PORTLAND, Ore. — High school teachers from across the Portland region traded classrooms for commercial kitchens this summer as they learned how to transform a simple marinara sauce recipe into a market-ready food product during a hands-on professional development workshop at Oregon State University’s Food Innovation Center.
The culinary workshop was part of the Career and Technical Education (CTE) Summer Skills Summit, a paid professional development series organized by Portland Community College (PCC) and the Portland Area Career Technical Education Consortium (PACTEC). The program is designed to help educators stay current with evolving industry standards and better prepare students for careers after high school.
During the session, 14 educators worked through the process of scaling a kitchen recipe into a production formula, calculating ingredient yields, testing flavors and learning the food science required to develop shelf-ready products. Participants also explored quality control, food safety, engineering principles and sensory testing used in commercial food manufacturing.
Melissa Buechler, a culinary arts teacher at Liberty High School in Hillsboro, said the training provides valuable skills she can immediately bring back to her students.
“These professional development classes allow me to not only learn new skills to take back to my students, but the cross-curricular relationships between teachers across districts are invaluable,” Buechler said. “We get to collaborate in small groups in ways that wouldn’t likely happen otherwise.”
Hosted at Oregon State University’s Food Innovation Center in Portland’s Pearl District, the workshop focused on culinary arts and food product development. It marked the second of nine Summer Skills Summit sessions being offered this year, covering subjects such as AutoCAD and surveying, irrigation systems, cybersecurity, project management, multimedia, project-based learning, welding and STEAM design.
The training comes as career and technical education continues to expand across Oregon. According to the Oregon Department of Education, students completing approved CTE programs graduated at a record 97.8%, while the number of CTE programs statewide increased from 1,038 during the 2021-22 school year to 1,125 in 2025-26.
Business Oregon also identifies food and beverage manufacturing as one of the state’s target industries, supporting nearly 1,700 businesses and approximately 40,000 workers while serving as a key economic driver in many rural communities.
PACTEC expects about 125 educators to participate in the nine-workshop series before it concludes Aug. 14 with an irrigation systems session at PCC’s Rock Creek Campus. The consortium serves rural, suburban and urban high schools throughout the Portland region, including Washington and Columbia counties, by expanding access to career and technical education programs through shared resources and state grant funding.
Katrina Stein, PACTEC’s industry liaison at PCC, said the workshops strengthen both technical knowledge and collaboration among educators.
“This session is for teachers to take skills back to their schools and classrooms,” Stein said. “We had 14 instructors learning industry-level food skills like scaling up recipes, seeing the latest equipment and technology, and the marketability of food. We believe that bringing together our teaching community with experts in the food industry is powerful for such a foodie city like Portland.”
The culinary workshop was led by Sarah Masoni, director of the Product and Process Development Program at the OSU Food Innovation Center, a partnership between Oregon State University and the Oregon Department of Agriculture.
Masoni, who has more than three decades of culinary education and food industry experience, guided teachers through recipe scaling, production planning and food testing. Participants divided into four teams to prepare regular, sweet, spicy and garlic marinara sauces while carefully measuring ingredients to ensure consistency and reduce production losses.
“The teachers were divided into four teams representing versions of marinara,” Masoni said. “They had to do the math calculations and accurately weigh and measure ingredients to work on their unique batch and prevent yield loss. That consistency is to optimize quality and maximize a product’s profitability.”
Teachers also observed pH, Brix and water activity testing while learning how flavor science and food engineering influence commercial food production.
Buechler said the workshop’s lessons will directly benefit Liberty High School’s growing culinary arts program, which serves more than 200 students.
“We have more than 200 students in Liberty’s culinary program, and I look forward to introducing new knowledge and career possibilities to them,” she said. “Our students are talented and focused. Some are entrepreneurial, and I’m here to get them excited and lead them.”
She also highlighted one student heading to Oregon State University to study nuclear engineering who has applied chemistry concepts to develop high-protein, low-sugar cookies and is now working toward bringing the product to market with her guidance.
PCC officials said enrollment remains open for several remaining Summer Skills Summit workshops. More information about PACTEC professional development opportunities is available through Portland Community College.
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