Alison Brown, a senior at Southeast Missouri State University, was recently awarded the Outstanding Student of the Year Award for a Didactic Program in Dietetics by the Missouri Academy of Nutrition.

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has divisions in each state and each state chooses one person to win the Outstanding Student of the Year Award for a Didactic Program in Dietetics every year. Every university that has a dietetics program in the state has the ability to nominate a single dietetics student every year and submit an application in their name.

"They do it by state, so each school with a dietetics program nominated someone and then they have a committee that goes through them all," Brown said.

Brown was unaware of the award until her adviser notified her that several professors in the Nutrition and Dietetics Program had unanimously nominated her. Brown said she was told about her nomination around the beginning of March.

"Ali was the first person I thought of," said Dr. Molly Timlin, an assistant professor at Southeast, the director of the Nutrition and Dietetics Program and one of the professors that nominated Brown. "She just really is such a leader and takes on things, and I think she is a mentor as well. So I ran it by Dr. [Ann] Marietta and she was fine with that and then at one of our dietetics meetings I asked the rest of the faculty and they agreed."

Timlin said although the department has many worthy students, Brown was the best candidate for nomination.

"We have a number of strong students, I mean we really do, but she was really the one that stood out," Timlin said. "She's just been so actively involved in things, has coordinated a lot of events, [she was] involved in Eating Disorders Awareness Week, you know, all kinds of things."

Timlin submitted her nomination for Brown on March 14. Brown was then sent an email confirming that she had won during the first week of April.

Brown said she found out that she had won the award a week before the acceptance ceremony and was delightfully surprised in light of other competitive dietetics programs and students in the state.

"It was kind of a shock just because there's so many great students everywhere," Brown said. "First I was shocked that I was nominated, and then I was shocked that I won, and then I was really excited about it all."

The Missouri Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has an annual three-day conference with seminars and luncheons, and the award ceremony was held at one of the conference lunches. Several awards were given out along with Brown's, and the academy's successes and positive strides of the year were discussed. The award ceremony was held on Thursday, April 10, at the Hilton St. Louis Frontenac hotel.

Brown will graduate this spring with a degree in dietetics and will return in the fall to begin work through Southeast's master's program on a degree in nutrition and exercise science. After Brown graduates with her master's degree she aspires to work at an eating disorder rehab center in the St. Louis area. She said that she thinks this award will help her chances of landing internships and jobs in the future, and that it is a strong addition to her resume.

"We're very proud of her, and she is just a very good representation of someone for the field of dietetics, she really is. And I had said in, and they actually read the sentence off the letter I wrote for her, that she is someone that will, you know, carry this practice far into the future," Timlin said. "She's very dedicated to it, and again, very much a leader."