Campus Dining Services, responsible for providing all aspects of food services at the residential college dining halls and at cafes across campus, is a natural Campus as Lab for student work. Smitha Haneef, executive director of dining services and assistant vice president of university services, continues long-established sustainable and local procurement practices.
Upcoming projects of the department that could incorporate student research and analysis projects include
• evaluating wasted food throughout the department;
• setting goals for reduction through production, food recovery and composting; and,
• if there is continued overproduction, continuing an excess food donation program piloted in 2017, where leftovers are frozen, then driven to a community in need.
Further, the department continues the tradition of working with faculty members to supply dining services chefs, who cook at scale, advise or provide basic curriculum-specific food/cooking lessons to students. That effort, now named Food and Agriculture Initiative, has as partners Dan Rubenstein (EEB, ENV) and David Wilcove (EEB, WWS). Dining services also is looking to “investigate the connection between food-related goals and regional sustainability drivers, such as water, soil and air quality.”