打破常规

汤姆·瑞安,79年,与他的导师,伊恩·格雷博士,谈论他的职业生涯,以及它是如何开始在密歇根州立大学食品科学和人类营养系。BOB体育

2016年3月21日

汤姆·瑞安,密歇根州立大学79届毕业生

汤姆·瑞安,79年,与他的导师,伊恩·格雷博士,谈论他的职业生涯,以及它是如何开始在密歇根州立大学食品科学和人类营养系。BOB体育瑞安是Smashburger的联合创始人,他是一名食品科学家,本科、研究生和博士学位都毕业于密歇根州立大学。在他的职业生涯中,他设计了一些当今最受欢迎的食品,包括必胜客的填充皮披萨,麦当劳的麦卷和Smashburgers新鲜汉堡。

汤姆?赖安

在现场,与汤姆·瑞安和伊恩·格雷一起打破常态-成绩单

Kraig:记得不能用欢迎来到“实地考察”,这是密歇根州立大学农业与自然资源学院的播客节目。BOB体育bob体育下载iosbob体育合法吗我是你们的主持人,克雷格·埃姆。在这一期的《实地调查》中,我邀请到了汤姆·瑞安,他是Smashburger的联合创始人兼首席概念官,以及汤姆·Urban的创始人。伊恩·格雷博士,总统的特别顾问。先生们,谢谢你们参加我的节目。


伊恩·格雷:很荣幸。

汤姆?赖安:很高兴来到这里,谢谢。

:记得不能用好吧,汤姆,从你开始吧。跟我们简单介绍一下你自己。

雷恩:我在密歇根大急流城出生长大。我是三倍深的斯巴达人。很荣幸能回到校园。我本科学的是食品科学,硕士学的是脂质毒理学,博士伊恩是我主修的风味化学教授。在食品行业工作了很长一段时间,在过去的25年里,一直在做餐馆。我所做过的最新、最伟大、最有趣的事情是开发和扩展《Smashburger》和《Tom’s Urban》。

:记得不能用现在,如果我说错了请纠正我,但我认为在你的职业生涯中,你也吃过必胜客的填充皮披萨。麦当劳,麦当劳,Big N' Tasty,一元菜单,水果和酸奶冻糕,我妻子对此表示非常感谢。

雷恩:她是受欢迎的。

:记得不能用Quiznos,牛排馆牛肉蘸酱,上等肋排,还有萨米三明治。那么近吗?

雷恩:是的,我在公司内部做了很多工作,帮助扩展他们的品牌平台,增加收入,真正创新他们的食物,使其现代,当代,并改变了景观的面貌。所有这些都是我的产品开发生涯与概念开发和餐馆经营的一个很好的例子。但是,是的,我在这方面度过了一段美好的时光,过去我很喜欢这样做。

:记得不能用伊恩,跟我们简单介绍一下你自己。

灰色:很明显,我的职业道路和汤姆的有很大不同。我一生都是真正的学者。70年代初,我来到密歇根州立大学。读了几年博士后,然后去了加拿大。1978年回到加拿大担任副教授。我开始教分析食品化学,这让我有机会接触到当时食品科学专业的一些顶尖本科生。这就是我和汤姆相识的原因之一,通过这个项目,我们帮汤姆读了硕士和博士课程。所以我一直在研究…从本质上讲,他是一名食品化学家,研究烹饪和加工过程对有毒化合物形成的影响。所以我在密歇根州立大学的职业生涯很优越,我可以教书,可以做研究,还可以进入研究管理部门。bob体育登录 Both as a director of then the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station, and subsequently became VP for Research and Graduate Studies at the university. So overall it's been a kind of a very balanced career portfolio which is coming to end. But at the same time you take great pride in seeing the success stories of our graduates. Particularly your own graduates.

:记得不能用汤姆,现在是你大学三年级。你不太确定你想做什么。突然间你就把注意力集中到食品科学上了。如此专注,以至于人们可以提到你在密歇根州立大学获得的食品科学本科学位,脂质毒理学硕士学位和风味和香料化学博士学位。格雷博士是什么让你想学食品科学的?

