2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Everyone needs to eat, and the production of foods and beverages provide an accessible model for chemical engineering processes and concepts. In addition to being a pathway into the major, a course communicating food science and engineering is a valuable addition to students’ general education. Applied Food Science & Engineering for Non-majors (CHEG 242) is a sister course to the 400-level (senior/junior) engineering elective CHEG 442: Applied Food Science & Engineering. The 200-level course is aimed at first-year and sophomore non-engineering students and moves at a deliberately slower pace than the 400-level version, with a particular focus on foundational material in chemistry, heat transfer, and thermodynamics in a food-context. The course is also designed as an online-only summer course that meets the university “laboratory science” requirement. Students are grouped into teams that design and execute collaborative experiments within their own kitchens and then pool the data to draw conclusions. This “science” work then forms the basis of individual students’ food engineering designs for new and improved food products. The course uses three iterations of this experiment-analysis-design loop as its primary instructional and assessment mechanism. This work is complimented by lectures and supplemental video material as well as reading and reflective writing. This paper describes the course outcomes, design, and delivery, and concludes with portable takeaways for those seeking to create similar courses at their own institutions.