Students in this undated photo make cheese at Oregon State University’s creamery. OSU has created a new scholarship fund for undergraduate students in its Department of Food Science and Technology.

CORVALLIS — Oregon State University has created a new scholarship fund for undergraduate students in its Department of Food Science and Technology.

The scholarship is available to students in the department’s three study areas: food science, fermentation science and enology and viticulture. The fund is designed to support hands-on learning for students in the program, including internships, research and work-abroad programs.

Directly, college officials say, the scholarship benefits students. Indirectly, it could benefit Oregon’s food and farming industries by helping develop better future food scientists.

“This (scholarship) will have an immense impact,” said Lisbeth Goddik, professor and department head of the OSU Department of Food Science and Technology.

Graduates of the program have gone on to work in many sectors, including at food companies, breweries, wineries, dairies and creameries, as production supervisors on farms with value-added processing, as inspectors for agencies and as entrepreneurs.

“Our current food science students are the future leaders of Oregon’s food and beverage industries,” Goddik said.

The program, college officials and students say, is already hands-on, but some students have missed out on the opportunity to study abroad or do internships because they couldn’t afford the additional costs of travel or housing.

This new fund aims to solve that problem; the scholarship can be used to support travel and/or lodging for students who are doing internships, studying or working abroad in food science via official OSU exchange programs or doing undergraduate research in the department.

“This scholarship can help overcome some of the financial barriers students run into,” Goddik said.

In 2022, the scholarship is targeted to support 30 to 50 out of the department’s approximately 100 undergraduate students.

Lian Moy, an OSU student who was approved to receive the scholarship this year, said she plans to use it to pay for housing to study abroad fall term at Wageningen University & Research, an agricultural university in the Netherlands.

“It would be really tough to study abroad without the scholarship,” Moy said.

Moy works in OSU’s creamery, where she said she enjoys making cheese. Moy said she hopes to bring back what she learns at Wageningen.

Another OSU student, Grace Spencer, was also approved for scholarship funding this year. Spencer plans to use it to study sustainable food systems in France.

“Honestly, without the scholarship I probably couldn’t afford the travel,” Spencer said.

She said she hopes to bring back ideas and innovations from Europe.

“I think it’s super important to understand food systems on an international scale,” she said.

Goddik, the department head, said she hopes the Department of Food Science and Technology will draw more students from farms in the future because she sees opportunities for young people with farming backgrounds to pursue food-science related degrees and then use them to create value-added products.

“What does it take to save the family farm? Sometimes it takes turning a commodity into a value-added product. And we can definitely provide an opportunity there,” Goddik said.

The scholarship’s donors are Grant and Alice Schoenhard. Grant Schoenhard, who holds a doctorate, is a program alumnus. He was a food, additive and medical chemist.