Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences • Tuskegee, AL • Campus • $1,015–$1,570/Credit
Tuskegee University offers 6 nutrition credentials:
- B.S., Food and Nutritional Sciences, Food Science option
- B.S., Food and Nutritional Sciences, Nutritional Science option
- B.S., Food and Nutritional Sciences, Didactic Program in Dietetics option
- B.S., Food and Nutritional Sciences, Public Health Nutrition option
- B.S. dual degrees, Food Science and Biology or Nutritional Science and Biology
- M.S., Food Science and Nutritional Science
Program Tracks Overview
| Program | Est. Tuition | Est. Duration | Credit Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| B.S. Food Science | $109.0K flat | 4 years (8 semesters) | 123 |
| B.S. Nutritional Science | $109.0K flat | 4 years (8 semesters) | 123 |
| B.S. Dietetics (DPD) | $109.0K flat | 4 years (8 semesters) | 125 |
| B.S. Public Health Nutrition | $109.0K flat | 4 years (8 semesters) | Not clearly stated |
| B.S. Dual Degree | Not clearly stated | 4 years and 2 summers | Not clearly stated |
| M.S. Food and Nutritional Science | $42.1K flat | 1.5 years (3 semesters) | 30 |
The centre of gravity here is food science, not dietetics. The department carries two separate programmatic approvals, ACEND for the dietetics option and the Institute of Food Technologists for food science, and the ACEND track is one of six bachelor’s options rather than the organising principle. Anyone arriving expecting a dietetics department will find a land-grant food science department that happens to house a dietetics track.
Quick Facts
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Program Types | One B.S. degree with six options, a thesis or non-thesis M.S., and a participating doctorate |
| Format | Campus. No Food and Nutritional Sciences program is listed as an online offering |
| Credit Hours | 123 (Food Science and Nutritional Science), 125 (Dietetics), 30 (M.S.) |
| ACEND Accreditation | Yes, one program. The Didactic Program in Dietetics option only |
| Other Programmatic Approval | Institute of Food Technologists, Higher Education Review Board, for the Food Science option |
| RD/RDN Eligibility | Partial. The DPD gives a verification statement; no supervised practice program exists here |
| Supervised Practice | None offered. DPD students document 35 field hours and take a 2-credit practicum |
| Specializations | Food processing and product development; nutritional biochemistry; community and public health nutrition |
| Research Facilities | Food Safety and Processing Center; Center for Research on Nutrition, Lifestyle and Chronic Disease in Alabamians |
| Entrance Exams | ACT 21 or SAT 1000 for the bachelor’s; GRE required for the M.S. |
| GPA Floor | 3.0 to enter, 2.8 to remain, 3.0 in professional courses for DPD students |
| Tuition | $11,240 per semester at 12 to 18 undergraduate hours; $11,655 at 8 to 15 graduate hours |
| Mandatory Fees | $2,390 per semester, including health insurance with no waiver available |
| Institutional Accreditation | Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) |
B.S., Food and Nutritional Sciences, Food Science Option
The estimated tuition for the Food Science option is approximately $109,040, being eight semesters at $11,240 plus $2,390 in mandatory fees each term. The program requires 123 credits over four years and is the option carrying Institute of Food Technologists approval.
The Food Science option is built for the food industry rather than for clinical practice, and its senior year is essentially a food engineering and chemistry sequence.
Food Science Curriculum
The senior year is where this degree declares itself. Four-credit courses in food microbiology, food processing engineering technology, food processing, food chemistry, and product research and sensory evaluation run back to back. That is a heavier applied science load than any other nutrition option in the department.
The chemistry and mathematics requirement is unusually deep. Ten credits of general chemistry with labs in the first year, then organic chemistry, quantitative analysis and biochemistry, alongside calculus and physics. Students who arrive without strong mathematics should expect the sequence rather than the credit total to set their pace.
