FEEd Lab in the News

Healthy Start: Alumna Virginia Stage Adds Science, Nutrition in Preschool

Signs of Virginia Stage’s professional calling—helping young children discover science and enjoy nutritious foods—showed up on her plate long before she became a nutrition professor and researcher.

NUTURING NUTRITION

While East Carolina University is known for preparing educators for the classroom, a team of Pirate researchers is studying how teachers’ personal views on healthy behaviors impact their students.

FEEDING OUR CHILDREN’S FUTURE

The good news? With increased research, policy, evaluation, tracking and funding for early childhood nutrition, healthy eating and equitable food access programs, we’re seeing a growing positive impact on the health, cognitive, physical, emotional and social development of the next generation.

STARTING STEM EARLY

ECU programs will give underserved preschoolers a head start in science, health education

If you happened to see Dr. Virginia C. Stage on the ground, digging through the dirt to find roly-polies outside ECU’s Health Sciences Building this past summer, you might not immediately guess that would somehow propel some of the state’s youngest learners toward a healthier lifestyle and a predisposition to futures in STEM.

Project examines behavior modeling in the classroom

Virginia C. Stage, an associate professor in the Department of Nutrition Science, along with two other Pirates Dr. Archana Hegde and Jocelyn Bayles (‘20).

MORE PEAS PLEASE!

Parents know, and research has proven, that preschoolers have hungry minds. They ask hundreds of questions every day as they observe and shape the world around them. Could early food and nutrition education, delivered by trained pre-K teachers, feed their curiosity about science, technology, engineering and math?

LEARNING SCIENCE AND HEALTH

East Carolina University will lead a new five-year, $1.3 million grant that will give thousands of North Carolina children an early start on learning about science.

Food Insecurity in ENC

In this episode of Relentlessly Rural, host Lamar Gilchrist interviews East Carolina University student Travis Miles about ECU’s Purple Pantry, Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina eastern regional director George Young about the difficulties of accessing food in the region, and ECU faculty members Stephanie Jilcott Pitts and Virginia Stage about food insecurity and healthy eating.