Research Project on Middle School Nutrition Education Receives Grant Funding for Expansion

A research project focused on integrating nutrition into middle school education will be expanded this year after a University of Central Missouri (UCM) assistant professor and his collaborators received a grant. 

The Center for Children's Healthy Lifestyles and Nutrition, based at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, is focused on childhood nutrition outcomes. The organization awarded its sole 2025 grant of $33,000 to the project, which includes collaborators from UCM, the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Nick Marchello, Ph.D., a registered dietitian and assistant professor of Nutrition, and Emily Schulte, a graduate student from Wardsville studying Nutrition, developed a nutrition education program last year as part of Schulte’s capstone project. The program has two parts: a one-hour nutrition education session for middle school teachers and an online toolkit full of nutrition lesson plans that can be used for math, science, social studies, communication arts and health sciences. The plans range from a worksheet about the role of nutrition in heart disease to a month-long research project about the Irish potato famine.

The idea for a nutrition education program came from Schulte’s background as a public school teacher. She’s turned her interests toward becoming a dietitian focused on community health, and she saw schools as a place to facilitate nutrition education for a larger population.

“She really wanted to work on helping her fellow teachers learn a little bit more about nutrition and how to communicate that successfully in a classroom while still having to stay within those Missouri Department of Education standards,” Marchello explained. “The idea is that we're trying to make it a little bit more comfortable for them to do it by having these lessons that the two of us put together.”

The program is being piloted with five teachers at a Jefferson City school. The grant will expand the field to 30 teachers, and Marchello is recruiting additional rural middle schools to participate during the 2025-26 academic year. Marchello noted that he partnered with the College of Education to develop a graduate credit for teachers who complete the nutrition program.

Schulte and Marchello focused on rural schools because they typically have fewer resources and fewer teachers, and there is a lack of nutrition curriculum for middle school students.

“This is also the period in these kids' lives that they're starting to make their own choices for the first time. They have their own peer groups that they're starting to hang out with more and more,” Marchello added. “They might have that option after baseball practice to walk over to Casey’s and get a candy bar or, fingers crossed, buy an apple. Kids spend so much time in school – it's the optimal place to teach them about nutrition.”

Marchello’s graduate students are crafting interview questions and learning how to analyze the results, looking at the teachers’ nutrition knowledge and literacy, if they feel more confident incorporating nutrition into their lessons, and if they encountered any difficulties with the program.

As Schulte wraps up her graduate work this summer, a new set of graduate students will help keep the research project going, and they are also assisting Marchello with another strategy paper that inspired the original project. He said offering hands-on opportunities outside of the typical classroom setting allows students to understand what goes into research, which in turn helps them better understand research.

“Whenever they are reading about the latest trends or the latest fads in nutrition, they know how to think critically about that,” Marchello said. “Does this actually hold water? Where can I go for reliable sources to make an actual recommendation to my clients? That way, they have a much stronger base for their clinical practice.”

For more information about UCM’s Nutrition program in the Department of Nutrition, Kinesiology and Health, visit ucmo.edu/nutrition.