- FOSC 470 Food Chemistry, lecture and lab, four credits
- FOSC 450 Food Processing Engineering Technology and FOSC 460 Food Processing
- FOSC 440 Food Microbiology, four credits
- FOSC 473 Product Research Innovation and Sensory Evaluation, the senior capstone
- FOSC 302 Food Sensory Evaluation with lab
- CHEM 307 Quantitative Analysis and CHEM 360 Biochemistry
- NUSC 302 Nutritional Biochemistry, four credits
You Should Know
- This option is not ACEND-accredited and produces no verification statement. It does not lead to the RDN credential.
- IFT approval is a different thing from ACEND accreditation. It signals that the curriculum meets the profession’s standards for food science education and is recognised by food industry employers, but it confers no clinical credential.
- A minimum grade of C is required in every major course, and an overall 2.8 GPA must be maintained.
- The Food and Nutritional Science Advisory Board, made up of academics and food industry professionals, arranges internships at member companies and provides annual scholarships. That is a live industry pipeline rather than a listed committee.
B.S., Food and Nutritional Sciences, Nutritional Science Option
The estimated tuition for the Nutritional Science option is approximately $109,040, identical to every other bachelor’s option because Tuskegee bills a flat semester rate. The program requires 123 credits over four years and is designed as preparation for graduate study rather than for practice.
This option points at an M.S. or Ph.D. in applied community nutrition or nutritional biochemistry, or at nutritionist roles in government, public health and industry.
Nutritional Science Curriculum
It carries clinical coursework without the accreditation. Both Medical Nutrition Therapy courses appear here, alongside community nutrition and life cycle nutrition, so the content overlaps substantially with the dietetics option. What it lacks is the ACEND-accredited structure that turns that coursework into a verification statement.
Research is the intended destination. Biostatistics, biochemistry of cell regulation with lab, and methods of food and nutritional analysis prepare students for the department’s research centres, where work runs on cardiovascular disease, cancer and chronic disease using both animal and human models.
- NUSC 343 and NUSC 443, Medical Nutritional Therapy I and II
- NUSC 302 Nutritional Biochemistry, four credits
- NUSC 305 Community Nutrition and NUSC 307 Life Cycle Nutrition
- CHEM 360 and CHEM 361, Biochemistry of Cell Regulation with lab
- EVSC 500 Biostatistics I
- ANPH 201 and 202, Anatomy and Physiology I and II, eight credits
You Should Know
- Course plans for this option circulating online list NUSC 307 Life Cycle Nutrition in both junior and senior year, and give ENGL 327 Public Speaking as one credit where the Food Science plan gives three. Take credit totals from the catalog rather than from summed year blocks.
- Taking Medical Nutrition Therapy here does not substitute for the accredited dietetics option. A student who wants the RDN credential should be in the DPD option from the start, since switching later means completing accredited coursework that may not overlap cleanly.
B.S., Food and Nutritional Sciences, Didactic Program in Dietetics Option
The estimated tuition for the Dietetics option is approximately $109,040, the same flat figure as the other options despite its higher credit count. The program requires 125 credits over four years and is Tuskegee’s only ACEND-accredited offering.
The Didactic Program in Dietetics is the first step toward the RDN credential and, as Tuskegee frames it, is designed to make graduates competitive for internship placement rather than to supply the internship itself.
Dietetics Curriculum
Food service management is a real component. Restaurant operations management, facilities management and design, principles of management and elementary accounting all appear, which is more management content than most DPDs carry and reflects the department’s food industry orientation.
The science load is front-heavy. Sophomore year alone runs 35 credits and includes anatomy and physiology, cell and general biology, microbiology and genetics. Because Tuskegee bills a flat rate from 12 to 18 hours, that heavy year also returns the most credit per dollar of any term in the plan.
- NUSC 343 and NUSC 443, Medical Nutrition Therapy I and II
- NUSC 304 Nutrition Assessment and NUSC 303 Counseling Education Theory
- NUSC 444 Nutritional Practicum, two credits in the senior year
- HOMT 301 and HOMT 362, restaurant operations and facilities management
- FOSC 405 and 406, Analysis of Food Quality with lab
- PHIL 347 Medical Ethics
- BIOL 309 Genetics, four credits
You Should Know
- Tuskegee operates no dietetic internship, coordinated program or graduate dietetics program. A verification statement here is a ticket to apply elsewhere, and since January 2024 the CDR has also required a master’s degree before the examination.
