The following is a guest post by Jay Blanton, the Executive Director of Marketing and Public Relations at the University of Kentucky.
Rona Roberts’ recent commentary regarding dining services offered several compelling ideas for the issues that should be considered as the university weighs how best to move forward.
Indeed, each of the issues she raises — from local purchasing to sustainability to healthy food choices for our students — is at the heart of our decision-making process as we consider the best alternatives for providing food services for students, faculty, staff and visitors to our campus. She is one of many thoughtful and concerned people, both on and off campus, asking tough and important questions about this issue. Her voice, like that of many others, is an important one. And the questions and concerns she is raising deserve a response that reflects our commitment to communication and transparency. Moreover, a few points require some clarification and further expansion because of their importance to this process:
First, UK does not require any student to live on campus. The vast majority of first-year students — more than 90 percent typically — seek to live on campus. And, yes, as Ms. Roberts correctly notes, the university wants students to live on campus. The academic literature strongly suggests that students do better, are retained at higher rates, and graduate on time more readily when they live on campus. That’s because students who live on campus are more likely to become engaged early on in the life of the university — from engagement with their studies to involvement with student organizations that increase socialization and a sense of belonging. But there is no requirement that they do so.
Second, against that backdrop, it only makes sense that we would want even more students to live on campus. Right now, we can’t accommodate more students. We have about 5,200 beds, only about 680 of which provide modern living and learning space. So, we are seeking to rebuild our residence hall system and expand the number of beds — perhaps up to 9,000 — to accommodate first-year students and, ultimately, upperclassmen and graduate students as well.
Third, we’ve turned to a private partner to help facilitate that revitalization effort. Prior to beginning our work with EdR, the company we are partnering with, UK built only four residence halls in 40 years. There are a host of reasons for that pace of construction — from the university’s limited debt capacity to the fact that building residence halls is not a core competency of the university.
The bottom line: Enrolling more students and graduating more students at even higher rates is not only good for the University of Kentucky. It is good for the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
Indeed, few things, if any, could contribute more to a stronger economy than a larger and even more educated and highly skilled workforce.
So, even as we seek to improve the living environment for our students, we’re also endeavoring to significant upgrade their learning environment and the teaching and research space utilized by our faculty and staff. It’s why UK President Eli Capilouto recently sought, and received authorization for, some $275 million in campus construction, all paid for with university resources, including some $65 million from our athletics department for a new Science/Academic Building in the heart of our campus – perhaps an unprecedented commitment of funds in American public higher education.
The construction and revitalization efforts underscore that our focus is — and should be — tremendous teaching, groundbreaking research, and community changing service.
That growth in our student population, coupled with the commitment to create better living, learning and research spaces, also is driving the need to think about and examine our dining operation.
To be sure, we are asking a fundamentally important question: what is the best way to provide dining to students, faculty, staff and others who spend time with us?
Yes, we have a quality dining operation. But is it a core function of the university itself? Or, are there more efficient and effective ways to provide this service, particularly as we grow and develop as an institution?
And, without question, part of our consideration in this process is whether and how significant investment could be made in dining facilities and others that serve our students and campus community.
But there’s nothing wrong with that consideration. In fact, facility revitalization is an important part of the equation in terms of creating an atmosphere that maximizes the potential of our students and of the faculty and staff who work with them. It’s why we are moving forward in a partnership to build new residence halls. It’s why we are increasingly relying on our own sources of dollars to construct new classroom and research space, even as President Capilouto and our Board of Trustees delivered on a commitment to the smallest tuition increase at UK in some 15 years.
In an era of constrained resources, those questions of affordability, debt and limited capacity necessarily take on even more importance.
However, those considerations are not, by any means, the only things on the table — far from it.
In considering how best to proceed, we have put forward several requirements that will — and must be — part of any partnership we enter into with a food service provider, should we decide to recommend that course to the university and our Board of Trustees.
Many of those requirements, in fact, are cited by Ms. Roberts:
- We are, for example, retaining our current food services employees as university employees with the same salary and benefits.
- We would require that employment opportunities continue for students, as food services provides important compensation and potential career paths for many students who participate.
- We will mandate our continued involvement with Kentucky Proud and local purchasing of food. Interestingly, something that has been conveniently overlooked is that at least two other institutions who work with third parties for dining services — the University of Louisville and Berea College — more food is purchased locally as a percentage of their overall purchasing than UK currently does with an in-house service.
- We will require expanded academic interaction with units like the Lemon Tree, Butcher Shop, Nutrition and Food Sciences, Hospitality Management, and other campus departments. We will expect a bigger influence on developing collaborative faculty and student engagement in support of our land-grant mission for diversified agriculture and creating new market research practices.
- Finally, if the university ultimately decided to engage in a third-party partnership, we would expect more food options and healthier food choices than we currently provide students and others.
Yes, third parties expect to make a profit and benefit their shareholders. But it is simply erroneous to suggest returning a profit precludes partnerships and quality and the development of deep community ties. That is simply not the case.
We should be willing as an institution to examine all these issues closely, in both their positive and challenging dimensions, as part of an effort to find the best alternative for our students and for everyone who looks to UK for leadership on this issue and so many others.
But as we commit to that examination, we also — both those of us with UK and those of us, understandably, raising questions and challenges — should commit to dealing in the facts, wherever those facts may take us in the interest of finding the best path forward for everyone involved.
That’s a process we should undertake with a willingness to ask and answer tough, at times, skeptical questions. But, ultimately, we also should consider the fact that even though we don’t always agree on every aspect of every issue, that doesn’t mean we don’t want what’s best for UK and the Commonwealth we serve.
Indeed, we do.
We look forward to continuing this important dialogue as this process moves forward.
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