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Uniqueness is the name of the game in Dr. Gail Frank's Nutrition & Dietetic Internship Program at Long Beach State. Having served as the program's director since 1989, Dr. Frank has had many students come through her classroom with varied interests and specialized research goals. Think of the Nutrition and Dietetic Internship program under the direction of Dr. Gail Frank at Long Beach State as the equivalent of Bobby Knight's Indiana Hoosiers and Texas Tech University program for basketball. 

And that wouldn't be a stretch for Dr. Frank, a West Texas native and Texas Tech alum herself, and the awards displayed on her office wall would back up that sentiment -- having accrued the amount of hardware in her field to the likeness of some of her favorite Texas Tech athletes, Patrick Mahomes and Sheryl Swoopes and Texas resident Simone Biles to name a few among Dr. Frank's favorites. 

More recently, Dr. Frank’s own accolades include three distinctions given by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, including the Medallion Award in 2019, the 50-Year Member Award in 2022 and Excellence in Nutrition Education Programs Award in 2023. 

And most recently, Dr. Frank was awarded The Outstanding Faculty Advisor at the Gold Level honor this past May. She stood on the proverbial podium with Dr. Cheryl Rock -- from the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences -- being honored for a faculty distinction as well (Go Team LBSU)!

“It is a great source of pride,” Frank says. “Because for a lot of these awards, you have to be supported by sub-organizations and fellow colleagues to say, ‘We know Gail, we know what she’s done.’”

When Dr. Frank first came to Long Beach State in 1989, entering as a full professor, and receiving tenure in ’95, she was recruited to start a nutrition and dietetics internship program at the university, having already had an extensive career as a nutritional epidemiologist. She had served on many national committees and reviews in the field and had a volume of work that impressed leadership from ����Ӱ��. 

That’s when associate dean in the college, Peter Cortese, had contracted her to come work for the university at Long Beach State. Dr. Frank’s hiring dean was Dean Donald P. Lauda, for whom the College of Health and Human Services’ annual Lauda Lecture on Wellness is named after. When Lauda retired, Dr. Frank inherited his desk, and it is still where she keeps all of her important papers, schedules and other office paraphernalia. 

“My office is a museum – I come from a paper world,” she quips. 

That world, even before she came to Long Beach State, was layered with rare and impressive experiences, and is why she was so sought after to come to The Beach. 

“I’m originally a Lady Raider from Texas Tech,” Dr. Frank enthusiastically recalls of her own college days, obtaining her Bachelor of Science in Nutrition degree from there. In the 1980’s, Dr. Frank was named a Distinguished Alum from Texas Tech and recalls Dr. Lauro Cavazos -- then President of Texas Tech who later became the 4^th U.S. Secretary of Education -- placing the medallion around her neck and saying, “You are the youngest awardee I have ever honored.” 

From Texas Tech, Frank went on to study at Tulane University in New Orleans and did her dietetic internship there at a local hospital, Touro Infirmary. She was then recruited to LSU Medical Center on a new research study looking at the early history of cardiovascular disease development in children and had a robust career there. 

Frank eventually went back to obtain her doctorate at Tulane while working full-time and as a single parent, and changed her area of focus to epidemiology – she is a nutritional epidemiologist by title and training, a field she acknowledges she was part of establishing with a select few in the U.S. at the time. In her 16 years working at LSU Medical Center, Dr. Frank worked on a nationally funded research project with the best in the epidemiological field. 

Sitting in the most specialized inner health circles and visiting places like the Center for Disease Control, the National Cancer Institute and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute several times, writing school health intervention curriculum and serving on other national review boards, Dr. Frank ‘frankly’ could’ve ended up anywhere. When she arrived at Cal State Long Beach, she was ready to pass on her knowledge and expertise to other generations. 

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“I will have graduated 403 dietitians into the field this spring,” Dr. Frank says. 

As she watched the Olympics this summer, ����Ӱ�� grad Hannah Parducho no doubt couldn’t help but think about how she herself could make an impact in the sports world – perhaps even at the LA Olympics in 2028. Having just graduated from Long Beach State with a master’s degree in nutrition and dietetics, Parducho would like to become a sports dietitian and specifically help Olympic weightlifters maximize their health and performance. 

