January / February 2004

5 Million Listened & Learned

On January 14, 2004, Voice of America Mandarin interviewed Dr. Kirk Dolan, Assistant Professor with joint appointment in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition and in the Department of Agricultural Engineering, and Eric Graf, M.S. student in Food Science. The interview came about after a VOA broadcaster received a gift box of MSU cheese. VOA called MSU to inquire about the MSU Dairy Plant, and how students gain hands-on learning about food science and food processing outside of class. The interview was part of an on-going VOA series called "Youth & Campus." The interview lasted 25 minutes, and was conducted in Mandarin by conference call from Washington, D.C. to E. Lansing at 6:30AM to allow live call-in questions from listeners from China. Listeners called from Hubei, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Jiangsu Provinces.

Other questions included how student workers in the Dairy Plant are paid, what responsibilities student workers in the Dairy Plant have, whether the dairy store sells products off-campus, whether students can gain credit for working in the dairy plant, what students learned in the dairy plant, nutritional aspects of dairy products, what the sanitation requirements in the plant are, and why the university would invest in building the dairy plant.

The Voice of America (VOA) is an international multimedia broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government. VOA Mandarin has an average of 5 million listeners. VOA Mandarin is the number one international broadcaster in China with three times as many listeners as the second place BBC. The average listening audience of VOA Mandarin is about five million, based on 2002 survey data. VOA Chinese also sends out 17+ million emails every week through the internet. This program on MSU will be sent to 50 affiliated stations in China for re-broadcast, so MSU will be gaining a lot of publicity for only 25 minutes!

>>Listen (28.8K - 15 minute download; 56K - 7 minute download)

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February 11, 2004