  4. Greater flexibility in student learning,
  5. Increased emphasis on food, nutrition, and health,
  6. More exposure to food science instruction in the first two years of the undergraduate program and finally
  7. A curriculum that is rigorous, science-based, and quantitative.

In the past year the Institute for Food Technologists re-approved the food science undergraduate program (with high praise for our revision efforts). We had a focus group of recent graduates, which was facilitated by the UW-Madison Office of Quality Improvement to help with assessment of our current program and suggest aspects for improvement. The faculty revised learning outcomes for all new and existing food science courses and new roadmaps for undergraduate program adopted.

In the newly approved undergraduate program we now have a sophomore gateway course (to help bridge sciences/maths concepts to FS courses), at the junior level we have foundation courses in food chemistry, engineering and microbiology, we changed the capstone to a senior thesis and seminar and at the senior level we have several advanced integrated courses (heavily project-based). The next few years will be an exciting time for the program here and our goal is to have a student-centered curriculum that is responsive to the on-going needs of students and employers.