- The practical requirement is modest: at least 35 documented hours of field experience across the whole degree, plus a two-credit senior practicum. Neither counts toward the roughly 1,000 supervised practice hours the credential requires.
- Progression runs in two phases. Entry needs a 3.0; the phase two checkpoint before junior year needs a 3.0 overall and a C or better in chemistry and biology; retention then needs a 3.0 in professional courses against a 2.8 overall.
- There is a seven-year limit from enrollment to completing DPD requirements.
- Circulating course plans list NUSC 400 Seminar in both junior and senior year, which double-counts a credit. Verify the total against the catalog.
B.S., Food and Nutritional Sciences, Public Health Nutrition Option
The estimated tuition for the Public Health Nutrition option is approximately $109,040 on the same flat semester basis. Tuskegee does not publish a credit total for this option separately, so treat four years as the planning assumption and confirm the figure with the department.
This option is built around community programme design, work with at-risk groups, and evaluation of lifestyle and environmental factors in nutrition and health. Its practical emphasis is data collection on chronic disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity, feeding into nutrition-related solutions.
You Should Know
- Tuskegee describes this option as having a component that lets students apply for a dietetic internship and take the registered dietitian examination. Read that carefully: ACEND accredits the Dietetics option, not this one, and only accredited didactic coursework produces a verification statement. Ask the department exactly which additional courses are required and whether the verification statement is issued.
- Career destinations are public health agencies rather than clinical settings, which makes this the option to consider if community and policy work, not patient care, is the goal.
Dual Degrees in Food Science and Biology or Nutritional Science and Biology
Tuskegee does not publish a combined tuition figure or credit total for the dual-degree routes, so neither is stated here. What it does publish is the timeline: two B.S. degrees in four years and two summers.
The structure is unusual and worth understanding before dismissing it. Rather than a five-year double major, the department uses two summer terms to compress a second biology degree into the standard four-year window. For a student aiming at medical, dental or veterinary school, or at a doctoral programme in the life sciences, holding a biology degree alongside a food or nutritional science degree is a materially stronger application than either alone.
You Should Know
- Two summers of coursework are billed separately from the fall and spring block rate, so the four-year cost is higher than the $109,040 figure for a single degree. Tuskegee publishes a separate summer fee schedule; get it before committing.
- Neither dual degree is ACEND-accredited, so neither leads to the RDN credential on its own.
- Summers are not optional in this structure. A student who needs to work through the summer cannot follow this plan on schedule.
M.S. in Food Science and Nutritional Science
The estimated tuition for the M.S. is approximately $42,135, derived from three full-time semesters at $11,655 plus $2,390 in fees each term. The program requires 30 credits and offers a thesis or a non-thesis option, each available with a Food Science or a Nutritional Science emphasis.
The M.S. in Food Science and Nutritional Science is a research degree, and the department’s own framing is about creative endeavour through basic and applied research rather than professional preparation.
M.S. Curriculum and Research Requirements
- Shared core in biostatistics, methods of food and nutritional analysis with lab, food chemistry, biochemistry with lab, and professional seminar
- Food Science emphasis adds scientific research methods, food ingredient chemistry, and a human nutrition course
- Nutritional Science emphasis adds vitamins and minerals, human nutrition and health, and nutrition and disease
- Thesis option: six credits of FOSC or NUSC 700 research, a four-member committee formed in the first semester, a proposal defence, an academic defence of major-area content, two seminars, and a final oral examination
- Non-thesis option: 30 course credits and a comprehensive examination, with no research hours
- Admission to candidacy follows roughly 18 hours, about a year in
- Up to nine transfer credits on Advisory Committee recommendation
The thesis route is the one that connects to the department’s research infrastructure, the Food Safety and Processing Center for product development and processing work, and the Center for Research on Nutrition, Lifestyle and Chronic Disease in Alabamians for chronic disease research. If a doctorate is the eventual aim, the thesis is not really optional. The department also participates in Tuskegee’s Integrative Biosciences Ph.D., which is where nutritional biochemistry and food science doctoral work happens; it is an interdisciplinary university programme rather than a departmental degree, so its requirements come from the Graduate School.
