Nancy Hunt named 2019 Outstanding Dietitian of the Year
Longtime nutrition faculty honored for effort to incorporate service-learning into her undergraduate nutrition courses.
Janel Shoun-Smith | 615.966.7078 |
Nancy Hunt was honored for incorporating community service into her nutrition curriculum, such as this project where nutrition students gathered pumpkins after the holidays and baked pumpkin bread for needy families.
Nancy Hunt, associate professor of nutrition, was awarded the 2018-19 Outstanding Dietitian of the Year from the Nashville Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the local chapter of the National Association of Nutrition and Dietetics.
Hunt, who has been on the Lipscomb faculty since 1986, served as the undergraduate program director for 32 years, but moved back to full-time classroom instruction in 2018.
“I began working in higher education because I love to teach, so I wanted to put all my efforts into the classroom,” said Hunt.
The award honored Hunt’s effort to incorporate service-learning into her undergraduate nutrition courses, such as community nutrition and nutrition in aging, which teaches about agencies and programs offered through public health or nonprofits.
Nancy Hunt
In her courses, students are required to volunteer at Nashville non-profit organizations such as Second Harvest Food Bank, Room In The Inn, Meals on Wheels and Fifty Forward and local schools. Students have coordinated health fairs for students, served meals to cancer patients and volunteered at the Nashville Food Project, Hunt said.
“To learn the content you need to go out and experience it. You have to interact with the community to be effective,” she said. “These experiences are also developing cultural awareness in our students which has become an essential skill for future professionals.”
Hunt is also actively involved with Lipscomb’s IDEAL program (Igniting the Dream of Education and Access at Lipscomb), which empowers students with disabilities to grow into adults with opportunities. Students in the IDEAL program take her Principles in Nutrition course each semester and her community nutrition students assist with planning food labs for these students to learn basic food preparation skills. Hunt also works with IDEAL students during their annual summer camp.
Under Hunt’s leadership, Lipscomb’s didactic nutrition program maintained an internship match rate above the national average for three decades.
Hunt said when she began teaching at Lipscomb, the majority of nutrition students were planning to work in clinical settings, but today she sees many more students looking to work with the community.
“This generation wants to help the underserved,” she said. “They discover what they want to do in nutrition by our getting them out into the community and exposing them to the various practice areas. They are very servant-heart oriented.”
Hunt completed her B.S. degree and dietetic internship at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. She holds a master’s degree in education from Middle Tennessee State University and an M.S. degree in nutrition and food science from Western Kentucky University.
Learn more about Lipscomb's Department of Nutrition and Kinesiology.