Alexandra Gogel and Cassandra Partridge took a leap of faith to position themselves to earn the first doctorates in the more than 120-year history of University of Idaho’s Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS).
When Gogel, of Gig Harbor, Washington, and Partridge, of Spokane, Washington, committed to pursue a doctorate in nutritional sciences at U of I, the program didn’t exist.
“There was communication about the hope that this would exist in the future,” Partridge recalled.
Thanks to hard work and rigorous scientific research by the candidates, a willingness to build a doctoral program among FCS faculty and leadership and a bit of luck, Gogel and Partridge are poised to earn the school’s first doctorates in May.
“To be frank, it was on a lot of trust that this would happen,” Gogel said. “I’m excited to see how this grows and benefits the university, as well as the students who want to learn nutrition.”
Backup plan
The graduate students had a backup plan in case their FCS doctoral program didn’t materialize according to schedule. When they began their doctorate pursuit, they enrolled in the Department of Animal, Veterinary and Food Sciences (AVFS), working under University Distinguished Professor Mark McGuire as their advisor. They were prepared to graduate with doctorates in AVFS if necessary.
AVFS affords doctoral students flexibility to take upper-level courses that are relevant to their dissertations, and Gogel and Partridge also took seminar classes in both FCS and AVFS, providing themselves with a broad range of knowledge about both disciplines. About two years ago, when the doctorate in nutritional sciences became official, they both switched back to the FCS program, working under the school’s director, Professor Shelley McGuire, as their advisor.
Human milk research
Both of their dissertations involve research in human milk. Gogel has been studying how the milk microbiome may vary from breast to breast, within a day or within a single feed. She’s also collaborated with Johns Hopkins University on a study of how the human milk microbiome is associated with growth and size of infants in a rural Bangladeshi population.
Partridge is studying how a mother’s diet affects the components of her milk. A primary focus is the possibility of allergenic peptides and proteins from cow’s milk and soy to be passed on in a mother’s milk, potentially inducing an allergic reaction in the infant.
Gogel switches programs
Gogel earned a bachelor’s in zoology from Washington State University and applied for veterinary school at WSU, while also working full time at a Moscow veterinary clinic. After two consecutive years of getting placed on a waiting list for veterinary school, she enrolled in U of I’s master’s degree program in family and consumer sciences. She initially planned to reapply for veterinary school after completing her master’s program, which she figured would boost her resume. She changed plans, however, after she had the opportunity to present some of her first-year master’s research on human milk at a conference.
“My world just opened up. There were scientists from all over the world who were really interested in the work I was doing — who were nice and inviting and ready to talk to me and wanted to engage in milk research,” Gogel said.
After returning from the conference, Gogel approached Shelley McGuire about switching from her master’s program to a doctoral program in nutritional sciences.
It’s really exciting to think of how many people will follow in our footsteps and continue to make the degree and the college more valuable to our community and the academic field.
Cassandra Partridge
Doctoral student in family and consumer sciences
Partridge’s Vandal roots
Partridge has a long history as a Vandal. She earned both her bachelor’s and master’s in FCS from U of I, as well as a bachelor’s in Spanish and a registered dietitian credential. She had an internship at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane and went on to work as a clinical dietitian in the hospital’s intensive care unit for three and a half years but decided against making a career in dietetics. Instead, she enrolled in graduate school at U of I in 2018.
Two years later, after Partridge finished her master’s program, Mark and Shelley McGuire invited her to spend a year working as a research associate with their laboratory, where she served as research coordinator on a study that has become a dissertation project as she seeks to wrap up her doctorate in nutritional sciences.
“There’s something special about the Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences that makes it even more special that we would get to be the first ones in the school’s history to do this,” Partridge said. “It’s really exciting to think of how many people will follow in our footsteps and continue to make the degree and the college more valuable to our community and the academic field.”