Day 7: North Dakota State University Part 1: by Bree

             From starting at 701X we went to North Dakota State University otherwise known             as NDSU. NDSU is the land grant university of North Dakota and was founded in                 1890. Mr.Blaine Novack was the amazingly talented and joyful individual who                     discussed what NDSU is about  and the different units at NDSU. 

                NDSU has around 12,000 students, D1 athletics programs and is located in Fargo, North Dakota. NDSU focuses on four key components when it comes to their majors as well as research, these consist of plants, animals, education and the environment. NDSU’s main focus is to teach their students through hands on learning to develop skills such as through innovative labs, state of the art technology, etc. One interesting fact with NDSU is that there are guaranteed scholarships based upon your high school GPA ranging from $1000 a year to $3000 a year depending on your GPA in the 3.0-4.0 range. The key focus of NDSU is to try and push their students to be as ready for the world as they can. 

                The next part of the tour was going through the different modules of learning. To start we went through the Food Science Laboratory where they can work on different food recipes as well as host studies for experiments through their host kitchen. NDSU has a whole area based around grain sifting ranging from mini mills to a massive NCI pilot mill that they use for companies such as Tyson and their different requirements for an experiment to occur. From there we went to the NDSU meat processing department where we were able to suit up and get our hands dirty. From putting on aprons, hair nets as well as gloves this lead into taking a half of a pig that was cured for 2 weeks and cutting them into the 5 primal cuts. Others of the group who were unable to handle processing a pig were allowed to watch from the outside and not participate. Everyone had fun learning the different parts of the pig as well as being able to process it in teams of 2-3 with the help of Mr. Jacob and Miss Ella who actively work for the meat processing unit. 

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                For the last main portion of the tour at the main facility before heading to the beef feedlot unit as well as feedstuff unit we were walked around the campus of NDSU by Miss Emma who is a dual major criminal science and woman studies major at North Dakota State University whose mascot is the bison. Miss Emma showed us the resident hall with a mock apartment, the dining hall and then the main classrooms throughout the campus. From there we met back with Mr. Blaine and left for the beef feedlot unit.