雷恩:是的,其实在格雷医生之前就开始了。我在大三的时候上了我的第一堂食品科学课,当时真的不知道有这么深的技术,以及对我一生中认为理所当然的事情的基础科学理解。我的第一堂食品科学课是《食品加工物理学》,我完全爱上了这门学科。在那一刻,我真的非常渴望尽可能多地吸收它。当我在我们的食品分析和化学课上遇到伊恩时,我有点爱上了它作为一种学术追求。他的教学风格很吸引人。我很荣幸,也很荣幸能被邀请来和Ian一起做原创研究,一起完成攻读学位和写论文的过程。bob体育登录伊恩一直是一位很有吸引力的老师,很容易交谈,当我决定和他一起攻读硕士学位时,我真的很高兴。这不仅是一次伟大而全面的教育。但在我的学术生涯中,这是我第一次真正感觉到我在向一个对待我非常成熟的人学习。 And not only as an adult, but as a friend as an adult. So it was a huge difference of point of view to go from undergrad to graduate school. It was like starting all over for me. So it was very exciting and obviously I absorbed that equally as much as I did my undergrad, and loved the whole process.

:记得不能用伊恩,你在汤姆学生时代看到了什么,让你认为他会成功?

灰色:这是个好问题,因为我认为你可以评估潜力。现在,我有诚实的优势。我总是说我的口音为我打开了一扇通常不会为我打开的门。因为它帮助我在教学中获得了良好的学生评分。但说真的,我认为我很早就接触到了优秀的学生。很明显,当你观察学生在实验室环境中的表现时,在课堂上,这并不总是转化为研究倾向。bob体育登录但是汤姆,还有这个小组里的其他几个人,都是从他的毕业班来的。我在密歇根州立大学的第一批研究生,可能是在我全职工作的头10年里,研究生的质量,尤其是那些来自我们自己项目的研究生,是惊人的。汤姆从不让人失望。汤姆有一种独特之处。 It's very unusual for a student to get three degrees in the same place. Now, in fact it was frowned upon sometimes. "Go out and look at different philosophies," and so on. But you got to treat every student individually. One the things, and Tom mentioned it, you got to treat every student as if he were your own child. They're placing their trust in you to ... that you can educate them. The whole idea of any successful graduate program is not the research accomplished per se in publications. But can you turn out a well-trained individual who is self-sufficient? Somebody who can, is ready, to make a mark. That's the overall goal of all research programs. How do I develop the next generation of scholars and scholars that will fit into industry? Scholars that will fit into government circles, scholars that will fit into academia. Tom had showed very early on that he had a propensity for going beyond traditional research. I will talk a little bit maybe later about Tom's choice of course work, for example, during his PhD dissertation, that allowed him to move in areas where traditionally it wasn't very common at that time. More so now, but Tom had a PhD program tailored to fit his future needs. That's something of which, I think, we all take a lot of great satisfaction and pride in doing.

雷恩:他想说的是80年代的时候,我是他麻烦缠身的老二,他很好地和我一起度过了那段时期。实际上,他给了我思想上的自由,实际上是学术上的自由,让我设计了一个非常前卫的项目,为那些正在攻读真正以学术为中心的博士项目的人服务。至少在博士阶段是这样。它改变了我的生活。能够灵活地邀请不是纯食品科学家的人加入我的委员会。他对市场营销有自己的见解。他对商业化有着同时代的观点。这些东西对于我们能够超越学术界,并对企业的消费者方面产生影响是非常重要的。我总是被它驱使着。伊恩很好地适应了我的能力,让我把真正独特和原创的东西放在我的研究、我的课程和我的委员会中,他们给了我一些东西,我认为,事后看来,这对我来说是一个巨大的竞争优势,让我能够做别人需要多年经验才能获得证书才能做的事情。bob体育登录 So I feel very privileged and entitled.

灰色:但这里有一点很重要我们并没有让汤姆放弃基础学科的课程。汤姆积极地选修了化学、食品科学、高级食品科学、统计学等课程,这些都是所有研究生的必修课。记得那时候我们采用的是四分之一学制,一共有36学分。博士学bob体育登录位至少36个研究学分。但事实上,汤姆参加了一个积极的硕士课程项目,这让他可以灵活地进入其他选修课程,这些课程是他所修36个学分的一部分。因此,他进入了食品营销领域,参加了一些商业课程等等。这并不是以牺牲更多的科学为代价的……因为我坚信,(更严格的)科学知识越丰富,学生的准备就越充分。汤姆做到了,但他也接触到了营销世界的情况等等。这与他当时的兴趣非常吻合。

:记得不能用你从伊恩那里学到了什么,他传授给你的不仅仅是书本知识吗?

