Sue Gorman grew up in southern Wisconsin on a small dairy farm. She was very active in my local FFA chapter as a chapter officer as well as involved in the meat judging career development event contest. They won the WI state FFA contest and participated in the national FFA meats judging contest.
Sue attended UW River Falls and got her degree in food science and technology. She worked at a small independent laboratory that tested food samples for various clients. Sue also worked at Land O Lakes in Woodbury, MN at the fluid milk facility and tested incoming milk as well as bottled milk. She then returned to school at the University of Minnesota and obtained my masters of education degree in agricultural education. Once finished, she then was employed at the Minnesota department of agriculture as a meat inspector from 1999-2002. Sue was a stay at home mom for 5 years before relocating back to Wisconsin and taught high school agriculture at Clinton High School in Clinton WI for 6 years. She moved back to MN in 2013 and was an ag teacher at Red Wing for one year and Goodhue for 4 years. Sue was then employed as a Farm Business Management instructor at Riverland community college from 2018-2019, returning to the Minnesota Department of Agriculture as a meat inspector from 2019-2025. During this time, Sue became the chairperson of the Minnesota Region VIII FFA Meat Evaluation Career Development Event held every year at Stinson’s Country Style Meats in Houston, MN.
Riverland Community College was looking to get the food science program established and Sue applied and was hired as the full-time food science instructor. At this time, her main goal is to recruit students to get the program up and running. She currently offers 4 classes. 2 classes the fall (principles of food science and food quality and safety) and 2 classes in the spring (food processing and food product development). Sue also works with high schools, like Triton, that teach my principles of food science course to high school students for college credit. Ensuring they are following the curriculum and offering enough rigor to meet the college standards.
Her long-term goal is to offer a meat cutting/processing program to help with the worker shortage in the meat processing field. She hopes to be able to start this program within the next 3-5 years.
