Issue
My issue that I am doing has to deal with dining services and how overcrowded it can get during the main eating hours, how long the lines are and how little seating there is for people to eat.
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Community
The SLU students,
The faculty
The Canton community who do use our dining facilities.
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Challenges
There are a couple challenges that I do have to deal with…
1) There needs to be a lot of planning before anything can happen. The school has to hire people to come in and draw up plans for how they are going to go about it, which can take some time
2) We have to deal with the health department when making changes to our dining services. There are a lot of food and health codes that need to be followed and can be a tedious process
3) Funding is another issue that could ruin a whole project. St. Lawrence may not have the money or resources to make a drastic change to the amount of dining places that we currently have on campus
4) This project is not a priority at St. Lawrence. The resident hall issue is looked at as a bigger priority right now and everyone’s focus and energy is with that because we are running out of places for students to live
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Research
Dayle Burgess (Assistant to the President)
What He Said…
There is a group called the Lunch Crunch that started this past semester to talk about ways to improve dining options on campus.
Alec Cote, VP of Thelmo, is the student who coordinates meetings…I will be speaking with him
Additionally, the office of Student Life oversees dining services. You may want to reach out to Dean Tolliver at some point in the future to assist with your project.
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David Geleta at the NorthStar Café (Associate Director of Dining and Conference Services)
What He Said…
He recognizes that there is an issue and the dining services are trying to deal with it.
Dining services is meeting with THELMO to try and come up with the best solution to deal with this issue.
Short Term- David said that they just put in a new Grab and Go at the Johnson Hall of Science, which would hopefully attract students so the other dining areas are not as crowded.
Long Term- David said that he was not sure…. He said ideas are being thrown around about possibly configuring Dana and the pub differently. Possibly Dana would be made bigger so there would be more space for students to sit and eat while also configuring the seating area in the student center to allow for more tables to be put in.
The resident’s halls are the number one priority right now and dining is something that is looking to be taken care of 2 to 3 years down the road. He said there might be some kind of Grab and Go in one of the new Residents Halls.
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Dayle and David both recommended that I speak with Cindy Atkins (Director of Dining and Conference Services).
I have been in email contact with Cindy and I am meeting with her on Friday so I will get more information then.
Two interviews with Brian Wilber and Piersen Fowler…
The two students said that the dining services could be better. They both think that the lines are to long and that it takes forever to get their food. Also, seats are not always available when they are trying to eat. They think another place needs to be open or have longer open hours at places like The Grab and Go and Johnson, Pub 56 or the Time Out Café. One of the students did not even know that the Grab and Go existed.