Limited number of qualified dietitians

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33032, 27 September 1972, Page 6

Limited number of qualified dietitians

Although the United States provided a wide range of jobs for dietitians, the same opportunities were available in New Zealand, but there were only a limited number of qualified people available to fill them, said Miss Julian Morris, a New Zealand dietitian, in Christchurch yesterday.

Miss Morris has just returned from the United States, where she spent a year’s study at Kansas State University under a New Zealand Home Science Alumnae Trust Foundation award.

The award works on an exchange basis. Miss MaryAnne Leach, from Kansas State University, is just completing a year at the Home Science School, University of Otago.

Miss Morris left New Zealand in August last year to arrive in time for the American academic year. She was employed as a graduate research assistant, and was paid for the work she did on campus.

“I was bound to do about

20 hours a week for the department of home economics,” she said.

Work included institutional management, food service, administrative planning, and industrial administration.

“The work was not so very much different from what I was doing in New Zealand,” said Miss Morris. “I didn’t feel out of my depth at all.” She did a lot of work on standardising recipes and providing guidelines for large concerns, such as factory kitchens, to go by.

“The work I was doing was supported by the Kansas State experiment stations,” Miss Morris said.

Jobs available to trained dietitians in the United States include work in school-lunch programmes, food-service operations, industry, and restaurant management.

The Kansas State University home economics department, which encompasses several fields, has a student body of 1500. Miss Leach was accepted

as an exchange student after replying to advertisements displayed about the Kansas State campus. “I knew where New Zealand was,” she said, “which was more than a lot of people did, or still do know.” She has been doing courses at Otago which can be crosscredited to her degree in the United States. The American home science degree takes four years to complete and the New Zealand degree, five.

This is the first time the exchange award has been in operation. The idea was inaugurated several years ago by the New Zealand Home Science Alumnae.