Food Safety Knowledge Allows Jones To Follow Her Interests

Balancing work, raising four children, and pursuing her degree wasn't easy for Diamond Jones, but she knew what earning an associate degree would get her – a promotion.

Jones enjoyed cooking and working in a laboratory, so when her employer asked her to pursue a degree, she enrolled in the food safety program at Delaware Tech.

It wasn't an easy path. Jones was a non-traditional student, having graduated high school years before enrolling in college, and she could only take night classes due to her work schedule.

"I'm very organized, so I would go to work in the morning and go to class at night, while my mom watched my kids," Jones said. "I also had a lot of good teachers along the way, and that made it easier."

The hardest thing for Jones to get used to during her time at Delaware Tech was visiting chicken houses and dissecting chickens. But that knowledge would help her in the future.

Jones graduated in 2016, and currently works at Simmons Feed Ingredients in Bridgeville as a lab technician. Simmons produces raw feed ingredients for dog food, so Jones tests chicken meat for temperature, inspects loads and seals, and verifies analytics, all duties she had prior experience with thanks to her food safety degree.

"The knowledge of the chicken industry, the temperature ranges of the cooler and the refrigerator, the different thermometers and calibrators, all of that I learned at Delaware Tech," Jones said. "So it wasn't new to me when I started."

And Jones hasn't stopped balancing life responsibilities. She is currently attending Wilmington University, majoring in liberal studies with a minor in human resources management. She enjoys the work she does in the lab and would like to continue to do hands-on work, possibly running her own lab one day. Whatever the future holds, she knows it began at Delaware Tech.

"Having a degree really makes a difference," she said. "Without a degree, I wouldn't have been able to work in a lab, and I definitely learned more than I expected."