How Campus Dining can Create Wellness and Sustainability Awareness to Hungry Minds

This article is part of the 2016 Western Regional Conference Vendor Spotlight series.

While students attending college are learning how to relate the world and become responsible adults, our dining teams on campuses have an opportunity to teach them how to think about the sustainability and nutritional aspects of the foods they choose to eat.  As an industry leader in sustainable food purchasing, Chartwells Higher Education begins by educating students monthly on topics such as supporting local economies, sourcing sustainable seafood and addressing climate change issues.

We also challenge ourselves to support student learning in line with Menus of Change.  This initiative was formed as a partnership with The Culinary Institute of America and the Harvard School of Public Health that examines these key issues.  Chartwells is honored to be a founding member, supporting this exciting and industry “changing” initiative of collaboration among America’s most talented chefs, nutritional and environmental scientists, farm and fisheries experts, foodservice executives, and policy makers, and we’re inviting our interns and students to have a seat at the table.

Across the US, Chartwells hires 80-100 interns each year at our campuses.  We ask our student interns to learn about the Menus of Change initiative focusing on reducing obesity, diabetes and healthcare costs, the sourcing and production of our food, and the challenge of feeding an additional two billion people by 2050 as global resources decline.

In addition, through our Student Success department, which is dedicated to making sure interns learn about the best practices in our industry, we’ve created this fellowship with one of our cutting-edge business partners, Hampton Creek.  Hampton Creek’s mission is finding the intersection of healthy, delicious and sustainable food production, and they are often in the news for their delicious allergen-free, low environmental impact products such as Just Cookies and Just Mayo.

Their driving question to our students is, “What would the food business look like if we started over from the beginning?”  Fellowship recipients are eager to dive in and as a result get the opportunity to meet the movers and shakers from the San Francisco business world during their exclusive five day fellowship in California.  
Video – Chartwells Students at Hampton Creek.

These are a few ways that Chartwells Higher Education and its business partners help lead students to where hungry minds gather through student education about the future of food.