Cornell University Returns to Compete in Dairy Products Sensory Competition
After more than 30 years in hiatus, the Cornell Dairy Products Sensory Evaluation (DPSE) Team participated in the Regional DPSE Competition. Cornell University was one of nine universities present at the 45th Midwest Regional Collegiate Dairy Products Sensory Evaluation Judging Contest held on October 22nd at The Kraft Heinz Company in Glenview, IL.
Established in 1916 by several universities, the Collegiate Dairy Product Evaluation Contest initially was designed to identify quality defects in dairy products throughout the country so they could be corrected. It expanded over the years to recognize those students and dairy product judging teams that had mastered the ability to identify high-quality dairy products. The contest gives students the opportunity to showcase their evaluation skills and prepare for careers in the dairy industry.
Students tested their palates against professional judges in six different dairy products; fluid milk, butter, yogurt, cheddar cheese, ice cream and cottage cheese. To begin, judges reviewed eight representative samples of the six different dairy products and render judgments on each of dozens of possible attributes and the severity of their departure from the ideal. Students were then challenged to present scorecards with answers that are compared to the judgments of the experts.
The Regional DPSE Competition was a great opportunity for the students to showcase their dairy products evaluation skills and compete with other Universities as: South Dakota State (the winner for the last 9 years), Iowa State, U. of Wisconsin, U. of Tennessee, U of Minnesota, U. of Missouri, Clemson and Michigan State University. The competition was intense, and amounted to 6 grueling hours of exhaustive dairy product evaluation!
The Cornell University DPSE Team was reduced in size from the full team of 5, to 3 so had no chance to win the overall competition. Team members Thomas Reis (undergraduate), Ana Chang and Sofia Lara (both graduate students) were our representatives having trained in the different dairy products since the start of the fall semester. The team was accompanied to Chicago by the Team Coach Carmela Beliciu.
L-R: Sofia Lara, Ana Chang and Thomas Reis.
As previously mentioned, without a full team present, overall team honors were unattainable for the Cornell team, however individual performance in each category was rewarded. We are proud to announce that in our inaugural year and with only 2 months of training under their belts, our students represented Cornell University well. Our students placed as follows:
- Ana Chang – 2nd place in the Yogurt category for Graduate Students
- Sofia Lara – 3rd place in the Milk category for Graduate Students
- Thomas Reis – 5th place in the Milk category and overall 13th rank out of 27 Undergraduate students.
The regional event was a great learning experience for our team and team advisors here at Cornell. We now know what to expect as the format was a little unclear to us going in. We’re confident this event will help us be much better prepared for the National Dairy Products Evaluation Competition in April.
We would like to gratefully acknowledge and thank those who have financially supported this program to date:
- Great Lakes Cheese
- The 1,200 farm families of Agrimark/Cabot/McCadam
- Northeast Dairy Foods Association Boosters
- Northeast Dairy Foods Association Board of Directors
We appreciate all the industry professionals who supported our program with hands-on training, sharing their knowledge and time to teach our students the secrets of dairy products evaluation.
We are always looking for volunteers who are experts at dairy product sensory evaluation to train students. Since this is funded by industry donations currently, any donations to support the program forward are also deeply appreciated. It is our goal, with industry help to put Cornell University back on the map in dairy sensory evaluation. If you would like to support this program either with a monetary donation or as a training volunteer, feel free to contact Rob Ralyea at rdr10@cornell.edu or Carmela Beliciu at clb352@cornell.edu. We’d love to hear from you and talk about this exciting program!
