It's a cool lesson for high school students: how to create an ice cream flavor and commercialize it into a product for sale in their own café and on supermarket shelves.

Thanks to a collaboration with Cornell's Department of Food Science, it could also lead to an Ivy League education for some, as proceeds will benefit a scholarship fund for students to attend Cornell in food science.

Alicia Orta-Ramirez, a lecturer at Cornell, has taken one of the most popular parts of her Science and Technology of Foods course to 21 students in an enrichment program in Jacksonville, Fla. The novel, long-distance outreach effort is designed to entice teens into food science and encourage their entrepreneurial endeavors.

In a series of eight live webcasts that started in January and an in-person visit, Orta-Ramirez, associate professor Carmen Moraru, Cornell Dairy director Jason Huck and two graduate students taught the students the science and economics of ice cream production.

The students also received hands-on help from such industry experts as a vice president of research and development and project managers of TIC Gums, a Baltimore-based company that supplies ingredients used as texture in many foods, including ice cream. They also heard from representatives of Sam's Club, which has expressed an interest in selling the finished product in its stores. Other companies donated freezers and soft-serve machines, including Taylor Equipment, Electro Freeze, Mr. Cookie Face, and Master-Bilt Corporation, which donated an ice cream hardening cabinet.

TIC Gums director Steve Andon, a member of the Cornell Food Science Advisory Council, came up with the idea, after a chance encounter with the director of City Kidz Café, a restaurant that also hosts an after-school and financial literacy program for area teens.

Andon saw it as an opportunity to engage students who are traditionally underrepresented in the industry. A quarter of the participants are African-American or Latino, and a quarter are Native American. All were selected as academically gifted.

"The kids are eager for this kind of exposure," Andon said. "They are motivated. They are there every Saturday, at 8:30 a.m. It's incredible."

He said there is an acute need in the industry to recruit future food scientists and to sustain the United States' dominance in the field.

"When my son graduated from the Cornell food science program in 2006, he was one of only 299 graduates in the United States," he said, noting that the only other comparable program is in China and it enrolls some 1,200 students. "If we do not continue to turn out top-quality food scientists, we jeopardize our leadership role in feeding the world," he said.

If successful, the City Kidz program could be implemented in other cities, starting in Baltimore and possibly Philadelphia, Andon said. He also sees potential to include other departments, such as applied economics or communication.

"These are really top-notch students who have the background and preparation to succeed at Cornell," Orta-Ramirez said. "These are the kinds of students we want in our college."

Even after the program wraps up March 12, Orta-Ramirez plans to lead a summer session in Jacksonville for teachers on how to incorporate food science into lessons in a range of topics, from biology to consumer science.

"Chemistry concepts can be taught using food science and household things. Fudge can be used to learn about boiling point elevation and saturated solutions, for instance. Students really enjoy 'playing' with food," Orta-Ramirez said.

Stacey Shackford is a staff writer at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.