College shopping? A criterion you may not have considered

Students are back at the University of Minnesota Duluth, where I teach, and I’m grateful to see last year’s new students again, to see this year’s new students for the first time and to hear from alumni recently placed in their new jobs.

Meanwhile, the children in my life are considering college this fall. The brochures are flooding the mailbox, stacking up on the dining room table. If the number of brochures matters in recruiting, the University of Chicago has sent four. If the expense in printing and mailing the brochure matters, some of the Minnesota community colleges are investing in attracting the best students.

Yet there is a hidden metric for the quality of education an undergraduate, possibly your child, will get at a university, and it’s not found in the US News rankings or in the alumni reports. It’s found behind the salad bar.

Consider that at UMD, for example, our Dining Services are led by Betsy Helgesen, a graduate of Harvard University (as an undergraduate) and of Western Culinary (as a chef) and of UMD, too (for a graduate degree in organizational leadership). She works with more than a half dozen people with the title of chef or sous chef.

The food service staff at UMD hold degrees from diverse institutions like UW Madison, Minnesota State University Moorhead, St. Scholastica, Le Cordon Bleu and, of course, UMD.
They have experience at W.A. Frost in St. Paul, at Northland Country Club in Duluth, fine dining restaurants in Hawaii, and local establishments like Lake Avenue Restaurant & Bar, The Duluth Grill, and OMC.
They have collected awards from the National Association of College & University Food Services (NACUFS) American Culinary Federation (ACF).

Dining Services staff are a friendly face to students; some of them have been here for more than two decades. They know where the parking passes are sold. They know what a “registrar” is; they know where health services is located if a student has the sniffles or needs someone to talk to.

UM Duluth has invested in the student experience down to the dining room. We are relatively unique in this choice; more than 300 universities have outsourced their food service to Chartwells. Another 275 have outsourced their food service to Aramark. The Twin Cities has used both, over the last decade, in addition to giving space for Panda Express, Subway, and Chik-Fil-A in student unions. The University of Minnesota Morris is one of 850 schools that chooses Sodexo to provide their food service.

Every decision about a student’s food, possibly about your child’s food, is made, here, at UMD, by professionals committed to the best in taste, nutrition and affordability. And everything I have said about food is just as true of the librarians, of the student life workers and especially of the faculty at UMD.

As families do campus visits, they should learn about the dormitories, the programs, the faculty, the athletics. Then, really, take a look at who will be feeding your children.

A university willing to cut corners to feed a for-profit catering corporation (serving the same menus at hundreds of universities across the U.S.) might still be the best place to send your child. Or maybe, you might consider sending your child to a university where none of us, from the sous chefs to the faculty, cuts corners.

David Beard is professor of rhetoric at the University of Minnesota Duluth, where he teaches writing.