NUTR 428 Community Nutrition 

Fall 2008 location, day and time:  SIMS 113C         

Day & time: Tuesday, 5-7:45 PM  

Course delivery format: NUTR 428 is a WebCT hybrid course meaning electronic and face-to-face interactions. All course deliverables are submitted to the WebCT assignment dropbox. All students are expected to know how to use WebCT.  Attendance at class meetings is mandatory; these meetings typically involve examinations, student presentations or guest speakers.         

Prerequisites: NUTR 427, 421, 221, CHEM 106/108 (2nd semester general chemistry/lab), and physiology. Dr. Silagyirebovich does not approve overrides for students who have not met course prerequisites and will not provide individualized remediation for students with knowledge or skill deficits.  Students are advised against registering for community nutrition until they've completed statistics (MATH 141).  Community Nutrition is a capstone course requirement for the didactic program in dietetics and human nutrition science degree options.  Excellent core skills (writing in English, oral communication in English, computer proficiency with Microsoft (WORD, PPT, XLS), WebCT, TURNITIN, electronic databases (e.g., Food Processor and MedLine) are required.  Students are expected to be technologically self-sufficient, capable of learning to use ADA's EAL, completing online tutorials for the protection of human subjects, EAL and NCP, capable of independently learning to navigate around and search for government web sites, and use government databases.   

Syllabus: copies of community nutrition syllabi from past years are on file in Room 302, Department of Human Nutrition. NO copies are mailed or distributed electronically. Students may contact the administrative specialist to arrange a time to come into Room 302 Life Sciences Building and preview a copy of an old syllabus.  The course syllabus changes from one year to the next but old syllabi are reasonable indicators of the type of work students produce in the course.  The schedule of topics and activities will be distributed to registered students when the semester commences.  This schedule represents the SEQUENCE, not necessarily the exact date, specific topics will be covered. We will use a continuous, formative evaluation process to determine the need to spend more or less time on particular material. Unless notified (typically by an email sent to our class list serve and/or a change in our Blackboard-WebCT course calendar), students are expected to read assigned chapters  BEFORE coming to class during which the reading will be discussed, analyzed, critiqued. 

Assignments failure to complete and/or submit any portion of all assignments on time results in an automatic failing grade for the course. Extensions are not permitted.  Revisions are not permitted.   

Attendance:  Professionalism requires that students be in their seats ready to begin when class commences at 5 PM.  NUTR 428 is scheduled to meet once each week for 15 weeks.  On-time attendance is required for all class meetings.  My course policy on attendance will be articulated in the syllabus distributed the first night of class.  Students who arrive late are counted as absent.  Page 29 of the 2008-2008 undergraduate catalog outlines the university policy on attendance. Chronic tardiness or absenteeism will result is course grades being lowered or course failure.   

Examinations

All examinations are cumulative.  No make-up examinations are ever permitted for any reason.  

Students may NOT use calculating features on cell phones, IPODs, laptop computers, blackberries, or any other computing devices. Students earning transfer credit for courses equivalent to the NUTR 428 prerequisite courses are held accountable for the curricular content of Winthrop's NUTR 427, 421, and 221.  No private tutorial services are provided; if you are enrolled in NUTR 428, you are expected to have the requisite knowledge and skills. All exams are comprehensive and cumulative; expect to be tested on prerequisite course material in all examinations.  All materials discussed in class, posted on our WebCT course site, covered in readings, assignments and projects are "testable" materials. Students are expected to create their own study guides. Registered students are given information about test dates during class meetings.

Generally, three - four examinations are administered. The final exam, is comprehensive and cumulative, administered during final exam week.

Exam format for this course is both constructed response and objective items, primarily demonstrating students' conditional, procedural, and, to a lesser extent, declarative knowledge.  

Course Expectations: Students typically enroll in NUTR 428 during the same semester they matriculate through NUTR 521 (Nutrition Metabolism), NUTR 527 (Medical Nutrition Therapy, the second in a series of two courses) and NUTR 534 (Seminar in Human Nutrition).  Students who successfully complete NUTR 428  generally invest a minimum of ten hours each week on work for NUTR 428. Poor test performance is most often associated with inadequate prerequisite knowledge and skill preparation as well as insufficient time on task each week.   Course activities and deliverables include (but are not limited to) individual and group presentations, primary research article critiques, researching and preparing  grant proposals, agency analysis (observations, interviews, reports), working with the EAL and NCP on ADA's website, and service-learning.  

