Lucy Hoang: Dietitian in the Making
A second-year nutrition elective course triggered Lucy Hoang’s decision to transfer from Faculty of Science to Faculty of Land and Food Systems. Trading in chemistry for dietetics, she has enjoyed opportunities to practice nutrition counselling with volunteer clients, write blog articles for dietitians and lead nutrition tours in a grocery store.
Among the fourth-year student’s favourite experiences is her four-year involvement with Nutri-Kids, a volunteer-run nutrition outreach program in elementary schools.
“Nutri-Kids has been an amazing opportunity for me,” said Hoang. “I’ve experienced different aspects of nutrition education from directly delivering age-appropriate workshops to training volunteers to deliver workshops, developing marketing materials, revamping the website and Instagram page, to running a large non-profit organization. In LFS, you have every opportunity to work your way up!”
Now serving as president of Nutri-Kids, her most challenging task was transitioning the in-person workshops to an online platform during the pandemic. The endeavour has proven to be successful in attracting more volunteers to the organization than before.
Hoang has served as an LFS Student Ambassador to increase the visibility and awareness of LFS to prospective students. “I applied for the position because I wish I had an LFS ambassador talk to my high school,” said Hoang. During her two years in the role, she has honed her skills in social media engagement, peer advising, workshop development and presentation, feedback analysis, video shooting and editing, and HTML coding.
Hoang was also course facilitator for the ‘Live Well to Learn Well’ course – one of three self-paced free classes in the Academic Essentials series designed to help newly admitted UBC students transition from high school to university.
“It was an enriching experience to support them during the pandemic, to listen to students from around the world talk about their experiences, dreams, concerns and hopes for the future,” she said. “The students felt heard and appreciated the academic and wellness resources I connected them to.”
In the future, Hoang would love to run community programs or counsel people. “I’m excited to create interactive and engaging workshops and educational materials,” she said. “I’m passionate about rebuilding positive relationships with food, removing morality around food, and dismantling diet culture. I want to promote a culturally appropriate and judgement-free zone, where people feel safe, heard and empowered to make food choices that benefit them.”
