Welcoming new students, part II
The Gastronomy Program looks forward to welcoming these new students for the upcoming semester.
Lindsey Barrett was born and raised in Northern California and has always had a sense of adventure. After receiving bachelor degrees in Journalism and Spanish from California State 
University, Chico and spending a year of college in Mexico, she was unsure of her next step. She was the sports editor for her college paper and had dreamed of interviewing athletes and telling their stories. But she shifted gears the closer graduation came, finding more love for food and travel. After graduation, Lindsey was no stranger to both. An internship in a kitchen took her from student to employee at a local steakhouse for three years. And after learning the ins and outs of a fast paced kitchen, she decided food has to be more than just a hobby. It was during her adventures to 15 countries that she fell in love with the different cultures and cuisines of the world.
Coming from a small town can be a bit overwhelming, but Lindsey is more than excited to move to Boston and explore the city. In her free time she enjoys a good baseball game, wandering through farmers markets, creating new recipes, trying new food and is still a kid at heart. Remember from the great movie UP, “Adventure is out there.”
Keith Duhamel hails from the Valley – the Blackstone Valley of Central Massachusetts, that is. Having been blessed with parents who encouraged world travel from an early age, Keith has been exploring cultures of a wide breadth for nearly his entire life. His interest in gastronomy started simply at his grandmother’s kitchen counter, devouring Shake-n-Bake chicken livers and a shot of Manischewitz from his own grape jelly jar.
Keith’s interest in in food led to Johnson & Wales University, where he graduated from the Baking & Pastry program. His life’s work to date has been dedicated to supporting adults with intellectual disabilities, of which Keith has had a successful thirty-year career. Recently graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Keith has decided to return to his passion, food, and plans to focus on history and culture in the Gastronomy program. Keith’s goals combine a lifetime of teaching and learning – he plans to pursue a PhD and eventually to teach about this amazing, vital ingredient to our lives, food.
When Juliane Schmeltzer Dybkjær was a girl, she wanted her dad to read aloud recipes instead of bedtime stories. And so he did. She still reads recipes before bedtime (and any other time of day, really), but by now, she also gets to develop them – for her food blog madgrisen.dk (translated: The Food Piglet) and for the organic foodstuff company Aarstiderne. When she is not writing recipes, tasting new products, or doing story telling about organic vegetables, she studies for a master’s degree in Digital Design & Communication at the IT University of Copenhagen. And when she is neither studying nor working, she is typically at a concert, a restaurant, or a bar – or, of course, in her kitchen.
Born and bred in Copenhagen, she loves Scandinavian specialties like salty licorice and the infamous tongue twister rødgrød med fløde (red berry compote with cream). Like most Danes, she is also disproportionately proud of sharing nationality with the best restaurant in the world, Noma.
Juliane is into honest and vibrant food and cooking with wine (in the pan as well as in the glass). Most of all, though, she is into different food cultures and adventure – both of which she hopes she will get to explore during her time in Boston.
Laurel Greenfield is a recent graduate of Boston University’s School of Hospitality Administration and is from Poughkeepsie, NY. When she is not working at Sweet Cheeks BBQ in the Fenway neighborhood, she can be found eating ice cream, watching Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown on repeat, or editing posts for Spoon University’s BU chapter.
When she is not watching other people travel on TV, Laurel spends her savings exploring around the world in pursuit of all things delicious with a special emphasis on ice cream. This past year she has found herself driving down the east coast, up the west coast and flying to Australia and Japan.
Laurel is also a painter whose primary subject is food, especially desserts. She has learned a lot of about the restaurant industry from working at Sweet Cheeks and from working as a pastry intern at Sofra Bakery in Cambridge and is ready to expand her food knowledge with the Gastronomy program. Ultimately Laurel wants to combine her love of food with her passion for painting. She is so excited to meet people who love to talk about food as much as she does!
Kyoung-Ah Kim was born in South Korea and raised in a family of ceramic artists who love to be with earth. (Her parents and sister are all ceramic artists.) 
She grew up with touching and feeling the clay with all my senses. This carried over into the farm where the family raised vegetables and cooked them by making a fire in the furnace. Being naturally surrounded by food has had a huge influence on her life.
