Nearly 30 years ago, Sue Bailey knew the poised, serious student sitting in the front row was destined to be a professor.
The student spent 15 years working as a registered dietician, and today, Melinda Anderson teaches and directs the program from which she graduated.
“She saw something in me that I didn’t see,” said Anderson, who graduated from Tech’s human ecology: food, nutrition and dietetics program in 1989. “I didn’t appreciate at the time how much confidence she had in me.”
The relationships Anderson had with Bailey and her other mentor, Cathy Cunningham, Tech’s now-retired dietetics professor, are not exceptional in the School of Human Ecology. Instead, they are the rule.
“Dr. Anderson’s door was always open and that really helped me build trust in her,” said Beth Miller, ’13 human ecology: food, nutrition and dietetics. “I may be a little biased, but the relationships the professors form with students here are incredible.”
Miller, now in graduate school in Florida, came to Tech for the nutrition program and to play Golden Eagle softball. She discovered her passion for sports nutrition at Tech doing research with Cunningham about the effects of nutrition on her cross-country teammates.
The School of Human Ecology has prepared students to help improve quality of life for children and families for all of Tech’s 100-year history. The program has changed over the years, but its focus has remained the same.
“I remind myself and I remind my faculty, the students are the only reason we’re here,” Anderson said. “We are here for them, to help them be successful in whatever they want to achieve.”
Anderson’s open door policy extends beyond normal working hours and beyond a student’s time at Tech. She helps prospective students learn about the program and enroll at Tech during weekend conversations. After they graduate, she keeps up with former students’ lives and careers through email and over coffee.
Anderson’s motivation is partly due to the example Bailey set when she was her professor and mentor.
Bailey invited Anderson back twice on temporary appointments to teach and help with research. Since 2001, Anderson has been a fixture at Tech.
“I fell in love with teaching; I loved being with the students,” Anderson said. “I knew when I came back that this was what I needed to be doing.”
Bailey came to a similar, and similarly unexpected, realization about teaching. She had another job lined up when until her mentor told her about an interview at Northern Michigan University.
“The day before my graduation, a deliveryman knocked on my door with plane tickets to Michigan,” Bailey said. “I never looked back.”
Together, the two women have more than 40 years’ experience working in a program that has been part of Tech for a century. In 1915, what is now human ecology was domestic sciences and, later, home economics.
The program’s name and content of its courses have changed with American lifestyles, habits and workforce needs.
When people stopped sewing, the fashion program shifted to merchandising and trend prediction, though students still learn some sewing with focus on apparel and accessory design. When Americans stopped cooking at home, Tech created the Friday Café to teach students to run a commercial kitchen, including health inspections, calorie counts and portion sizes.
“Each faculty works above and beyond to help each student. I am very fortunate to work with faculty and staff who value each student,” Anderson said. “Our students come into the school and they say, you treat me like family.
“I’ll have seniors come in and thank me for my help. I wouldn’t be here if not for Dr. Bailey and Dr. Cunningham. It’s easy for me to help these students because they helped me. I tell my students to carry that forward for someone else when they can.”
Every year since she was hired by Sodexo, the nation’s largest employer of dieticians, Rachel Werkheiser, ’11 human ecology: food, nutrition and dietetics, has paid it forward by annually supervising a post-bachelor’s student in getting the required 1,200 hours of on-the-job work to become a licensed dietician.
It is her way of helping her profession and paying forward the help she received as a student.
“With everything Dr. Anderson does for her students, I feel like this is something I have to do,” said Werkheiser, who earned her a dietetics degree after nearly a decade as an accountant. “Somebody did it for me; it’s our responsibility to continue our profession and help people.”
Anderson says she is ready to help usher in the next century at the School of Human Ecology. An 18-month expansion of South Hall, completed this spring, is helping to set the course for the future, which will include an expansion of human ecology degree options at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
“I do feel a great responsibility to the previous directors, especially to Dr. Bailey as my mentor, to do whatever I can,” she said. “We are doing great things in human ecology and looking forward to creating new memories for our students, faculty and staff. We’re moving ahead.”