You Should Know
- ⚠ Pace decides price here, and the gap is large. Tuskegee’s full-time graduate band is 8 to 15 hours at a flat $11,655 a semester, but part-time graduate credits are billed at $1,570 each. Finishing 30 credits in three full-time terms costs about $42,135; spreading the same 30 credits across four part-time terms costs about $56,660. That is roughly $14,500 for going slower.
- Sources disagree on the non-thesis credit total, with 30 and 33 both in circulation. Tuskegee’s department page states 30 course credits plus a comprehensive examination.
- The GRE is required, which is now unusual and rules out applicants who assumed the waivers common elsewhere.
- Applicants from related STEM fields need one course in food science and one in nutritional science before entry.
Tuition
Tuskegee’s published cost per credit hour for 2026-27 is $1,015 for undergraduates taking fewer than 12 hours and $1,570 for graduate students taking fewer than 8. Most students instead pay a flat semester rate: $11,240 at 12 to 18 undergraduate hours, or $11,655 at 8 to 15 graduate hours. Hours beyond the band are cheap, $680 per additional undergraduate credit and $745 per graduate credit. As a private university, Tuskegee charges one rate to every student regardless of home state.
Mandatory fees add $2,390 a semester on top of tuition: technology $390, activity $700, identification card activation $45, health insurance $900, and an all-access e-book fee of $355. Health insurance carries no waiver at all, which is worth noting because most universities let students opt out with proof of coverage.
| Enrollment | Charge | Effective per credit |
|---|---|---|
| Undergraduate, 11 hours | $1,015 per credit | $1,015 published |
| Undergraduate, 12 hours | $11,240 | $937 derived |
| Undergraduate, 18 hours | $11,240 | $624 derived |
| Graduate, 15 hours | $11,655 | $777 derived |
Across Tuskegee’s own rate lines the highest undergraduate credit costs 1.5 times the lowest, and the difference is entirely a function of how many hours you register for. Dropping to 11 hours triggers the $1,015 rate on every credit; taking a nineteenth hour costs $680, the least expensive credit the university sells.
Confirmed costs
- Any bachelor’s option, four years: tuition 8 × $11,240 = $89,920, plus fees 8 × $2,390 = $19,120, for $109,040 (derived)
- Blended cost per credit for a 123-credit degree at 16 hours a term: $731 (derived)
- All six bachelor’s options cost the same in fall and spring tuition, because the flat band absorbs the difference between 123 and 125 credits
- M.S. in three full-time terms: 3 × $11,655 plus 3 × $2,390 = $42,135 (derived)
- M.S. in four part-time terms: 30 × $1,570 plus 4 × $2,390 = $56,660 (derived)
- Health insurance across a four-year degree: 8 × $900 = $7,200, with no waiver available
- All-access e-books across a four-year degree: 8 × $355 = $2,840
- Room, board and renters insurance in a double-occupancy hall: $11,900 a year, or $47,600 across four years
- Sibling discount of $300 per student per semester in tuition, plus $650 to $975 per semester on residence hall charges, where two or more siblings attend together
Be aware that:
- Tuskegee is private. Any figure presented as an in-state estimate for this university is a category error, since there is no out-of-state rate to compare it against.
- Figures circulating for these programs frequently apply the part-time per-credit rate to a full-time degree, which inflates the total. A full-time student never pays $1,015 a credit.
- Students with fewer than 60 credit hours must live in double-occupancy university housing for the full academic year, so the room and board line is effectively mandatory for the first two years unless you are 24 or older, married, or a Macon County resident.
- The e-book fee is not an opt-out programme, unlike similar schemes elsewhere.
