Week 1 - The Information

My first week at KU was jam packed with information about everything from KU Dining to where the best fishing and restaurant spots in Lawrence were.

June 9
This morning I met Jim at Mrs. E’s and then we immediately headed over to the Union to meet with David Mucci, the Director of the Kansas Memorial Union Corporation, which from my understanding is the culmination of the recent merger of the residential and retail operations on campus. I’m very glad that I had the opportunity to meet with David because he helped spark a lot of thought about what I want to achieve with this internship and about what career I want to pursue after I’m finished with my education. He was very inspiring and encouraged me to not only take advantage of all the NACUFS internship has to offer but to also continue to pursue other avenues within my area of study by perhaps getting in touch with some dietitians from hospitals in the area this summer.
During our meeting David and I also discussed some of the similarities and differences between KU’s dining operations and my own experience with campus dining at Virginia Tech. Both schools have their strengths and weaknesses of course. For instance, Virginia Tech has been very successful in many aspects such as maintaining a high level of interest in on campus dining, but has yet to be very successful with recycling efforts across campus; whereas KU has a flourishing recycling program but has struggled with retaining student interest in purchasing dining plans. Therefore, I hope to help resolve some of the issues KU Dining is faced with by providing another perspective and using some of the resources and information from Virginia Tech while learning from KU dining as well.
I also met with Sheryl Kidwell, the Assistant Director for Residential Dining today. I especially enjoyed speaking with her because she started off as a Dietitian interested in clinical dietetics but decided to pursue a career in food service management instead. Hearing her story about how she acquired her position here at KU and about how passionate she is about what she does was a great motivator for me to learn as much as I can about a career path in food service and meal management this summer. It is always inspiring to meet someone who genuinely loves their job and coworkers. Sheryl and I also spoke a good deal about some of the sustainable initiatives that KU Dining is taking and how they decided to be proactive about the “green” movement rather than reactive. Part of their being proactive involved a switching of primary vendors from U.S. Food Services to SYSCO because SYSCO has begun to include infrastructure for sourcing food locally in their operation. In addition, I also learned of the research KU Dining is doing on composting waste from dining halls. I’m eager to hear as to whether or not they can be successful in their endeavors to compost without already having the infrastructure available in the Lawrence community, and to see if the Lawrence community will then follow in their footsteps. Lastly, I was happy to hear for the second time today about how successful KU’s recycling program has been. I would like to learn more about it in hopes of sharing information with the Virginia Tech community.
Finally, I met with Nona Golledge, the Director of KU Dining Services. We began with speaking about KU Dining’s strategic, or long term, plan for the next five years. Part of the plan included the implementation of KU Dining’s core values that uses the acronym S.C.R.I.P.T. , which stands for: Support, Creativity, Respect, Integrity, Professionalism, and Teaching. In addition to the core values is KU Dining’s core purpose which is to “support our community with exceptional cuisine in a progressive and inviting environment.” I really appreciated how KU Dining has concrete, well planned out goals that it is working towards achieving over this course of the next few years and how they also set the bar high with the ultimate goal of dominating collegiate dining and hospitality programs.
Next Nona and I went over department organization, as in who reports to who and why. I learned that the way their department is structured has a lot to do with streamlining communication so that everyone is always informed about what is relevant to them at all times, thus enabling the organization to execute things efficiently. Nona, like Sheryl, also graduated with a degree in Dietetics, therefore I also asked her to explain how she ended up with the position she has now. It was great to hear from both of them about some of the different avenues that I will be able to pursue with my degree.
June 10- Introduction to Supervising
This afternoon I observed lunch service with Sergio Banos, the head Service Supervisor (front of house operations), and with Bill Corrigan, the head Production Supervisor (back of house operations).
With Sergio I learned how to draw up a schedule of where employees are designated to work for a shift. Drawing up a work schedule takes careful consideration of employees ‘ skills and experience so that all service and production operations run as efficiently as possible. It also takes a great deal of patience and compromising in that employees will often request certain work stations or be reluctant to work in assigned stations. For this reason I really enjoyed observing Sergio because he excelled at smoothing over any scheduling problems while keeping most all of the staff satisfied.
In addition to scheduling Sergio also oversees the actual serving of the meals, meaning speed of service, accuracy of portion sizes, and customer/server interactions. Before and during meals Sergio’s duties include assuring that all service stations are stocked with the proper utensils, that the front of house stays clean, and that food items are prepared in advance so that they remain in stock throughout the meal.