About
Culinary Medicine curriculum/impact:
Frederick Community College’s (FCC) Hospitality, Culinary and Tourism Institute (HCTI) first offered Health meets Food: Culinary Medicine for Foodservice Professionals during the summer of 2023 and continues to offer classes each summer. Since its initial offering, 23 students completed the program and 15 earned their CCMP. During summer of 2024’s class, all 11 students enrolled in Health meets Food: Culinary Medicine for Foodservice Professionals earned their CCMP.
During summer 2025, HCTI is offering Culinary Medicine to the community (Health meets Food: Community Adult Beginner Series) and Health meets Food: Culinary Medicine for Foodservice Professionals: Health Meets Food: Culinary Medicine in Foodservice
Leadership and Faculty bios:
Elizabeth DeRose earned her CCMP at FCC summer 2024. She has been the Institute Manager for HCTI since 2016. As a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, she has directed culinary operations during restaurant growth and has been instrumental in HCTI’s success. During her time FCC, Elizabeth works tirelessly to expand the HCTI program and has witnessed many benefits of those efforts.In 2023 Sass Magazine recognized Elizabeth as one of the “Top Women in Food” FCC News – Frederick Community College. In 2025, Elizabeth was awarded the prestigious “Dr. Patricia Stanley Excellence and Leadership Award” by FCC’s President.
HCTI Highlights:
• Culinary and Baking & Pastry programs are American Culinary Federation accredited
• Offering Health meets Food: Culinary Medicine for Foodservice Professionals
• Offering Health meets Food: Community Adult Beginner Series
• Offering Food Business Entrepreneurship training
• HCTI has experienced 48% increase in enrollment since 2016
Mark Mills
Chef Mark earned his CCMP during summer 2023 and is an adjunct instructor for HCTI where he teaches Artisan and Specialty, and Advanced Artistry Techniques and Health meets Food: Culinary Medicine for Foodservice Professionals.
Chef Mark has been in the hospitality industry in almost every capacity for the last thirty years. Starting in small mom and pop operations, he spent ten years with Ted’s Montana Grill as a lead chef and proprietor before fine tuning his skills with a stint as pastry chef at the Park Hyatt hotel in Washington, DC. A graduate of L’Academie de cuisine in the pastry arts he now seeks to take his experience in both the savory and sweet worlds and marry it with his decade-long passion for farming. Specializing in unique ingredients grown in a sustainable manner, Chocolates and Tomatoes farm is seeking to be a teaching farm showing the next generation that stewardship of the land can be done in a fun and tasty way. Teaching at Frederick Community College is the perfect venue for Mark to share his journey and bring the intersection of the two worlds to students looking to find their true passion.
In 2025, Chef Mark received the Dr. Henry P. & M. Page Laughlin Distinguished Adjunct Faculty Award from Frederick Community College and the National Institute of Staff & Organizational Development (NISOD) Excellence Award.
Health meets Food Graduate Highlights:
Dave Rolls
FCC HCTI Graduate Competes in World Food Championships
Dave Rolls, a recent Frederick Community College (FCC) Hospitality, Culinary, Tourism & Hospitality Institute (HCTI) graduate of the Culinary Arts program and the first cohort of the Culinary Medicine for Foodservice Professionals program, recently competed in the World Food Championships in Dallas. The competition took place from November 9–12, 2023.
Rolls won the Vegetarian Golden Ticket to the World Food Championships in a competition in August 2023, with a winning dish of patty pan / zucchini cakes / romesco sauce, farro lemon risotto, wilted kale with balsamic reduction and cantaloupe blackberries with spicy honey blackberry coulis. Participants had to shop at the farmers market and showcase four of their ingredients. The judges remarked that Rolls’ lemon risotto was “totally on point” and something they hadn’t had before.
The World Food Championships is the largest competition in food sport. Culinary contestants who have won previous events compete for a chance to win prize money and the ultimate food crown. Rolls competed in the vegetarian category.
