Week One at Colorado State University

Hello everyone!  My name is Laura and I am the NACUFS intern at Colorado State University this summer.  I just finished my sophomore year at Scripps College in California.  I’ve had some experience in small scale food service and I’m excited to learn about all of the components of large scale food service.  Some of my passions include running, cooking, baking, and finding new restaurants to try.  I’ve also never been to Colorado before and I’m looking forward to taking adventures and exploring Fort Collins during my time here.

Monday, June 6: My internship coordinator, Lori, and I joined the dietitian on campus, Brittney, and her intern, Ann, while they updated the bulletin boards at five of the six dining halls across campus.  The purpose of the boards is to keep a good line of communication between the kitchen staff and the office staff in Housing & Dining Services.  After walking around campus and getting a comprehensive tour of the dining halls from Lori, the four of us had lunch at Ram’s Horn.  Following lunch, Brittney, Ann, and I went to Parmelee, the dining hall serving lunch to transfer students and their parents during orientation, and set up a booth about Eat Well @ CSU nutrition program.  Lori suggested I join the Health and Wellness Summer Challenge for the Housing & Dining Services employees.  This is a great idea to promote health and wellness among the staff members in the summer.  I’m excited to be a part of such an enthusiastic group of people! 

Tuesday, June 7: I began my day sitting in on an on boarding meeting with Lori and the new general manager of Durrell, Jennifer.  The meeting was similar to an orientation and overview of Housing & Dining Services, from safety training to cultural competency among the employees, with special emphasis on the importance of customer service throughout Dining Services.  After the meeting, Lori and I walked around the academic side of campus and finished up some little tasks, including getting a Ram Card (a temporary ID).  I also met with HR and learned the process of Background Investigations, which are a huge part of hiring new employees on campus.  To close out the day, I sat in on a student manager meeting with Lori, Brittney, Ann, Hannah, the office administrator, and some of the student managers from each of the dining halls.  I was shocked at the number of students employed solely in the Dining Department, about 1,000, which is more than the total student population at my school!

Wednesday, June 8: Today started out with a bang!  Lori drove me around Fort Collins so I could get acquainted with the area.  While it was still modestly warm outside and not sweltering hot, Lori and I hiked the Maxwell Trail behind the Hughes Stadium (CSU’s football stadium).  When we reached the top, I looked to the west and saw a huge body of water!  Lori had kept this part of the hike a secret from me, hoping for it to be a surprise.   

View of Horsetooth Reservoir from the top

I was completely shocked and in awe of the beauty of the Hoorsetooth Reservoir.  When I looked to my east, I saw the CSU campus and Old Town (downtown Fort Collins) from above.  It was fun trying to pinpoint the different areas of Fort Collins.  After we made our way down, Lori drove me around the reservoir and pointed out Horsetooth and Arthur Rock, two very large rock formations in the foothills.  After a quick lunch, I spent time with Hannah and Jason, the production manager, while they stood at the dining booth at transfer student orientation.  The rest of the afternoon was spent shadowing Hannah at her office administration role.  She essentially serves as support for dining services, which encompasses much more than I thought.  Without her and Royce, whom I will shadow tomorrow, dining services wouldn’t function.  Her tasks range from being employees’ travel agent to scheduling meetings to organizing state classified employee evaluations.  I got tired simply from watching her and I can’t imagine what it’s like for her during the school year when all of the dining halls are open.

Hughes Stadium from the base of the hike

Thursday, June 9: Today was an exciting whirlwind of a day!  I started out shadowing Stephanie, the business manager.  She went through her monthly checklist which included financial statements for all of the dining halls, weekly cost per meals, monthly meal count revenue, and meals per labor hour.  She has Excel spreadsheets to keep track of all of the information.  She also showed me the budget she prepares for each fiscal year.  Everything seemed very complicated because each unit (dining hall) does things a little differently, but she is very methodical and organized.  Afterwards Liz, the Dining Services director, took me out to a lovely lunch at Café Bluebird, just a short walk down the street.  We both had the special Island Salad that was loaded with delicious vegetables and two crab cakes.  We also had grilled cornbread on the side that was superb!  It was nice to meet with Liz outside of the office in a more casual setting to get to know her on both a personal and business level.  She has only been as CSU for two years after spending 31 years at Ball State University.  She discussed the differences between the dining services at both universities and her efforts at CSU to create an accepting and supportive dining services team, including starting the Cultural Competency Team that I mentioned earlier.  After lunch, Royce, the meal access coordinator; Jason, the program manager; and I walked down to the CSU greenhouses.  

Island Salad at Cafe Bluebird

Royce was a horticulture major at CSU and is working with Steve, his former advisor and greenhouse extension specialist, on a project that will hopefully provide farm-to-table vegetables to the dining halls.  At the greenhouse we also met with Tim, the sustainability coordinator for housing and dining services, and Liz for a tour.  Currently Steve is only growing lettuce, which Liz hopes will be ready to be used on the sandwiches at the president’s reception later this summer.  The greenhouse uses sustainable pink LED lights and is currently the only location in the country with them.  The entire tour and discussion was extremely interesting and I am excited for the progression of the project.  For the rest of the afternoon, Royce told me about his tasks as the meal access coordinator.  Not only does he also provide support for dining Services along with Hannah, but he also works with the meal programs and cards, and creates special programs for visitors, conferences, and other events throughout the year.  He described the entire meal card system to me, which is quite complicated considering CSU offers six different meal periods a day and allows students to swipe into two meals each period (once for eat-in and once for to-go).  I was shocked by the amount of work that goes into meal planning and all of the problems that can arise.  After the first week spent on the administration side, I have learned the importance of all of the positions.  Dining services couldn’t function without all of the behind-the-scenes work done by Lori, Hannah, Royce, Stephanie, and Peter.

Friday, June 10: Today was a little more relaxed than the past four days.  I shadowed Karen, the data specialist at Corbett/Parmelee.  Each dining hall has their own specialist who uses Computrition to manage the menus.  The software allows the specialists to integrate menus, forecasting, ordering, and

Cupcake Friday at Corbett

inventory.  Karen walked me through the different reports she enters in the computer, such as Purchasing Requirement Reports and Overproduction Reports.  I also learned CSU orders their foods from two different vendors: CSU and US Foods.  CSU also locally sources some ingredients like coffee and spices, which require additional reports in the system.  During lunch, I helped Freda with meal swipe at Corbett.  She taught me about the rules for swiping students, faculty, staff, and visitors into the dining hall.  There are a variety of camps going on here throughout the summer and today the dining hall served over a hundred high school and middle school dancers.  Corbett was very busy and Freda did a great job keeping the line of girls moving!  I'm looking forward to what next week will bring!