The American Dairy Products Institute (ADPI) is a national trade association representing the dairy industry. The dairy-centric organization aims to connect, engage and educate its members. Kimberlee (KJ) Burrington, vice president of technical development for ADPI, authored this article for Dairy Processing.

Training occurs throughout life, and much of our formal training and education starts with school. An education, whether it is from a technical school or a university, is often the launching pad for a first job or even a career.

Once in the workforce, on-the-job training is essential to the growth and success of the organization. Training is beneficial to both employers and employees, as it leads to more productivity, better morale and promotion opportunities for employees. In the long run, training improves the employee’s ability to adopt new technologies and methods, which will help the company to remain competitive in the market.

Companies use training as an investment in their employees for these reasons. Training provides knowledge-based information and professional development for current and future employees of the dairy industry. Many dairy companies have internal training courses to provide these benefits to employees, but the United States has many other training opportunities across the country to expand the knowledge base on all things dairy and help manage future challenges in the dairy industry.

Short courses

Established dairy training courses, typically called short courses, have been organized by universities and made available to industry participants for more than 100 years. The first dairy short course was established in 1890 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since then, more than 13,000 participants have been trained in different dairy manufacturing short courses at UW-Madison.

In 1987, US dairy farmers agreed to provide funding through the dairy checkoff program, managed by Dairy Management Inc. (DMI), to support six dairy research centers across the country. These six regional dairy centers support more than 138 experts from 20 different universities. The six centers are: Center for Dairy Research, Midwest Dairy Center, Western Dairy Center, Northeast Dairy Foods Research Center, Southeast Dairy Foods Research Center and the California Dairy Innovation Center. Each center has its own areas of expertise and list of short courses, which are a great way for new and experienced employees to learn about different cheese varieties, cultured products, dairy ingredients, ice cream, butter, safety, quality and more.

You might think that these courses are only taught by academics that have never had any industry experience, but that is not the case. Most of these short courses use a combination of faculty and industry experts to provide instruction and a hands-on, deep dive into the manufacture of dairy products on a small scale. Not only do participants learn about current technologies used in the dairy industry, but also new research that each of these centers is conducting.

Exposure to new research helps companies fuel their own innovation without having to conduct the research on their own. Long term, this research helps to keep the US dairy industry stronger and more competitive. Not only will dairy companies gain the opportunity to commercialize the research, but they also have the possibility to hire the students conducting the research, who have specialized training and knowledge.

Dairy manufacturing short courses are designed for industry employees from research and development, quality assurance and manufacturing roles. Undergraduate and graduate students can also attend these courses at their university (without college credit) to enhance their own knowledge base.

Some of these universities also provide online short courses and certificate programs designed especially for people that don’t have the flexibility to leave their jobs for an in-person short course. Outside of the universities and dairy centers, there are other dairy organizations that offer training for an even wider range of participants.

Ingredients training

One of those training courses is the Dairy Ingredients 360 Training Course (DI360) developed and introduced by ADPI in 2017. This course, which started as an in-person event, covers similar topics to those that many of the university short courses offer, but without the hands-on experience or such a deep dive scientifically.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this course shifted to an online course in 2021 and will continue as an online training course into the future. This comprehensive training course, taught by 25 subject matter experts, 10 of whom are members of ADPI’s Center of Excellence with experience from academia and industry, is a course in which even non-technical people from an organization can understand and learn. As a result, the course hosts attendees from sales, marketing, procurement and finance, as well as technical people from the dairy industry.

Though DI360 includes sessions on manufacturing of cheese, cultured products, butter, dairy ingredients, functional and nutritional properties, and safety/quality, it also covers pricing, markets, exports, supply chain, risk management, sustainability and more.

This year, Dairy Farm Practices, taught by an expert from the National Dairy FARM Program at National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), was added to the course, truly making it farm-to-fork training. You might ask why a training course that focuses on dairy topics that are considered “post-harvest” would add a session on farm practices. More and more of our dairy industry employees don’t grow up on farms, much less dairy farms. In general, it means we are all further away from our food, which can translate into misinformation about dairy farm practices and environmental concerns.

Engaging students

Another group of people that can benefit from dairy industry training is university students. Over the years, a few university students have taken DI360, but like university short courses, they have not received college credit for their participation.

That situation changed on Jan. 16, 2024, through a collaboration with Kansas State University. Through this collaboration, DI360 is now offered as an online course called “Introduction to the Dairy Ingredients Industry,” a three-credit course available to undergraduate students. The course is listed as a food science class, but any student can enroll in the course. Students from other universities can also enroll in the course and transfer the credits to their own university.

The benefits of offering this course as a part of a college curriculum are many. We are seeing universities lose their dairy faculty and therefore they also lose the dairy courses that they teach. Even if a university has one dairy faculty, that one person can’t teach every dairy related topic. Because freshmen can enroll in the course, it will give them valuable knowledge and maybe even lead them to a career in the dairy industry.

Even if they don’t choose to work in the dairy industry, they have improved their dairy knowledge and learned the “real facts” about how the dairy industry works. As consumers, they can also help to debunk the misinformation they hear about dairy. The course will be offered again in the fall semester of 2024 for both industry and Kansas State participants.

Offering this training course to college students is important for the future of the dairy industry. Continuing to invest in your own employees by giving them opportunities to take training courses will only make the dairy industry stronger in the years to come.