Name: Tomas Tebarek
Major: Finance in Agribusiness
Scholarship: Jonathan M. and Judith D. Groesbeck Scholarship in Honor of Harold E. Dustin
Hometown: Wheaton, Ill.

How did you make the decision to attend the College of ACES and major in your chosen field?

The Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics Student Advising and Enrichment Center (SAEC) distinguishes ACE as a leader in student service. The center emphasizes four core principles: experiential learning, personalized advising, professional development, and career exploration.

Private gifts, including the Tom Frey Fund, have provided funding essential to making student services and programs available and financially accessible.

The following are a sampling of the opportunities made possible by the ACE Student Advising and Enrichment Center.

Construction on the Food Science and Human Nutrition Pilot Processing Plant (FSHN-PPP), which began in May 2016, was completed earlier this spring. Although primary construction is complete, gifts to defray the cost of the construction are still needed.

The facility has undergone a $3-million transformation, with new HVAC, utility, and electrical systems; improved food safety considerations; and the addition of a product development kitchen, food analysis lab, conference space, and more.

• Dairy cattle diets are often deficient in the essential amino acid methionine; supplements have been shown to increase milk production and protein concentration.
• A new study shows that rumen-protected methionine supplements can change gene expression in the ovarian follicle, potentially leading to shorter time between ovulation events.
• Methionine supplements also decrease expression of genes related to inflammation in the cells of the ovarian follicle.

URBANA, Ill.

• Rumen-protected methionine (RPM) added to the diet of Holstein cows improves the survival rate of preimplantation embryos.
• Cows fed methionine have more lipid droplets inside the preimplantation embryo, which could be used as energy by the embryos.
• Embryonic death has been shown to drop from 19 percent to 6 percent in cows fed methionine.

URBANA, Ill - Research at the University of Illinois has shown that adding methionine to the diets of Holstein cows during the prepartum and postpartum periods may impact the preimplantation embryo in a way that en

When children participated in a program designed to reduce sibling conflict, both parents benefited from a lessening of hostilities on the home front. But mothers experienced a more direct reward. As they viewed the children's sessions in real time on a video monitor and coached the kids at home to respond as they'd been taught, moms found that, like their kids, they were better able to manage their own emotions during stressful moments.

What social skills does a three-year-old bring to interactions with a new peer partner? If he has strong bonds to his parents, the child is likely to be a positive, responsive playmate, and he'll be able to adapt to a difficult peer by asserting his needs, according to a new University of Illinois study published in Developmental Psychology.

What effect does a father's depression have on his young son or daughter? When fathers report a high level of emotional intimacy in their marriage, their children benefit, said a University of Illinois study.

"When a parent is interacting with their child, they need to be able to attend to the child's emotional state, be cued in to his developmental stage and abilities, and notice whether he is getting frustrated or needs help. Depressed parents have more difficulty doing that," said Nancy McElwain, a U of I professor of human development.

Teachers learn a lot about how to teach curriculum in college, but they don't get much training in helping very young children learn to handle frustration, anger, and excitement, skills that kids need for kindergarten readiness, said Nancy McElwain, a University of Illinois professor of human development and family studies who conducted a study on the topic.

The way you react to your two-year-old's temper tantrums or clinginess may lead to anxiety, withdrawal and behavior problems down the road, and the effect is more pronounced if the child is a boy who often displays such negative emotions as anger and social fearfulness, reports a new University of Illinois study.