雷恩:听着,我们还没有机会深入讨论伊恩的教学风格,我非常喜欢激励,喜欢在承诺和服从的基础上建立人们的资历。所以伊恩在智力思考方面非常开放,我认为这对于像伊恩这样的人来说是独一无二的。但更重要的是,伊恩很有趣,很迷人。伊恩为我们提供了一种文化,研究生院可能是脆弱的,也可能是乏味的,这取决于你所处的工作阶段,他用一种伟大的文化包围着我们,让我们相互交流。他组建的团队,我…不是研究生同学,而是一个团队。我们一起做IM运动,午餐时间一起打网球。我们一起出去喝酒。这不仅仅是师生关系。这是我第一次接触真正的职场文化。 Ian was the head of that. So he provided us not only with, I think, a great amount of academic input. A lot of counseling on how to put thesis and research proposals together, but he made it fun. I don't mean fun in a trivial way. I mean it was an engaging environment surrounded by great people who really enjoyed what they were doing and spending time together doing it. So I think that's another rarity based on conversations I've had with others who've gone through graduate programs. They're like, "Really? That's really what your graduate program was like?" It was a rare thing. We all kind of knew it was a little bit magic while we were going through it. But it was magic. It was great.

灰色:我对密歇根州立大学来说也是个新人。我在威尔士大学有研究生但是汤姆和我从威尔士带来的另一个博士生,我们昨晚谈到了她,他们是第一批学生。这有点神奇,因为赠款能够……拨款很成功,申请也很成功。我们有钱做事情,我们有一群很棒的学生。现在,其中一个。你周围都是好人。我们和一位教授有共同的关系,就是我做博士后的那位教授,汤姆从他那里学到了高级脂质化学。他是那些传统的教员之一。他是个了不起的人,关于勒罗伊·杜根我只能说这么多。 He's still alive and doing very well. One of the persons that really had an influence on both of us was we had a visiting scholar from England for a year, Ian Morton. Ian Morton was the chair of the Queen Elizabeth College Food Science Department. He wanted to get away from administration, and he spent 10 to 12 hours a day in the lab working on a project. He took Tom under his wing, and this is the basis of Tom's master work, the oxidation of cholesterol in heated frying oils. As a result of that, Tom got exposed to another culture, another discipline, another point of view about research, how you can conduct research. Because you want to glean from everywhere you can. You want to be in situations, or we try to create an environment, where students will glean from each other or learn from each other, interact with each other. It can be done in a formal lab setting, and it could be done socially. So we try to balance that out. It's not that it was all fun. There was tensions, there was arguments. One of the worst things ever happening is if somebody's project's not going well and other projects are going well, that immediately causes tension because that person's getting further ahead of the game than I am. Forgetting the fact that every project's individual, every project's different. Some will work, some will not. Some will get positive results, some will get negative results. But you balance that all out, and you can do that in multiple ways. But it's simply you've got to trust the student and the student's got to trust you. If that trust is ever eroded, we lose. We lose an awful lot of that. So we developed a trust. Tom is under my watch. I trusted his data-taking and all that stuff, and we both benefit. I get the publication, shared with Tom. He got the benefit of multiple investigators working together. As a result, Tom got off, I think, on a firm career.

:记得不能用你在这里读书时遇到的最大挑战是什么?

雷恩:这是一个非常私人的问题。对我来说,是阴谋。我很喜欢空白页。我对拥抱未知的事物并弄清楚它们非常感兴趣。坦率地说,对我来说,最困难的部分是研究生研究中不涉及空白页上的发现的部分。bob体育登录这其中有两部分,我必须坦诚。我不太喜欢重复研究来证明有效性。bob体育登录这就像不得不重新发现同样的东西两次,但最后没有精力了。所以冗余的要求是学术驱动的,这是必须的,我尊重它,我诚实地做了。但它真的很乏味,在我看来,我讨厌这么说,没有什么比文学评论更糟糕的了。 Nothing. But it's part of the discipline and I respect the discipline, and it's with me everyday. Back in the day ... I would love to do a lit review now with the ability to google and have access to those things at my fingertips. But in the old days we actually had to go and pull cards and pull papers, and request reprints. It took forever to get all the things together, and you had to knit those into a historical quilt, if you will, that got the reader, the academic reader, to a point where your piece added the next piece to the puzzle. Again, it wasn't that it wasn't valuable, it wasn't that it wasn't interesting. It just wasn't my favorite thing. So I had to make myself get it done. It was a really tough discipline thing for me, because I like to think and do instead of reflect. That's the honest to god truth. But Ian was great, he only made me rewrite it four or five times.

