Improved food quality enhances college life
By Aleksei Pavloff
Students at Ohio Wesleyan University have complained about the dining services on campus in recent years and the main concern - food quality.
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And for OWU, food quality is more than simply providing good food. It can be a potential hook to attract more students to the school, an outcome desperately sough by the university.
Food quality has more influence than just getting students to come to a specific college. If a student has access to low-quality food, they may be food insecure. Sara Goldrick-Rab of the New York Times writes that students who are food insecure have a difficult time graduating from college.
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College is a place for students to learn, have fun and become a happy and healthy individual. All of these factors can be categorized in the type of quality of life a student can have while attending college. One of the qualities of college life is the quality of the food that is available to students.
“Food services offered are a component of campus quality of life,” says OWU student Joelle Trubowitz in her study about perceived satisfaction about the campus food provider.
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HHK professor Chris Fink discusses the link between students and quality food
Chartwell's was the former food provider for OWU and has been for close to 30 years, according to the Vice President of student affairs, Dwayne Todd. He says that students have continually complained about the dining services on OWU’s campus.
OWU has been public about its plans to increase the student population in years past. In 2017, OWU announced its plan to create opportunities for more students to enroll.
“To address these areas head-on, and strengthen the commitment to providing a practical liberal arts education, the ambitious goal of attaining an enrollment of 2,020 students by the year 2020 was created, growth of more than 20 percent in the student body,” according to owu.edu.
“Food services on campus has the potential to increase these efforts,” says Trubowitz.
The new food provider for OWU, AVI Foodsystems, and the university have made it a commitment to buy more food from local sources, says Todd. This can improve the quality of the food that will be served to students, says Human Health and Kinetics professor Chris Fink.
AVI is set to take over in fall 2018. Along with serving better quality of food, students will be able to eat whenever they want with the “any-time dining” option. Administration will also make structural changes to established dining areas like Smith Dining Hall and the Marketplace inside the Hamilton-Williams Center.
Cooking Matters is a class that is offered to students at OWU. Students become the teacher and show Delaware community members how to prepare healthy, affordable meals for them or their families. Read more at cookingmatters.org.
Disclaimer: Although OWU does physically supply the food, they receive grants from the government (via United Way) that pays for the food.