About

The Program in Nutrition is a vibrant forward-looking program that builds on its rich past. Since its founding in 1909, the Program in Nutrition at Teachers College has been a leader in developing strategies for promoting health through encouraging dietary change.

Its mission is to facilitate change in individuals and communities through strategies for modifying personal food choices, food access, food policy, and the food system within which food choices are made to ensure healthy people in healthy and sustainable communities. To fulfill this mission, the Program

• Educates the next generation of nutrition and dietetics professionals to fulfill a variety of entry-level and leadership roles;
• Generates new knowledge, policy, and models for nutrition practice through research, scholarship and demonstration projects;
• Contributes to the enrichment of the community and the profession by service to the field.

To educate the next generation of nutrition professionals, the Program in Nutrition offers masters and doctoral degrees in nutrition education, nutrition and public health, nutrition and exercise physiology, community nutrition education, behavioral nutrition, as well as the Dietetic Internship Program.

Through these degree programs, students gain a thorough grounding in nutrition science, medical nutrition therapy, nutrition education and counseling, dietary assessment, community nutrition, and also in exercise science for students in our nutrition and exercise physiology concentration.

More specifically, the Program in Nutrition emphasizes the development of competencies in:

• Integrating knowledge from the fields of nutrition science, (exercise science where appropriate), foods, the behavioral sciences, medical nutrition therapy, community nutrition, and nutritional ecology to design and implement interventions for diverse individuals, groups and communities locally, nationally and around the world.
• Critically evaluating the scientific, policy and lay literature about food, food systems and nutrition-related issues.
• Facilitating healthful, just, and sustainable food choices, dietary practices, and active lives through direct education along with addressing structural inequities through policy, system, and environmental change
• Designing and implementing public health nutrition assessments and programs;
• Applying sports nutrition principles to recreational and competitive athletes (for appropriate degree students);
• Thinking critically and independently;
• Acting collaboratively and effectively with others in organizations and communities on important issues related to food, nutrition, and sustainability of the food system;
• Conducting food and nutrition‐related research.

Because of the breadth of its aims, the Program admits academically qualified students with undergraduate degrees in fields other than nutrition or the related sciences (following their successful performance in the science prerequisite courses). Such students bring valuable knowledge, skills and attitudes to our program and to the field of nutrition.

Our program provides extensive opportunities for practical experiences in addition to traditional classroom lectures and discussions. Among the course‐related educational experiences are field experiences in community nutrition; planning and teaching of nutrition sessions to selected audiences in the community; practicing nutrition counseling skills; medical nutrition therapy cases studies; food education and gardening projects in schools; dietary assessments and analyses, and social media and web-based nutrition activities. Supervised practice in sports nutrition with college athletics programs is included in the Nutrition and Exercise Physiology degree.

To generate new knowledge, the faculty are actively engaged in cutting-edge and transformative research, and evaluation, policy, and other scholarly activities. They write articles for peer-reviewed journals, books, and reports. Students, both masters and doctoral, are an integral part of these activities. These include childhood obesity prevention research and programs, impact of nutrition education on breast cancer survivors, impact of changes in school lunches and of transforming school cafeteria design, dietary practices of those with celiac disease, parental feeding practices, the role of exercise in diabetes prevention, impact of soda taxes on perceptions and attitudes, and much more.

To contribute to the enrichment of the community and the profession, the faculty are actively engaged in activities at the local, national and international levels: local community organizations that serve the public as well as professional ones such as Greater New York Dietetic Association and New York City Nutrition Education Network, national professional associations, such as the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior, and American Society for Sports medicine, to international organizations such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and International Union of Nutrition Scientists.