灰色:是的,我只用了三四支红笔。评分的全部秘密就在于你可以不用多少红色。

雷恩:是的。

灰色:你可以告诉大家,也不全是坏事。

雷恩:是的。但我们在整个过程中都很幽默,这是一次很棒的经历,对于标准和认证来说是必要的,伊恩要求我们对高水平的标准和认证负责。所以我明白了,我明白了,而且成功了。

灰色:任何时候你写论文,现在都有点不同,但我一直认为,当一个研究生和教授写一篇论文或论文时,在我们把它提交给指导委员会或审查委员会之前,它是我们共同能做到的最好的状态。现在关于这个问题有不同的哲学,但总的来说,我们会感到自豪的是,如果你向审查委员会提交一个项目或论文,汤姆坐在那里回答问题,如果他不回答问题,或者这里有一些问题,我就会和汤姆一起死……因为那是我们共同的努力。

雷恩:这是一个团队。

灰色:这是一个团队。这是一个团队,所以我坐在这里,学生们正在回答问题,他们茫然地看着那个人,因为……他们应该比周围的人更了解这个话题。当他们有一些缺点时,这对我和学生来说都是一种个人侮辱。所以整个想法就是。这就是为什么…我们谈论文学评论,或者文学评论可能是更好的说法。这是让学生准备辩护的必要部分,但这变成了一件私人的事情。学生们会打败体制,打败体制,拿到学位吗?这不是关于“我的研究与小组中其他人的研究相比如何?”bob体育登录 It's just simply, "Have I met the requirements? Have I surpassed the necessary requirements to get a degree?" So you want to give the student every advantage when that student comes before the examiners. That makes the defense that much easier. That's why we take care of the detail.

雷恩:我们做到了。

灰色:我们做到了。

:记得不能用你考得不错吧?

灰色:我们做得很好。

雷恩:是的,我们做到了。

:记得不能用你们之间有什么美好的回忆吗?

赖安:我先说。这是红笔之外的。事实上,我们所做的一件伟大的事情是,当我们所有人,我们整个办公室都完成了我们的课程,真正专注于研究。bob体育登录所以这一天会…8点进实验室,6点离开,除了研究什么都不做,真的真的……bob体育登录首先,我不认为你能在精神上以你所需要的那种敏锐来做这件事。所以我们需要找个突破口。伊恩不上课的那几个学期,我们的学生人数大概都在1到2之间。我们在那里呆了很长时间,我们实际上拥有进入网球场的专有权限。实际上,我们四个人出去打网球,打了一个小时,一个小时又十五分钟,一周打好几次。 Just to let off steam and kind of get our brains refreshed with a little physical activity. It was hilarious. We had a ball, it was fun. Walked over together, walked back together. It was really fun. You don't find that. I talked to my other peers who had [inaudible 00:20:06], it was just a rare thing that just happened to be what we ended up doing, as you said, as a team. It was one of the more pleasant ways to think about getting up in the morning and know you're going to have a little bit of fun in the middle of the afternoon, and go back and get the job done. That's one of my favorites.

灰色:其实这也是我最喜欢的电影之一,但是汤姆讲了……这个故事和汤姆说的有点不同,因为我从来没有打过网球。我来密歇根州立大学之前从来没打过网球。我得出去买个球拍。所以我一直跟着汤姆,我一直是他的搭档。因为汤姆比另外两个人强。汤姆可以和我们经常交手的两个人打,他们也是博士生。他可以一个人玩,还能打败他们。所以当他把我加到组里时,这真的增加了另外两个击败我们的几率。所以他支撑着我,我承认,他支撑着我。 We had fun, we did have a lot of fun. It's the same thing on the golf course. We didn't play as much golf as he did, because that was too time-consuming.

