Angelina Caradonna
Elective Rotations:
During my internship I had the opportunity to participate in additional rotations and projects that were outside the traditional clinical, community, and food service requirements. Below are a couple of these experiences.
For my elective rotation I got to be a virtual intern for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics headquarters in Chicago. I originally worked with the Life Long Learning department, where I helped research current dietetic trends and brainstorm topics for future seminars, as well as organize data. I got to listen in on a COVID seminar for RDNs & NDTRs and provide feedback to the team on the strengths and weaknesses of the presentation.
However, when the Academy announced at the end of June that FNCE 2020 would be virtual due to COVID, I was pulled to aid in transitioning the conference to be entirely online. I participated in remote all-staff meetings to assist in planning, and tested out the FNCE conference website for user-friendliness and comprehension. I appreciated having a hands-on experience even though I was remote, and given the opportunity to jump in and help with FNCE was a unique experience.
Over the summer a group of my fellow interns and I participated in a project for an OSU Human Nutrition lecture professor's beginner nutrition courses. We recorded grocery store videos that featured shopping and selection tips for a variety of nutrition topics. These topics corresponded to chapters in the students' textbooks and would be shown in relation to what they were studying at that time to enhance their learning and comprehension of the concepts.
The professor provided us with the topics as a starting point, but us interns had creative freedom to decide what information we thought was important to include and how we would preform it. After recording with a team at a local Kroger, we were responsible for piecing the clips together to create the videos. The topics I covered are presented in the videos to the left, the first being "Getting Enough Fiber" and the second "Coping with Lactose Intolerance."
In the fall of 2019 I got to accompany my preceptor to a day conference at Chatham University in Pennsylvania on Growing Access to Sustainability & Food. Regenerative agriculture and food systems models is an aspect of dietetics I had little exposure to, so I found it fascinating to dive into this conference and soak up as much information as I could. Some of the discussions included sustainability in urban garden planning, and incorporating farming techniques of other cultures. We also got to tour the campus and see their aquaponics system, greenhouses, and solar energy process. To the left are some pictures and videos I took from the conference.