An athlete in the sport herself, Parducho, a nutrition undergraduate from University of California, Davis, immersed herself in niche research while at Long Beach State for her postbaccalaureate studies, hoping to look at the food energy patterns of weightlifters, documenting existing relationships between their eating behaviors, dietary intake and body image concerns associated with a weight category sport – an area she says is underrepresented in terms of real galvanized research. 

“Dr. Frank is really amazing; you can see the amount of work she puts in every day to help her students accommodate their interests and tailoring their activities to make sure we get the best experience out of the program, which is really amazing,” Parducho says. 

That’s probably because Dr. Frank’s long, storied career has seen many like Parducho through the years who want to make a difference in the communities they serve. 

Dr. Frank has chaired an astounding total of 67 graduate theses – her first, being a student from Taiwan, whose research aimed at providing healthy Asian-inspired cuisine in local grade schools – wanting to provide variety and substance to community cafeterias. 

“I’ve had outstanding students throughout the years,” Frank says, as she dusts off a book labeled “Modified Chinese Meatbun,” Litsu Hong, 1991. 

“I remember she wanted to work in school nutrition,” Dr. Frank recalls of the first graduate student she was the research chair for at Long Beach State. “She developed her own recipe, created the training booklets for the food service and used scientific method to validate her research. She wanted to develop a nutritious food that could be brought to our school system that reflected her culture.”

That year, her student won first place at the CSU Statewide Research Symposium and received the National Award for Outstanding Research in School Nutrition – the first of many success stories that Dr. Frank could tell you about her students. 

Esther Lee, who has Dr. Frank this year for her Graduate Directed Project (DP) also exemplifies the students Dr. Frank has been accustomed to teaching over the years – bright young people who have a passion and drive to make a difference in the communities that run deep for them personally. 

The title of Lee’s Directed Project is ‘Guidebook for RDNs (Registered Dietitians) to Promote Weight Maintenance in Korean Older Adults to Prevent Type II Diabetes Mellitus.

“I was particularly interested in improving dietitians’ cultural competency when working with clients of different cultural backgrounds,” Lee says. “It is one thing to provide nutrition education to patients, but it’s another to understand their cultural background and tailor their nutrition advice to their cultural preference and influences. As a daughter of two Korean immigrants, I’ve seen and experienced the cultural gap in healthcare. Educating our healthcare professionals through research-based guidebooks is one step towards improving cultural competency in the field.”

“With the help of Dr. Frank, I decided to focus on weight maintenance to prevent diabetes, since this is an area of concern as we age. Dr. Frank’s guidance and expertise have been invaluable in shaping my research and fostering my academic growth. I am incredibly grateful for her mentorship and support throughout this process.” 

Another student of Dr. Frank’s, Nadine Khouri, is undertaking research looking at preventing gestational diabetes in Lebanese pregnant women. She also is influenced by her cultural background to find healthy nutritional solutions to health concerns people from her own Lebanese culture face. She is likewise thankful for Dr. Frank’s mentorship. 

“Dr. Frank is an amazing professor; she guides us through every step of the way and is always available to help. She is also very passionate, and even now that I’m going into the internship [portion], she is making it seem not scary and exciting. There are so many words I can use to describe how helpful she’s been in my academic journey. Right now, I’d like to go into pediatric nutrition or women’s health – either in the community setting or outpatient setting – maybe even start my own private practice.” 

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Dr. Frank impresses upon her students that they have agency to pursue whatever they want in life. She begins each class at the start of the semester with showing her incoming students a photo – displayed on the screen projector – that illustrates a particular maxim. The one she picked out this semester is a photo she took herself – photography is one of Dr. Frank’s other exploits – among numerous hobbies she’s picked up over a long career. The photo is taken from the Seal Beach Pier, overlooking the water at dusk, with downtown Long Beach depicted in a shadowy hue in the background. She’ll show this photo the first day of class to the tune of something like, “It looks like a big ocean, and there will be some obstacles and barriers, but sky’s the limit and it’s going to be a great year.” 

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