雷恩:耗时的,是的。

灰色:我是个要求很高的人。我喜欢早上八点在实验室看到学生们。我喜欢在他们离开之前离开,对吧?这就是我的计划。我们小组里有一个教员或研究生,我们的一个网球运动员,他是夜猫子。谁愿意在下午1点左右到实验室工作到深夜。当时我并不完全相信。工作没有完成。我在想"我希望你八点来。我才不管你是不是工作到一点钟。 I want you here at eight o'clock in the morning." So we had some tensions over that, but with time you get to be more flexible. As long as you have your weekly meetings with the student, you get the project progressing along and so forth, then all's well. Every student's different. It's part of the learning process. I had to learn how to deal with graduate students a little better. Particularly when you're dealing with competitors, the tensions there. I had about ... I taught six quarter classes a year at the same time, but there was a lot of tensions. My family was young, so how do you get the right balance to all of this? But I have to say, to a certain extent, my family, my wife, embraced my grad students. They were great friends. She got along well with them. She knew them and we had them out at the house several times a year. It was just a good time.

雷恩:这很棒,我想再补充一些小的事情。不只是关于伊恩和我,我们那个时候的部门真的是一个有趣又美妙的地方。这是1979年到1984年。我们有来自世界各地的多民族研究生,这是一个非常学院化的研究生部门。我们都认识彼此,一起出去玩。每年的假期前后,所有的国际学生都会聚集在一起,从各自的国家带来食物。对我们来说,这是一件罕见的事情。所以这种早期对文化多样性的欣赏和庆祝他们和我们的传统,当你生活在现实生活中,你会抽象出来,事后看来,我们作为一个部门一起做的一件非常酷的事情,我们都是其中的一部分。我有非常美好的回忆。我很尊重… We were talking last night about foods from around the world. I will tell you this, though. My one regret in hindsight is that I wish food back then was as cool as it is to everybody as it is now. Because we were really pioneering. When we were studying food science, you tell people, "I'm studying food science." They're like, "What the hell is that?" Now, as I like to tell people, food is one of the most topical ... Food, cooking, cooking equipment, processing of foods, where it comes from, how it got there, what are you doing to it. It's probably one of the most passionate threads in the social fabric out there right now. So it's really great to have done all this early so I can enjoy this as just part of my life, but I can't imagine what kind of a rock star we would have been if this was as cool when we were doing what we were doing.

灰色:术语的变化。它过去常常……我们谈论农业研究。bob体育登录现在,在现代社会,在现代时代,农业研bob体育登录究有时是一件消极的事情。但实际上,当你在研究农业研究时,你是在研究发展知识,以改善农业或解决农业问题。bob体育合法吗bob体育登录很多都是基于科学的。食物也是如此。我们正在研究食物科学。您可以通过行业的实际经验轻松地教授、学习、处理等等。但当你看到支撑食品科学学科的科学原理时,它是应用领域的纯科学。 When you look at that, we need to, and modern food science requires, physics, engineering principles, toxicological principles. It all falls under that umbrella. Now, that's about what? 30, 40 years ago or 30-plus years ago, when we were working on that. So we were kind of narrow in focus. Now you expand, so we've become a food university, and we bring expertise from all over campus. The students benefit from that because they seek multidisciplinary training. That's the key. Tom in a sense was a forerunner to multidisciplinary approaches. He chose business options, business course options in his PhD. We're doing the same thing now in a different way with the modern graduates. I would say Tom's a little bit of a pioneer in that sense.

雷恩:这真的很有用。就像我之前说的,它让我在做事情时感到自信和自在。我可能错了,但我是麦当劳唯一一个曾经做过食品科学家的CMO,或者其他任何地方的CMO。所以从学校出来,精通语言,精通这一领域的方言的实际好处,这是一个真正不同于学术科学的领域,正如伊恩所说的,以食物为基础。我的第一份工作是在必胜客,人们会问我:“你不是搞技术的吗?你听起来像个搞营销的。”这对我来说真的很有意义,因为我很早就在为伊恩工作时,通过与商学院的同学们的联系获得了这些条纹。每个人都在正确的轨道上以同样的方式思考这个问题。多学科思维,有强大的根基,让你在一个领域有信誉和认真,但在外面有色彩、故事和能力。我认为这就是现代教育的意义所在。 I know that's what we look for in the industry in candidates that we look for, regardless of what job they're interviewing for. So my first time back to State in a while, I'm proud to see this flourishing on campus, and I'm really happy to see it alive and well, particularly in the Food Science department.

:记得不能用我要感谢Tom Ryan, Smashburger的联合创始人兼首席概念官,Tom’s Urban的创始人;总统的特别顾问伊恩·格雷博士今天也来参加我的演讲。下次一定要收听In The Field的另一期节目。

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