Part of Pao Ying’s work involves teaching students how to make careers from their nutrition education/degrees and talking to them about their plans after graduation, so she seemed like a perfect fit to share her own career story here. She has inventive ways of teaching, including creating things like the #lettuceeatchallenge and #bewellproject for her students to apply their knowledge to their lives. You can tell she loves what she does and I’m sure her students truly benefit from that passion.

Why did you become a RD?

I love that I work in a field that anyone who eats, which is everyone, can identify with. I love that I’m in a profession where you could combine many interests together and create a career. My love of nutrition, mentoring and having summer and winter breaks for traveling, lead me to academia.

What area of dietetics do you work in?

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Food and Nutrition at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP). The school has nothing to do with the state of Indiana, but rather our town is called “Indiana” and our county is shaped like the state of Indiana.

How would you explain what you do?

I always tell my students that you know you’ve found your ideal job when you forget that you get paid for what you do each day. I love what I do and at the end of the day, I feel a lot of satisfaction from working with students. I teach foundational nutrition, medical nutrition therapy (MNT), advanced human metabolism, public health nutrition, and nutrition and aging at the university level. I teach both undergraduate and graduate students. One of my favorite things about teaching is that I have academic freedom to be creative. I have a lot of fun experimenting with ways to use technology to engage current students. For example, I’m currently using Instagram to teach foundational nutrition (follow me @dr.misohungry to find out more).

In addition to teaching, I’m also the advisor for our student nutrition organization, the IUP Student Association of Nutrition and Dietetics (SAND). I help them to plan events that increase awareness about nutrition throughout campus as well as the community. I also help them to organize events that help them develop as nutrition professionals. For example, we organized an improv workshop so that they could learn how to be better communicators. We also invite guest speakers to share different avenues of how they have used nutrition to make careers for themselves.

What are your ‘typical’ daily/weekly tasks?

Although I am scheduled to teach classes during certain days/times of the week, I love how I get a new schedule each semester. That might drive some people nuts, but I like mixing it up each semester. In between teaching classes, I meet with students to talk about their class schedules and what they might want to do after graduation. I also work on various research projects. Currently, I am working with a team of faculty members on how we can include inter-professional simulation experiences in the curriculum to help students learn about communicating in healthcare teams.

What has been your career path?

After I finished up my dietetic internship, I got married and ended up moving to a smaller, more rural town and found it challenging to find a clinical position. Because of this, I decided to go back to school for a Master’s degree in Food and Nutrition. While I was a graduate student, I had the opportunity to get involved in research and teaching. My academic advisor encouraged me to think about continuing on for a PhD, but I knew I wanted to gain clinical experience. So, I first worked as a clinical dietitian for a couple of years where I was also able to gain experience working in the neonatal ICU. I then, went back to school and finished a PhD in Nutritional Sciences from The Pennsylvania State University, where my dissertation work was in nutritional epidemiology, specifically in examining dietary patterns of older adults. Before getting my current job as a faculty member, I also did some consultant work. One of the coolest projects that I got to work on was recipe development for the first cold-pressed juice company in China. After a few years of consulting work, I landed my current faculty position.

What advanced education or special training do you have?

In addition to the PhD + RDN combo that has opened SO many doors for me, I have also been trained to perform the nutrition-focused physical exam (NFPE), which I have used to also train my students during their medical nutrition therapy class.

In an ideal world, what does the industry look like 5 years from now?

Hopefully, registered dietitians will be recognized as an integral part of the healthcare team. The really awesome part about having a career in nutrition is that everyone eats. There will always be opportunities for registered dietitians and in today’s day and age where people are increasingly conscious of how their food and nutrition directly affects their health, it will become even more important for everyone to recognize the registered dietitian as the nutrition expert.

What makes RDs unique/different from other nutrition/wellness professionals?

I think this is the coolest profession because you can combine nutrition with almost any interest and make a career out of it. Love traveling and nutrition? Become a television host for a show that features global cuisine. Love photography and nutrition? Become a food stylist. Love marketing and nutrition? Work for a national food company as a nutrition communications manager. I always play a game anytime I meet a new faculty member from other discipline. I always say “let’s brainstorm a research project that we might work on together”. This has lead to discussions about how we might evaluate the diets of prisoners (convo with a criminology faculty) or most recently a conversation about a possible biofabrication project to determine how to create sustainable clothing through use of SCOBYs (which are used to make kombucha) (convo with a faculty in fashion).

Anything else you’d like to add that you feel would be valuable:

I’d like to encourage any students who are reading these interviews to explore lots of opportunities to try to figure out what you want to do. Sometimes learning what you don’t want in a career is just as valuable. Once you figure out what interests you, figure out how to gain experience in that area. It often means just asking. That ask could come in the form of a meeting with your professor or a direct message to someone on social media. If you want experience with doing research, just ask. If you want experience working as a NICU dietitian, just ask. People have been in your shoes and want to help, but we can’t help if you don’t ask. One of my favorite things to share with students is that successful people don’t have problems, it’s just that they have figured out a way to solve their problems.

 More about Pao Ying:

Instagram: @dr.misohungry

Twitter: @paoying

Blog: Student Association of Nutrition and Dietetics (SAND)

Twitter: @iupsand

Instagram: @iupsand

Facebook: IUP Student Association of Nutrition & Dietetics

Thanks Pao Ying!