The biennial Aquinas College Resourceful Women Conference will be held this year on Saturday, April 12, beginning at 9:30 a.m. The juried conference features presentations by undergraduate students from colleges in the West Michigan area. This year's keynote speaker is food scientist Shirley O. Corriher, winner of the 1998 James Beard Award for Food Reference and Techniques for her book CookWise: The How's and Why's of Successful Cooking. The book has been used from test kitchens to food science classes, as well as by home cooks. Corriher will be speaking at 12:30 p.m. in the Aquinas Wege Student Center Ballroom. The title of her talk is "Your Very Best." This event is sponsored by the Aquinas Jane Hibbard Idema Women's Studies Center (JHIWSC).

Corriher began her career as a research biochemist at Vanderbilt Medical School, where she majored in chemistry. Corriher began a school for 140 boys, learning and experimenting as she prepared all the meals for the students. She went on to train as a gourmet chef and became well known for using her knowledge of chemistry while cooking. Over the years she has applied science to hands-on cooking and has explained some of the strange things that happen when cooking and how to avoid them.

Corriher has frequently lectured and consulted on topics related to cooking and food science. Her second book, BakeWise, will be published in November, 2009. Corriher has recently released a DVD "Shirley O. Corriher’s Kitchen Secrets Revealed" and has appeared on Alton Brown's Food Network television show "Good Eats."
In an event co-sponsored by the JHIWSC and Western Michigan section of the American Chemical Society, Corriher will be speaking on Friday, April 11 at 7 p.m. in the Aquinas College Wege Ballroom on "Better Cooking through Chemistry." Both events are free and open to the public.