Present: Jim Dontje, Deborah Downs-Miers, Lauren Fulner, Stacey Gerken, Kate Goodpaster, Ann Hakes, Lisa Heldke, Steve Kjellgren, Joe Lencioni, Rebecca Welp
Reports
Steve Kjellgren
- The student-created video about Gustieware is now available on youtube.
- Several individual students and/or groups are working with/through DS this semester:
- Some students of Bruce Johnson will be doing research for DS; they’ll be finding a “baseline” for students’ nutrition knowledge. What is it that students know? (From there, we can begin to explore what they need to know.)
- Sam Grace is creating a “navigating the DS” recipe booklet.
- Kim Braun is working as the Choices at the Table intern, doing research on the question of why students make the meal choices they do: pleasure, speed, nutrition, money?
- Jim and Stacey observed that these projects fall into the category of research known as “appreciative inquiry, and/or “positive psychology.” What are we doing that’s good and right? How can we build on it? This is non-shame-based work, that can build on itself. We can raise the profile of the program by being positive about the ways we’re responding to circumstances.
- Deborah noted some nutrition works that use a positive approach, focusing on “non-diet” diets; Mollie Katzen, Walter Willett.
Joe Lencioni
- Our blog is functional. Joe walked us through a tutorial, explaining the basics of blogging and the info we need to participate.
- Information now blogged includes meeting minutes.
- Deborah did a survey of dining service web pages of other schools and found that many are very good at linking themselves to the health services units on their campuses. She observed that the more we make the web a web, the more we can take advantage of it.
- Ideas for the blog (feel free to jump on any of these)
- George Elliott may have things on file that she could put up on the blog.
- Members should send Joe a list of links that we want between the DS (or KCab) and…?
- Stacey “volunteered” (ahem) to do a blog on the book The Chemistry of Joy.
- Pictures of our suppliers-e.g. growers and butchers in the area
- Joe has an idea for a calendar that shows the menu items for the day and then breaks down their nutritional profile. While it would be a chunk of work up front, then the info could just be reused.
Jim
- Recycle-mania is coming up
- So is the Energy Challenge
Watch this space for those events!
The net
- We might think of our work this semester on nutrition and health as creating a body of evidence to show that we need more staff time dedicated to this issue. Presently, we only have funding for George Elliott’s position for a tiny slice of the week. If we had fulltime nutrition expertise on campus, we could do a wide range of education on nutrition, with important health consequences for our community.