Two new faculty members to join nutritional sciences department

Two new faculty members will join the department of nutritional sciences in January.

Lauren Housley has been hired as an associate clinical professor and Carla Schwan has been hired as an assistant professor and Extension specialist in food safety and home food preservation. Schwan also will serve as director of the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

“We are pleased to welcome two outstanding faculty members to our department,” said Lynn Bailey, department head and Flatt Professor of Nutritional Sciences. “Both of them bring impressive credentials and are ideally qualified to direct our graduate dietetic internship program and provide leadership to our research-based food safety and home food preservation Extension program.”

Housley, a Georgia native and Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, currently serves as associate professor in the department of nutrition and food science at California State University in Chico, Calif.

She completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees and dietetic internship at FACS before receiving a Ph.D. in nutrition from Oregon State University. Housley will direct the department’s combined M.S.-Ph.D. Dietetic Internship Program and teach multiple courses.

“I am incredibly excited about being back in Athens and having the opportunity to build upon the same academic programs that launched my career,” Housley said. “The University of Georgia is such a special place.”

Schwan is currently a post-doctoral research fellow in the Food Science Institute at Kansas State University, where she also completed her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in the area of food safety and prevention of food-borne illness.

As director of the NCHFP, Schwan will serve as content expert to county agents in Georgia and across the country. Her appointment is 75 percent Extension and 25 percent research.

A native of Brazil, Schwan has dedicated her professional career to addressing complex domestic and international public health issues, particularly foodborne illness, antimicrobial resistance in foodborne pathogens and global food security.

“I am very humbled and excited to join such a great department and university,” Schwan said. “It truly is a dream come true! I hope to create a research program that contributes and advances food safety and home food preservation, as well as to meet people where they are in my Extension role.”