- Financial clearance is strict. Payment is due before the term, a $300 late payment fee applies from a published date, and the Nelnet payment plan requires a semester balance of $6,000 or less to qualify.
- The dual-degree route adds two summer terms billed on a separate schedule, so its four-year cost exceeds the single-degree figure.
For a student who can carry 16 to 18 hours a term and finish in four years, the arithmetic here is straightforward and the flat band rewards a full load. For a graduate student the decision is starker: the part-time rate is roughly double the effective full-time rate, so a master’s taken slowly costs about a third more than the same degree taken at pace. Anyone who cannot commit to full-time study should price that difference before enrolling.
Current rates are published on the Tuskegee bursar’s page.
Why Choose This Nutrition Program?
A good fit for students heading into the food industry, for those aiming at research or professional school, and for a narrower group who want the dietetics track and can plan around what it does not include.
For food industry careers, this is the strongest option in the state. The Food Science track holds Institute of Food Technologists approval, which nothing else profiled on this site does, and the senior year is a genuine food engineering sequence: processing technology, food chemistry, microbiology and product development, backed by a Food Safety and Processing Center. The departmental advisory board is made up of food industry professionals who supply internships at member companies and annual scholarships. That is an employer pipeline, not a brochure line.
For research and professional school, the structure is built for it. The Nutritional Science option exists explicitly to feed graduate study, the thesis master’s connects to two funded research centres working on cardiovascular disease, cancer and chronic disease, and the department participates in an Integrative Biosciences doctorate. The dual-degree route delivers a second B.S. in biology within four years and two summers, which is the sort of thing medical and veterinary admissions committees notice.
For dietetics, it is a solid didactic program with a clear ceiling. The DPD is ACEND-accredited and carries more food service management content than most, which suits students aiming at foodservice directorships. But Tuskegee runs no supervised practice program of any kind, so the hardest step in the credential happens elsewhere, and the master’s the CDR now requires is a research degree rather than a dietetics one.
The honest drawbacks. Six bachelor’s options in one department sounds like choice, and it is, but only one of them is accredited toward the credential most visitors are looking for, and Tuskegee’s description of the Public Health Nutrition option blurs that line in a way that deserves a direct question to the department. Credit totals and course plans in circulation contain duplicated courses and inconsistent credit values, so verify against the catalog rather than any summary. Health insurance is mandatory with no waiver, the housing requirement runs two years, and the part-time graduate rate penalises exactly the students most likely to need it.
Accreditation
Tuskegee University is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to award baccalaureate, master’s, doctorate and professional degrees. Institutional accreditation governs credit transfer, recognition of the degree by other graduate schools, and eligibility for federal financial aid.
Programmatic recognition here comes from two different bodies, which is worth separating carefully. The Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition and Dietetics (ACEND) accredits one program: the Didactic Program in Dietetics option of the B.S. in Food and Nutritional Sciences. Separately, the Higher Education Review Board of the Institute of Food Technologists approves the undergraduate Food Science option. IFT approval is the national standard for food science education and matters to food industry employers, but it is not a clinical accreditation and confers no dietetics credential.
The remaining options fall outside both. Nutritional Science, Public Health Nutrition, the two dual degrees and the M.S. carry no programmatic accreditation. For research and industry degrees that is entirely normal. It matters most for Public Health Nutrition, which sits closest to dietetics in content and is described by Tuskegee as having a component allowing students to apply for a dietetic internship, a description that only holds if accredited didactic coursework is completed and a verification statement issued.
Graduates of the Didactic Program in Dietetics option receive a verification statement and may apply to accredited supervised practice programs elsewhere, since Tuskegee operates none. On completing supervised practice together with a graduate degree, they are eligible for the Commission on Dietetic Registration examination, which has required a master’s degree at minimum since January 1, 2024. Graduates of any other option, or of the M.S. alone, are not eligible for that examination and cannot enter a dietetic internship without first earning a verification statement. Alabama licenses dietitians, so the examination is a step toward practice rather than the end of it; confirm current requirements with the state board.
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