Rolls is a graduate of the HCTI Health Meets Food: Culinary Medicine in Foodservice course, which provides students with a unique combination of nutritional knowledge and healthy culinary skills to effectively incorporate menu options that are both delicious and healthy. Students gain a solid foundation in Culinary Medicine to enhance their ability to prepare food for the most diverse range of nutritional needs. While completing the HCTI Culinary Medicine program, Rolls started a personal chef business called Chef4Health, which aims to inspire a healthy lifestyle through whole food cuisine.
Christine Van Bloem
Christine earned her CCMP at FCC summer 2024 and is an adjunct instructor for HCTI teaching Baking I and will be the instructor for the Health meets Food: Community Adult Beginner Series during summer 2025. During her training in culinary nutrition, she researched The Mediterranean Diet & Menopause for her capstone project. Since then, she has incorporated Menopause Meal Plans into her cooking and offers memberships for those wanting to benefit from those plans.
Founder of The Empty Nest Kitchen, she has been teaching cooking for a long, long time, and she is still excited to cook, teach, and share her passion. “Working with people in the kitchen is one of my very favorite things to do in the entire world, and I love the connection that food and cooking bring.”
After surviving a heart attack in 2020 and the loss of her brick & mortar cooking school business, she found new purpose cooking for her empty nest.
Post heart attack, she is reforming her butter-loving, heavy cream worshiping ways by making changes to how she cooks, taking things in a healthier direction, without doing a complete 180 and still keeping things flavorful and delightful. The key here is healthier. She is not afraid of butter, but she is using a touch instead of stick. A tablespoon or two of cream or half-and-half, not a cup, and so on and so forth. And now that the kids are grown and living lives on their own, she is re-learning how to cook for two.
Media Coverage:
FCC Students Recognized as Certified Culinary Medical Professionals
Frederick, MD – Frederick Community College (FCC) recently added to the limited number of Certified Culinary Medical Professionals (CCMPs) in the country. Out of only 24 food service professionals in the United States who have earned this prestigious certification, an impressive 15 are from FCC.
FCC’s CCMPs completed the Hospitality, Culinary & Tourism Institute’s (HCTI) Health meets Food: Culinary Medicine in Foodservice program. HCTI has run two cohorts of Health meets Food since first introducing the program in spring 2023. The latest cohort had 11 students, all of whom sat for and passed the exam and earned their CCMP certification in March of 2025.
Through the program, foodservice professionals learn to effectively incorporate healthy options into menus through a specialized combination of nutritional knowledge and healthy culinary skills. CCMP certification enables foodservice professionals to enhance their knowledge, confidence, and skills by learning how to evaluate and apply the most rigorous current research to menu and recipe development, enhance the quality of meals prepared, and improve the diet quality, especially targeting diet-related chronic disease.
Students who recently completed the Health meets Food program included FCC HCTI graduates, current students, local restaurant chefs, private chefs, culinary school educators, registered dieticians, nutritionists, and other foodservice and health professionals.
FCC’s HCTI is the first culinary school in the country to offer the program. Students are able to participate in-person or virtually via a structured remote format where virtual students are in the same lecture as in-person students via Zoom and cook at home while in-person students cook in the HCTI teaching kitchen.
“This program is offered both in-person and virtual format, so food service professionals from any location can take advantage of participating in this innovative program,” said HCTI Manager Elizabeth DeRose. “This allows maximum flexibility and accessibility to the program.”
FCC will offer the Health meets Food: Culinary Medicine program again in summer 2025. The program will be expanded to offer Culinary Medicine (or “Healthy Cooking” or “Culinary Nutrition”) classes to the general public through continuing education next summer.
About Health meets Food at FCC
Frederick Community College’s (FCC) Hospitality, Culinary & Tourism Institute (HCTI) began offering Health meets Food: Culinary Medicine for Foodservice Professionals in spring 2023 and is the first culinary school in the country to offer the program. Students are able to participate in-person or virtually via a structured remote format where virtual students are in the same lecture as in-person students via Zoom and cook at home while in-person students cook in the HCTI teaching kitchen.
