Aimee Tritt Faculty Profile
What are you Driven to Discover™?
I am Driven to Discover all of the different and new ways that future dietitians can do their jobs. I think our field is rapidly changing and part of educating future dietitians is understanding those changes and supporting students in being drivers of those changes.
What drew you to your field of study?
I wanted to be a chef. Originally I thought about going to culinary school but then I worked at quite a few restaurants and met quite a few chefs and realized I wasn’t a huge fan of the hours or the pay. So I started thinking about how to work with food in different ways, and when I was in my mid-twenties, I worked for EPIC, which is a healthcare software company. Part of my job was to go around to different hospitals and help them install software or learn how to use it. I went to Swedish Hospital in Seattle and I was assigned to the dietitian’s office. Up until that point, I hadn’t thought about being a dietitian at all, not even realizing it was a job. But that was a really fun way to get introduced to the idea, I really liked the dietitians that I worked with that week. And so when I came back, I started looking into it, and here we are!
What is your favorite or most rewarding part about teaching and mentoring students?
I really love seeing what students do after they graduate. I love hearing from former students. I sometimes get reference phone calls, which I actually think is really fun, and the hospital where I used to work has actually hired several of my former students. So it's really nice to see them going out into the world and doing great things.
What is an important idea or concept for modern nutrition and dietetics students that you hope they take away from their educational experiences?
Social determinants of health. It's something I try to focus on in all of my courses. My work at Hennepin Healthcare really cemented that idea for me. These things can be just as influential as a person's diet, exercise, etc., if not more in some situations, and I think it makes such a difference to be aware of that. I think it really makes you a much more empathetic provider, and it really helps improve relationships with clients.
How would you describe your teaching philosophy, especially when it comes to clinical dietetics?
Learning by doing is important. I think a lot of the concepts that I want our future dietitians to be familiar with are really best learned by practical application. I really like having an active classroom and in fact, my Advanced Counseling course is almost entirely experiential. The students conduct an informal nutrition clinic once a week and so they get used to the idea of having a session with a client and then documenting it afterward, which is exactly what they would be doing in a job as a registered dietitian in a clinic setting. I think it's a really good way for them to determine if the job is actually right for them. Students enter nutrition programs with all different impressions of what the job of a dietitian actually is. I like to give them the opportunity to experience it to a certain degree before they have to go and do it professionally.
What do you believe are the most important qualities for a successful dietetics professional, and how do you incorporate these into your teaching?
Empathy and communication skills. I think a lot of times, people feel like their level of nutrition knowledge is the thing that's going to separate them from the rest. But the reality is, dietetics is a field where you work one on one with a patient or a client a lot of the time. And if you can't have a conversation with the person, and you can't empathize with them, then you're not going to get very far, regardless of how much you know about nutrition. I have two whole courses that are dedicated to learning these skills. That is definitely something I hear from a lot of students that they never really thought about, having to have those skills, and it's become really important to them, even after they leave school. To have learned those skills makes them feel like they're well set up for the workplace.
Has there been a success story or memorable experience with a student or class that was particularly rewarding?
I always love it when students tell me that they decided to major in nutrition because they loved one of my classes. That's one of my favorite things to hear. I hear that especially with our Lifecycle Nutrition class. I think a lot of times students take that course because they enjoyed Principles of Nutrition. And Lifecycle is a good course for students who want to try out a nutrition major. And it's a really fun and engaging course that I love teaching. My redesign of that course over the years has made it super engaging and practical for students, even if they don't want to major in nutrition. Some days we talk a lot about parenting, we talk a lot about health throughout the life cycle. And so even if they don’t become a nutrition major, they’re still going to leave with a lot of really good, relevant information. That’s what I feel really good about.
Where do you think the future of dietetic education is headed?
I think our MPS program actually is a pretty good example of where dietetics education might be headed. It’s a really well-designed program. As we continue to develop new courses, we’ll continue to improve it, but the course load is already strong. A lot of our courses include experiential learning. We're also talking more about the concept of burnout and self-care than we used to. And I think that's an important part of the curriculum, because we know that there are really high turnover rates in healthcare professions. And dietetics is a healthcare profession, so we have to start thinking of it that way and make sure our students understand what that means and go into it prepared.
What are you most excited for in this new role?
I am really excited to advise students. This is something I've already been doing a little bit of but I have four MPS advisees this year and I'm really loving it. The students that I'm advising are students who are really interested in nutrition counseling, and that's what I do, so I feel like I have the opportunity to really help them grow those skills and come out head and shoulders above the rest when they do their dietetic internship. I'm excited about that.
If you could give one piece of advice to students entering the dietetics field, what would it be?
I think it would be to not eliminate any different types of positions from consideration when folks are thinking about what they might want to do for a job. That's a little bit based on my own experience. I didn't think I was going to be a clinical dietitian. I thought I wanted to work in either product design or school food service, with more administrative type responsibilities. I did not have any idea that I was going to love working with patients. I think my advice would be for students to remain open minded and go into every one of their internship rotations intending to get the most out of it, even if they think it's not something they want to do someday. Because you never know!
What is your favorite food science or nutrition fact?
We enrich and fortify foods for good reason and usually that reason is public-health related. For example, this is especially important for folic acid in preconception nutrition, as it is essential for early fetal development and only half of pregnancies in the US are planned.
Can you give us one fun fact about yourself?
I was a flute performance major in my undergrad and I thought that I was going to be an orchestral flutist someday. It did not take me very long to realize that that was not a good fit for me. I really loved playing in an orchestra when I was in high school. But one of the problems I always had was that, because I'm not a string player, we would have like 150 bars of rest. And I also had undiagnosed ADHD at the time, so I could not keep track of when I was supposed to play. So I used to totally piss off the people sitting on either side of me, because I would panic and be like, when are we on, like every single time. So yeah, that would not have been a good fit for me. I was so bored during rehearsals. Chamber music would have been a much better fit.