Ivy League Sausage Fest?

So  Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is getting on the whole food bandwagon:

Science & Cooking Public Lectures / Public talks by world-class chefs

 The Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (“SEAS”) and the Alícia Foundation have developed a new General Education science course, “Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to the Science of Soft Matter,” debuting in the Fall of 2010. The course will use food and cooking to explicate fundamental principles in applied physics and engineering.

 Limited to currently enrolled Harvard undergraduates, the class will bring together eminent Harvard researchers and world-class chefs, including Wylie Dufresne of wd-50 and Dan Barber of Blue Hill, as well as food scholar and writer Harold McGee, one of the leading authorities on kitchen science.

  Science & Cooking Lecture Series

Members of the extended Harvard community and the general public will have an opportunity to attend topic-related public lectures given by the guest chefs and faculty affiliated with the course.

 The whole thing is a bit of a headscratcher. 1) The Cod did his fingerling bid in the 02138, and had never realized that Harvard had a School of Engineering, and wonders why bother, when there is a solid one right down the street. 2) For an engineering dept, the whole enterprise has a slightly desperate feel to it -- what with the crisis in higher education, and whacks to Harvard's endowment, it was either putting on the battle of the Food Network Stars in the Science Center, or a calendar featuring members of the department a la the Rylestone Women's Institute. 3) Finally, and I realize that it is "Science and Cooking" and not "Quotidian, Nurturing, Backbreaking Cooking," and thus you gotta have Wylie, and Ferran, and Grant, etc, but still, only one chick and nine dudes on the roster? Is this not what Mr. Adria might call a fiesta del chorizo?

Comments

[Marco]

When I applied to MIT in 1965 and was turned down because I wasn't a fucking genius, I opted for RPI. Before I did that, a Harvard club undergrad nominated me for admission to the venerable university saying that I could take my engineering courses at MIT. So you might have a gripe. But Boston trumps Troy, NY in more ways than one.