Ketchum, an international public relations firm based in New York, recently announced the launch of a certification program that it developed in collaboration with Tufts' Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.
The Nutrition Certification Program for Public Relations Professionals is designed to increase the nutrition knowledge of Ketchum employees who work with clients in food-oriented businesses.
"It's a lot like nutrition education," said Cathy Kapica, the vice president and director of global health and wellness at Ketchum. "It's nutrition 101 [for] all our account staff … so we can share a common language and help our clients be more effective." Kapica is also an adjunct faculty member at the Friedman School.
The program is currently being offered only to Ketchum employees through Ketchum College, an in-house learning system at the firm. The certification program will be mandatory for all Ketchum employees who work in the company's food sector, according to Robert Burnside, the chief learning officer at Ketchum College.
Burnside and Kapica approach-ed the nutrition school last fall to see if it would collaborate with Ketchum to develop the program.
"We wanted to be able to say our people are taking course content that the best nutrition science school in the country has reviewed and endorsed," Burnside said. "From my perspective, [the Friedman School] was the Harvard of nutrition."
Because the partnership linked the nutrition school to an outside entity, Ketchum had to first be approved by Friedman School Dean Eileen Kennedy, Associate Professor Gary Gleason said. Upon her consent, Friedman professors agreed to evaluate the course's curriculum.
The nutrition certification course is an online program made up of 12 modules, each followed by a quiz, with a final exam at the end. The modules include terminology, worldwide dietary guidelines, the basics of scientific research in nutrition and other "hot topics," like childhood obesity, Kapica said. The final exam involves incorporating scientific research into a press release in a way that is appealing to clients.
Paul Giguere, the director of distance learning at Friedman, said that the Tufts team created a pre-test and post-test that will show how students progress during the course. Its members also plan to follow up with participants three to six months later to see how they incorporated the course information with their clients.
The evaluation process of the program, which involves monitoring the students' progress, is ongoing for the rest of the calendar year, Giguere said.
Giguere estimates that the program will take three to four weeks for participants to complete, but he called attention to the online, or distance learning, aspect of the course. "The [Ketchum employees] who do the program will do it around the world at their own offices," he said.
The decision to put the course on the Internet was due to both the scientific subject matter, which lends itself to online training, and the obligatory nature of the course, Burnside said. "Since it's mandatory, we need to make it accessible," he said. "So we went online."
Burnside said Ketchum is still developing its online technical capabilities, but it expects the course to be ready for employees in late October or early November.
While the nutrition school received only a small compensation for working with Ketchum, both Giguere and Gleason believe that the certification program will have a noteworthy effect on Friedman and its future programs.
Gleason said that the school will use Ketchum's online course to analyze the effectiveness of distance learning. He also said he believes the collaboration can be employed as a case study to evaluate how the school can work effectively with the private sector.
The school has access to the modules being used in Ketchum's program, Giguere added. Officials may consider integrating parts of the program into some of the Friedman School's continuing education programs, he said. "The Ketchum training would provide a good basic background in nutrition science for people working in, for example, the restaurant and food-preparation industries," Giguere said in an e-mail.
Although Burnside said it was unusual for an organization like Ketchum to partner with a university, he said he was pleased with the result and might consider working with the nutrition school in the future. "We've had a good experience with Tufts. We've really enjoyed working with them," he said.
