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Taco Ravioli. Peanut Butter Cran-Jelly. Carrot Raspberry Ice Cream. Pompeii Soup.

These aren’t nouveau cuisine available from top chefs at a four-star restaurant. They’re a few of foods created by high school students who designed them to fit the palates and nutritional needs of child cancer patients

I had the chance meet these student-chefs when I visited the program at the Teterboro, N.J., campus of the Bergen County Technical High School.

Even though I met the students and their teachers the day before their December holiday break, Principal David Tankard reassured they were looking forward to meeting me, not just the vacation ahead. “They want to be here,” he told me. “They love to have the opportunity to share their work.”

Upon entering the brightly painted workspace to meet 18 students in elegant black shirts, ready to present their research and findings, I knew he was right.

Culinology is a discipline that blends the culinary arts and food science. Students study the advanced science and technology of food production and use that knowledge to invent their own food products. Science teachers, seasoned chefs and technology faculty collaborate to provide students with both theoretical and practical knowledge. Strong relationships with partners (Rutgers University, Hackensack University Medical Center and The Research Chefs Association, whose education committee approved the program) enhance the program.

Teacher-Chef Dominic Branda offered me a delicious cup of coffee and presented a selection of student-made pastries while the student teams prepared their presentations. The teams taught me about their research creating suitable foods for children going through chemotherapy. Such children often lack appetite and may have sores in their mouths, they said. Still, it’s essential to create soothing foods that provide nutrients for young palates.

“We’re still children,” one chef told me, “so we still know what tastes good to them.”

A group of young men took the floor to present their creation. “Our soup is based on the volcano at one informed me.It’s packed with nutrition and is also an aesthetically pleasing comfort food. Each item in the soup represents an item from the site – trees, lava and volcanic wreckage – so this way the children learn some history while they eat.”

“Our reduced sugar Carrot Raspberry Ice Cream is cold on the children’s throats,” a student informed me, her open face showing sincere compassion.

A classmate added, “When you can’t eat, you just want something that’s magic inside.”

“That’s all part of this,” said Principal Tankard. “The students are really engaged in service to the community and are motivated by the fact that their work will help the children in treatment.”

I left the school visit feeling inspired. These high school chefs and their teachers teach all of us about the magic that happens when powerful teams learn and work together.

Read Secretary Arne Duncan’s 2010 remarks about the importance of A Well-Rounded Curriculum.

A forum Monday at Western Michigan University — titled “Hitting the Reset Button on Education” — was only the latest in a steady drumbeat of business and education leaders touting the value of universal preschool.

Sean Welsh, regional president for PNC Bank, suggested Monday that every $1 spent on preschool or other early childhood programs eventually yields $16 in economic benefits. Tim Bartik, an economist for the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, says the spending money on preschool makes just as much, or even more sense, than traditional economic-development strategies such as tax breaks for businesses.

The rationale: Academic interventions are most effective for very young children, and improving educational outcomes has huge benefits for both individuals and society.

The downside: High-quality preschool can’t be accomplished on the cheap, Bartik says, and costs about $5,000 per child. He estimates that expanding the current system of state-fund preschool to cover all children would cost about $300 million, or about $30 per Michigan resident. Still, Bartik estimates that $300 million investment would boost the present value of state residents’ earnings by $834 million.

So is it worth it? Should the state find the money? What do you think?

GREENSBORO — UNCG’s trustees this morning unanimously approved a plan to increase tuition 10 percent next year, as well as a proposal that could boost tuition as much as 10 percent for three years beyond.

Following a recommendation from UNCG’s tuition and fee committee, trustees voted to raise tuition by $345 for in-state undergraduates and fees by $315 for 2012-13, bringing total tuition and fees to $6,153.

But they also approved a proposal from Chancellor Linda Brady that would allow her to seek additional increases of up to 3.5 percent for another three years. That supplemental increase would be in addition to any other campus- initiated tuition increase the university seeks.

The proposals for tuition increases now move forward to the UNC Board of Governors, which will consider them in February.

See full coverage in Saturday’s News & Record.

Congress wants pizza and french fries to stay in school lunch lines and is fighting the Obama administration’s efforts to take such foods out of schools.

The final version of a spending bill would unravel school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year. These include limiting the use of potatoes on the lunch line, putting new restrictions on sodium and boosting the use of whole grains. The legislation would block or delay all of those efforts.

Lee and Collier school districts have already put into place many of the Obama administrations changes, such as serving more fruits and vegetables, but there are other standards that the districts would have been forced to take up removing 2 percent fat milk from schools and serving unflavored 1 percent or fat-free milk.

On an average day, the Lee district serves 48,000 lunches, and all meals include at least one fruit and one vegetable. The district spends $11.2 million a year on food for its 119 schools more than $1 million on fresh fruits and vegetables.

Collier and Lee, which removed all fryers from its schools five years ago, is in line to get a boost from the federal government to pay for the heathier fare. Last years $4.5 billion Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act increased the federal reimbursement rate for school lunches by 6 cents per meal. About 67 percent of Lees 80,000 students qualify for free or reduced-price meals through the federal government.

In its new spending bill, Congress wants to allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. USDA had wanted to only count a half-cup of tomato paste or more as a vegetable, and a serving of pizza has less than that.

Tomatoes, incidentally, are a fruit.

Nutritionists say the whole effort is reminiscent of the Reagan administrations attempt 30 years ago to classify ketchup as a vegetable to cut costs. This time around, food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools, the salt industry and potato growers requested the changes and lobbied Congress.

School meals that are subsidized by the federal government must include a certain amount of vegetables, and USDAs proposal could have pushed pizza-makers and potato growers out of the school lunch business.

Piling on to the companies opposition, some conservatives argue that the federal government shouldnt tell children what to eat. In a summary of the bill, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee said the changes would prevent overly burdensome and costly regulations and … provide greater flexibility for local school districts to improve the nutritional quality of meals.

School districts have said some of the USDA proposals go too far and cost too much when budgets are tight. Schools have long taken broad instructions from the government on what they can serve in the federally subsidized meals that are given free or at reduced price. But some schools have balked at government attempts to ban specific foods.

Staff writer Chris Umpierre contributed to this report.