For five years, Kyoung-Ah worked as a program producer and director on the Food Channel in Korea, where she produced a variety of cooking. During this time it occurred to her that food should not just be a material for TV programs. She aspires to be able to use media to express her passion for food, and her ultimate goal is to find accordance between food and the media. Her first step toward this goal is in enrolling in the Gastronomy program at BU, where she looks forward to meeting her fellow gastronomes
Esther Martin-Ullrich graduated from Temple in 2010 with a super useful BA in Theater, 
followed by 3ish years of dancing around the BU Gastronomy program. After taking Culture and Cuisine of Quebec in fall 2013, she realized it was time to apply. Her background is in web content, social media, and copywriting, but her true passion is food history, sparked at age 10 by her American Girl Doll’s cookbook (Felicity or Bust). She hopes to get a doctorate, but mostly wants her husband to get really rich so she can travel, research, and write. A lifelong resident of the Philadelphia area, she has never lived more than an hour away from home, so she’s kind of freaking out right now. Esther likes pugs, Doctor Who, the song “Africa” by Toto, costume dramas, and her long-suffering husband, Andrew. She has a sadly neglected blog, Why’d You Eat That?.
Anna Nguyen was born and raised in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and 
graduated with honors from the University of Arkansas with degrees in English Literature and European Studies. After graduation, she moved to Seattle where she worked a plethora of food-related jobs in a ‘foodie city’. During her time off from academia, she read a lot of food-related literature and decided to combine her interests in literature and food and applied for the MLA Gastronomy Program at BU. She is particularly interested in the possibility of writing and publishing. She currently manages a coffee shop in Boston. When not drinking coffee and eating, she enjoys exploring Boston, walking, being outdoors, playing with her cat, and trying to finesse her baking skills.
Rachael Reagan grew up in Tulsa, on 
dad’s cooking, mom’s baking, and grandma’s grits. Her Oklahoma childhood created the perfect breeding ground for an aspiring foodie. She fell in love with the ability to create wonderful food and memories. While studying history at the University of Arkansas, she desperately sought to blend her love of food with her love of the past. It wasn’t until studying abroad in Florence that she discovered her star-crossed passions could become one. In her classes abroad, she learned that diet, as well as artistic expression, changed dramatically during the Renaissance. After researching this phenomenon, she found that changing food culture correlates with changing cultural and political climate. She wrote her honors thesis on the diet and food culture of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and plans on pursuing research in the relationship between national cuisine and national ideological identity. Having just moved from Arkansas, she’s very excited to live in a large city where Wal-Mart is not on every corner and meet fellow culinary enthusiasts! When Rachael’s not reading about what fascists eat; she enjoys swimming, exploring, blogging, and watching old Saturday Night Live sketches.
Kelly Scott is from South Jersey, and deeply regrets moving before the Jersey tomato, corn, and blueberry season was really in swing this year. Kelly enjoys canning, pickling, fermenting, and 
generally DIYing all things in the kitchen. On a desert island, she would bring her Harry Potter hardbacks, mason jars, and a large canning pot. When she finally leaves the kitchen, Kelly enjoys feminist discourse and all animals of the fuzzy variety. She is interested in Gastronomy because she believes access to good, pure food is a human rights issue that can and should be guaranteed for everyone in our lifetime. Kelly looks forward to making like-minded friends, and can’t wait to share her preserves with them (Vanilla Rhubarb Jam, anyone?)!
Nicholas Vincelette was raised and currently resides in Cranston, Rhode Island. Upon graduating from Rhode Island College with a degree in Public Relations, he accepted a position as a Constituent Caseworker in U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s Providence office. In this capacity, he assists Rhode Islanders who contact the Senator to resolve issues ranging from commercial fishing and agriculture regulations, State Department visa and passport applications, to healthcare policies and federal student loan programs.
While his interest in cuisine was well established prior to working for the Senator (thanks to his French and Italian relatives), it was enhanced through seeing firsthand the relationships that exist between our government, food producers, media, and hospitality industry. Each sector plays a role in determining our nation’s eating trends and what its nutrition, food production, and trade policies will be. Through the Gastronomy program’s Food Policy and Food Media tracts, he hopes to learn and research more about our food systems and those of other countries. It is anticipated that such will aid in developing strategies that our government can implement via collaborative efforts with manufacturers, restaurateurs, and food media professionals to better our delivery system of whole, unprocessed foods to the masses, nurture their appreciation of them, and provide the education needed to prepare them.
In his free time Nick enjoys frequenting ethnic and farmer’s markets for new ingredients, running, cycling, and having lively discussions of international and political affairs at cafes with friends over an espresso. He considers his runs and bike rides the best times to let his mind wander about the next way he can incorporate Neapolitan, Provençal, Levantine, or Basque (or all four at once) flavors into a new dinner idea!