October 7, 2024: Campus Dinning
by Tanner Fleckenstein
This week we met with a number of representatives from our Dining team to learn about how the food on campus is sourced and produced. The team was really excited to be meeting with us, since they don't normally get the chance to engage with the community. This week our field trip instead began in the classroom with a presentation from the Dining team on their core philosophies relating to health and philosophy, and the various initiatives that they have implemented to achieve them. One initiative that stood out to me was how the team has formed a partnership with an organization that helps them source from local farms instead of larger grocery chains to give students much fresher healthier produce. We also learned about a past project where the team set up a farmers market on campus, and their plans to do so again sometime in the upcoming year. But the most important part of the presentation in my opinion was at the end when the team opened the floor for questions. The students were able to ask about the smaller picture stuff involved with dining. How are the menus decided? How are dietary restrictions handled? And so many other small but still vitally important parts of the dining team's experience.
After the presentation portion one of the team members took us to the Yablokoff-Wallace Dining Center which he was in charge of. We were shown the private dining area used for events as well as the adjoined garden, the second we had seen on campus in the course of this class. We were then given a short walk through explaining how the layout of the Yablokoff-Wallace Dining Center differs from the Pavilion, and how that was related to differences in what purpose they serve and how the two are each run. With the Pavillion being larger scale dining, with an almost buffet style meant to allow for feeding a much larger number of students. While the Yablokoff-Wallace Dining Center is more set up for smaller scale operation, which allows them to serve a wider variety of food which can take additional time to prepare.
