Jovan Duvall

As an OSU Dietetics student, Jovan Duvall cooks for the masses as a co-leader for the redesign and statewide launch of the $1.2-million Food Hero Social Marketing Campaign. Food Hero, an Extension Family and Community Health project funded in part by USDA, aims to promote family health by connecting with limited-income Spanish and English speaking moms to produce interactive tools to help increase fruit and vegetable consumption and family meals. Jovan was involved in many ways including working with the marketing firm to redesign FoodHero.org in English and create a Spanish version, leading student volunteers in testing hundreds of recipes, developing and leading the social media arm, and writing Food Hero monthly. The first three months of the Food Hero kick-off resulted in more than 10,000 web hits, more than 400 new social media followers, and thousands of media impressions via billboard, grocery store and transit marketing throughout Oregon.

Last year, Jovan again followed her passion of healthy eating and culture, this time across the Pacific, for an internship in Tokyo. The trip was the capstone of her OSU Japanese minor, and the 13 years previous to OSU when she studied Japanese within the nationally recognized Portland Public School Richmond Japanese Magnet Program. In Japan, Jovan shadowed the Head Dietitian at Tokyo Women’s Hospital, taught at a nursery school, wrote an article for the city newsletter, filmed and edited a feature story on Tsunami refugees returning home from Tokyo, translated tourist emergency documents, and was able to meet and interview author and dietitian Noriko Miyajima about her famous school lunch redesign and nutrition education philosophy. Through these amazing experiences Jovan learned about Japanese culture in business, especially as a female.

Back home in Corvallis, Jovan was a part of the OSU LitenUp team researching premenopausal women, energy density and its connection to metabolic syndrome. She presented this study at the Celebration of Undergraduate Excellence. Also, Jovan helped design and peer lead a two-credit class for first-term freshmen, which combined a college success tip, such as time management, with a healthy eating tip, such as energy drinks. Jovan contributes to numerous food and nutrition blogs, and had an article featured in the OSU Daily Barometer: “Benefits of fresh, local, organically grown foods.”

Jovan is a member of the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Oregon Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the Student Dietetic Association, and the Alpha Lambda Delta Academic Honors Society, and will leave OSU for a Dietetic Internship at UC Davis. A Beaver for life (since age 5, when she decided she wanted to attend OSU), there is no doubt Jovan will make OSU proud by being a future leader in nutrition.