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Elizabethtown, Kentucky, has even seen the effects of these network shows in recent years. Elizabethtown Community & Technical College (ECTC) opened a culinary arts department in 1975. Most of the students were former military personnel who worked in the mess halls that were looking to turn their skills into a career. From their opening year until 1990, there averaged anywhere from 9 to 20 students. From 1990
through 2008, they saw a steady stream of around 30 students every year. But in the spring of 2009, the ECTC culinary arts department saw a boom of incoming students. An astounding 88 students were now overflowing the classrooms and kitchen, four of which being high
school students. It's not a coincidence that this explosion of interest is showing up at ECTC and culinary schools around the country. This year will be The Food Network's 18th anniversary and with it graduates the first class of students raised on world cuisine
at the click of a button.

When Alton Brown's Good Eats show first aired in 1999, the history, science, and exploration of cooking began. Rich Hartel, a professor of food engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, commented in an article about Food Network effect on food sciences. Hartel says, "Recently, I think they [students] are being swayed by the Food Network. So they see Alton Brown's show and Foods Unwrapped and think,
'That's pretty cool, I'd like to work on that,' ". He goes on to say, "We have always fought this image that food scientists are cooks," however this appears to be changing. Food Engineering has always been mainly a field for biology and science majors, but according to Sara Webb in her article The Food Network Effect, chefs and food industry workers are seeing food sciences as a career path. Rich Hartel welcomes the different point of view it will bring and the new directions this cross training may take the field.