Valarie Stofferahn (Frigge) Mph, Rd Email & Phone Number

Roseville, Minnesota

I worked with and provided wellness support to the K-12, Higher Education and Business Dining sectors of the company. I managed and supported menu management software, creating menus, providing nutrition information, training and providing technical support to food service directors, executive chefs and other employees on menu software, as well as created nutrition talks and hosted wellness events at sites working with clients and employees. I created sports nutrition presentations and have presented to multiple college-level sports teams. I also worked one-on-one with collegiate athletes to provide nutrition assessments, and develop and evaluate nutrition and performance goals.

Waukesha, Wisconsin

I managed 85 food service staff and ensured food was being prepared safely, along with quality of texture and taste. I collaborated with principals, food service staff and district employees to grow meal counts within the school district. I assisted with summer food service program meals by connecting with different community organizations to reach as many children in Waukesha as possible. I trained staff through oral workshops, written instructions and individual tutorials on software, food safety, production, management and kitchen training and ensured ongoing compliance. I created, implemented and evaluated programs to increase interest and participation in school meals. I developed menus that align with United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrition guidelines. I worked with parents, students and food service staff to create meals that meet student special dietary needs.

Rochester, Minnesota Area

Followed nutrition care process to assess patients, create, implement and evaluate nutrition care plans. Ensured patients were compliant to their nutrition care plan and assisted with any challenges or barriers. Worked with hospital staff to ensure patients were provided the best care possible. Created educational materials, presentations and discussions for a variety of groups in the hospital and community.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

I assisted with the evaluation, monitoring and surveillance of the Statewide Health Improvement Program (SHIP) throughout Minnesota. I primarily worked with quantitative and qualitative healthy eating data to create state, regional and grantee summaries for various stakeholders. I refined and guided corrections for SHIP grantee healthy eating data. I helped enter and gather data for other grants throughout the state to report to organizations. I created written and video training materials for grantees across the state of Minnesota for the new REDCap database they started to utilize in data collection. I assisted with evaluation projects to learn more about Community Leadership Teams in SHIP and how to build capacity and provide technical assistance to them.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Project Breakfast is a clinical research trial funded by the National Institutes of Health. The main goal of the project is to improve School Breakfast Program participation among students and evaluate the effects of breakfast participation among students. I created an interview guide and conducted interviews with 16 foodservice directors and principles at four experimental and four control high schools in the Project Breakfast study. Through the interviews, I learned how the schools reformatted their school breakfast programs, how receptive the school community and students were to the changes, and how sustainable the new school breakfast programs are. I will share and disseminate the results in a paper for other schools to utilize.

University Of Minnesota

I primarily assisted with administrative tasks for the Healthy Eating Research team. I organized new research articles in the database, Refworks and in hard copy. I assisted with editing and preparing grant proposals and reviews for grant review meetings. I helped organize and implement the 8th and 9th Annual Healthy Eating Research Grantee Meetings. I helped to prepare the new Healthy Eating Research website.

I helped with a research study that is investigating the effects of yoga on eating disorder treatment. In this role, I administered and collected pre- and post-evaluations among participants in the yoga and body image classes. I organized all of the research files including the pre- and post-evaluations, Institutional Review Board forms and journal articles. I organized all of the data and went through all of the previous pre-and post-evaluations to assign participant numbers to all of the questionnaires collected and made sure participants were not counted twice. I started to perform a literature review.

I worked on the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) and the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) in the Child Nutrition Policy group within the Food and Nutrition Services agency at the USDA. In this position, I created a Farm to Preschool webinar for the regional offices. I contacted various States including Minnesota, New York and Washington to discuss their progressive Farm to Preschool initiatives to discover ideas for materials the USDA could create and make available to other States. I reviewed CACFP Wellness Grant projects, wrote an executive summary of each project and created a list of best practices from the wellness grant projects to be uploaded onto the USDA website for use by other States. I partnered and assisted with the nutrition education and promotion staff of the SFSP and CACFP group and completed research and created a document about culturally diverse diets in the United States for use on new educational materials. I helped to update the Grow It! Try It! Like It! educational materials for early childcare centers and preschools.

I assisted with UMatter, a pilot study. I made calls to families to recruit girls between the ages of 10-14 and their mothers from the Broadway Family Medical Clinic in North Minneapolis. The recruited participants attended sessions at the clinic. I assisted in presenting and discussing healthy eating, family meals, body image, weight talk and physical activity material to the girls. I also contributed to the snack and meal planning for each of the sessions.

University Of Minnesota Tickets And Events

I coordinated the successful launch of Northrop Dance Season subscriptions between Northrop and the Ticket Office. I managed and mentored student employees throughout the summer in processing dance season subscriptions. I interviewed and hired new student staff. I planned and implemented training for the new student employees.

Golden Valley, Minnesota

I worked in Product Performance within the Meals and Baking divisions testing new and reformulated products in the microwave, stovetop and oven. I assisted in evaluating the product after cooking or baking and wrote and edited package directions. I was the lead on projects consisting of Progresso soup, heat and eat products and Green Giant Vegetables. I represented product performance to the rest of the product research and development and marketing team. I assisted with projects reformulating Betty Crocker side dishes (potatoes).

Laboratory Staffing, Inc

In this temporary position with Laboratory Staffing Inc. at General Mills, I worked in Product Performance within the Meals division. I helped test new and reformulated products in the microwave, stovetop and oven. I evaluated the product after cooking or baking and wrote and edited package directions. I completed stovetop characteristic testing with 12 stovetops in the product performance lab.

Annandale, Minnesota

Friendship Ventures is a special needs camp in Annandale, Minnesota. I presented special diets and dietary needs to camp staff. I met with the caregivers of the campers each week to discuss special dietary needs (food or utensils) of each of the new campers (the camps only lasted 1 week). I wrote down and discussed each special dietary need of the campers to the counselors. I created menus and cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner that met the needs of all of the special diets including gluten free, dairy free, egg free, red dye free and vegetarian. I puréed meals when needed. I handed meals and special utensils out to the appropriate camper or camp staff for every meal.

West Bend, Wisconsin

I created and set up a display of new WIC foods. Using the display, I explained new food package changes to WIC participants. I created and administered a WIC foods cookbook.

Dietetics/Dietitian

Master Of Public Health (Mph), Nutrition

Bachelor Of Science (B.S.), Nutrition - Dietetics