Monday, February 18, 2013

VIMS Community Tackles Vexing Question in Marine Science


Cook-Off Winners: From L: Emily Loose; Ryan Carnegie, Léo Carnegie, and Corinne Audemard; Paul Panetta; Carissa Wilkerson; Randy Jones; Jess Schloesser; Katie May Laumann; Miram Gleiber for David Malmquist; and Lori Sutter. Photo by Kattie McMillan.

By VIMS Communications Staff

Students, faculty, and staff at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science taxed their analytical abilities to the utmost on Friday evening as they tackled one of the most challenging questions in marine science—who at VIMS makes the tastiest chili or cornbread.

The Institute’s annual Chili Cook-Off, now in its 6th year, is a community-building event organized by the Graduate Student Association (GSA), the official governing body of Master’s and Ph.D. students in William & Mary’s School of Marine Science at VIMS.

During the competition, more than 60 members of the VIMS community tasted small samples of each entry, using their scientific training in hypothesis testing and statistical analysis to choose a single winner in each of the three categories.

As an example of the tasters’ analytical rigor, Adjunct Professor Paul Panetta tasted each cornbread recipe both with and without a cinnamon honey glaze supplied by one of the chefs, noting that this helped to minimize bias in his experimental design.

Winning chefs for 2013 were graduate student Ryan Schloesser and his wife Jess (meat chili), professor Panetta (veggie chili), and Communications Director David Malmquist (cornbread). Second place for meat chili went to the family trio of Research Associate Professor Ryan Carnegie, Assistant Research Scientist Corinne Audemard, and future marine scientist and budding chili aficionado Léo Carnegie, with graduate student Carissa Wilkerson taking third.  Second and third place for veggie chili went to graduate students Randy Jones and Lori Sutter, while second- and third-place prizes for cornbread went to graduate student Emily Loose and the graduate student duo of Katie May Laumann and Jon Lefcheck.

The top winners in each category won an apron (hand painted by Freedman) that featured a fire-breathing Bay scallop, brown pelican, or summer flounder.  Second- and third-place winners were awarded cooking spoons decorated with designs that included a moray eel, Pacific octopus, cownose ray, starfish, pipefish, and diamondback terrapin. Freedman and fellow graduate students Cassie Glaspie and Gar Secrist made the creatures from Sculpey clay.

Perhaps the most stunning outcome of this year’s cook-off was the passing of the coveted Golden Bowl Award from students to faculty—with faculty/staff entries earning 92 total votes compared to only 87 total votes for student entries.


Excerpted from: http://www.vims.edu/newsandevents/topstories/chili_cookoff.php

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