DPD verification

Students earning DPD (didactic program in dietetics) verification from Winthrop University are responsible for knowing DPD verification requirements. DPD verification information is available online and in university catalogues. 

Technology Competencies

Students earning DPD verification and/or a baccalaureate degree from Winthrop University are required to demonstrate technology competency.  Students are introduced to computer technology in NUTR 221, and continue gaining depth and breadth of knowledge and skill about information platforms, software, electronic databases (e.g., Food Processor), communication systems (email, list serves, web-based courses systems such as WebCT-Blackboard), and ethical issues related to technology throughout the human nutrition program of study.  Winthrop University's student computing labs provide all of the hardware and software needed for NUTR 428 course requirements.  All electronic assignments will be produced using university-supported Microsoft products (PowerPoint, Microsoft Word "doc files" & "EXCEL).  Word-processed files transmitted in any format other than WORD DOC files earn a grade of zero. Caution, word-processing software that  comes with a newly purchased personal computer often has basic text-processing software (e.g., Microsoft Works, wps extension); be advised, word-processed files MUST be transformed to DOC files before transmitting the assignment for grading/evaluation. It is the student's responsibility to transform files to the software supported in Winthrop computer laboratories.  

EMAIL: Students are required to activate and use ONLY their Winthrop email addresses. Assignments submitted from non-Winthrop email addresses will not be graded.  Dr. Silagyi-Rebovich does not respond to course inquiries from non-Winthrop email addresses.  

WebCT-Blackboard: NUTR 428 is a web-enhanced course found at the following URL http://online.winthrop.edu/webct/public/home.pl. Updated information on WebCT servers, hosts, URLS is provided during the first class meeting. Students will be provided information about Web site log in and passwords, and TURNITIN log in and passwords during course orientation.  All course materials (syllabus, assignment instructions, rubrics, templates, course calendar, etc.) are communicated electronically using WebCT.  Names of registered students will be uploaded into our WebCT course site the first day of the academic term. Students are required to activate their Winthrop email accounts in order to have their names uploaded into our WebCT course site.  Student passwords will be distributed during the first class meeting. TURNITIN: Students will use "TURNITIN" for submission of writing assignments. CALCULATORS may be used in NUTR 428 classes and examinations, and should be brought to all class meetings and examinations. Each student must bring her/his own calculator, no sharing.

Human Subjects tutorial - requirement for Fall 2008

SERVER PROBLEMS sometimes occur. If the WebCT or the TURNITIN servers go down on the night a paper is due, send the paper to me via Winthrop’s server/email system. Send your paper as a doc file attachment.  I will be able to verify that the submission was on time.  If the Winthrop server goes down, use your personal computer (or a friend's computer) to upload a file into our WebCT course site. Remember "Murphy's Law", if something can go wrong, it will. Do NOT wait until minutes before an electronic submission is due! More information will be given during our first class meeting orientation session.  

TEXTBOOK FOR NUTR 428 for Fall 2008

Marie A. Boyle, David H. Holben   Community Nutrition in Action - An Entrepreneurial Approach (with InfoTrac) 4th Edition  © 2006  ISBN: 0534465811, Publisher: Wadsworth Thomson.  In addition, students are expected to own a basic human nutrition textbook (any of the textbooks used by faculty teaching NUTR 221 are fine) and a basic food composition (fundamentals of food chemistry) textbook (such as the textbooks used in NUTR 321).  Students are advised that the curricular content of NUTR 428 is designed by the professor.  Readings (textbook, professional journals, government documents) supplement course topics.  Bring your textbook to class on the first night.  Class meetings will generally include an opportunity for students to discuss, debate, reflect on and clarify readings; class meeting time is not the time when reading material is "introduced or summarized" via lectures.  

Evaluation of learning outcomes for NUTR 428: A multi-method approach formative and summative approach is used to evaluate attainment of learning outcomes.  Examinations (objective and constructed response), article critiques, reflection papers, service learning project, oral presentations (may be videotaped), grant proposals, government-based searches of public health web sites, and several online tutorials are all required.  For major writing/project assignments, grading rubrics are provided online so students can see how their work will be evaluated.  Students will also be expected to perform peer-evaluations and self-assessment for some of the coursework.  Faculty-observation of in-class performance for selected projects (e.g., lead discussant, case studies, peer-reviews) will also be used as an evaluation strategy..       

NIH    Frances Stern    Food Policy and Applied Nutrition, Tufts