Summer 2013... NACUFS Intern Style!: One Month Down at OU !

Day 16:

This weekend Kayla and I got some visitors, HER FAMILY! Her birthday was on Sunday (for those who didn’t know) so her mom, dad and brother came all the way to Norman to celebrate it with her. We spent the weekend sightseeing, shopping, trying out new restaurants and just hanging out by the pool. Her family was amazing, funny and pure entertainment for the whole weekend; I wish they could have stayed forever! Over the weekend we found our new favorite pizza place, Crooked Crust, and finally got a basketball so we can play in our courtyard.

On Monday morning we met with Nancy De Graff who was just a doll. Nancy is the Administrative Assistant for Housing and Food Services. She gave us the lowdown on her job and how she works with Housing dealing with meal plan assignments, how she organizes travel for the department and travel claims and how she also does the meal plan financial reports for the department. We learned how she uses Blackboard and Micros for the financial reporting of meal plans, which is done daily, bi-weekly and monthly. We reviewed the contracts students are required to fill out when purchasing their meal plan and all the details each meal plan entails. OU gives their students lots of options for different meal plans, there is a meal plan for everyone. After Nancy described her job in Housing and Food Services I don’t know how she fits it all into 8 hour days! Being organized must be her secret in keeping everything on track.

Day 17:

On an average day you hear lots of words but today a few key words stuck out for me, sharing, family, friendship, happy and many more optimistic words which came from the staff working for T.J at the Union. Today Kayla and I were at Quisnos, Laughing Tomato and Chick Fil a, and it was so cool to see how these restaurants work together and help each other out. We learned so much from T.J and her team including their preparation processes such as the recipes that need to get done before opening at Laughing Tomato, sanitation procedures including temperature checks and cleaning lists, job descriptions, and individual details about each restaurant. They’re actually working on a new restaurant project called Union Market which sounds amazing! Home style type food, who wouldn’t love that when you’re away from home! Who knew Laughing Tomato uses local products such as their peanut butter and honey and that they make their own pitas and hummus, so cool! That they hold Produce Markets for students educating them on healthy meals they can make in their dorm rooms. Or that they never turn down a customer with a food allergy and always make sure to follow the rules when dealing with allergies. All of these things are pretty amazing and let me tell you, the food is pretty amazing too. Every employee is cross-trained to be able to work at each of the 3 restaurants ensuring that if one needs help there is always someone available. Teamwork is important for T.J and her team and you can see that they act like one big family.

Day 18:

Today we had the pleasure of being over at Goddard Health Center where we met with Maggie Pool, Mary Montgomery and Nicole Kendrick. Maggie is the Assistant Director for Health Promotion and Clinical Services, Mary is the Registered Dietitian and Nicole works in Health Promotion. Today was the first day of ‘Dish with the Dietitian’ and the topic was on Snacking Healthier with Summer Salsas. We helped Mary prepare the salsas which entailed a lot of cutting and a few tears, from the onions of course! The salsas Mary chose were Avocado Mango Salsa, Corn and Bean Salsa, Roasted Tomato Salsa and Cool Cucumber Salsa, with each recipe being 100 calories. The Corn and Bean Salsa was my personal favorite, I just couldn’t get enough! Mary’s presentation was so informative discussing the major nutrients in each salsa and how their beneficial to our bodies including a discussion on complete proteins and how to get them in our diets. Everyone including myself learned so much and the food was absolutely delicious. Maggie, Mary and Nicole were a blast to be around today and so informative to any questions we had relating to health promotion. We spent the afternoon researching fun fresh recipes for their next Dish topic and we’re hoping to attend that talk as well at the end of July.

Days 19 &20:

To end our first month we found ourselves in the scrape room at Couch. Kayla and I wanted to calculate the amount of food waste left behind by the campers/persons who eat at Couch so we put together a food waste audit and took the average pounds of waste over a 2 day period. The scrape room might sound smelly and scary but it actually wasn’t too bad, the Orca on the other hand was a nightmare! The Orca is where all the food waste goes and gets turned into a liquid for easy removal. I took one for the team and dumped all the food waste into the Orca and the smell is something I can’t even describe; I will not miss going near it that’s for sure! Our food waste audit went well; our average is assumed to be slightly off due to people dumping food waste in the trash cans outside the scrape room. We put up signs stating “paper only” above the trash cans but it was not 100% affective. The last waste audit was conducted during the school year so it calculated 2820 people and 589.29lbs of accumulated waste.Comparing this food waste audit taken in March which showed results of .21lbs/person, our food waste audit showed .09lb/person of waste. Over a 2 day period 981 people ate at Couch resulting in 51.70lbs of food waste. We didn’t have the same customer count as the previous waste audit but we still got a general idea of the food that gets wasted in a university setting; which is a lot when you factor in the food that gets thrown out when overproduction occurs. This was a great experience for us, seeing firsthand the amount of food that gets wasted through scraping the plates, weighing the buckets and calculating the averages. Calculating food waste is important for the university because it tells them which meals are accepted by the students and if they need to modify their menu or not. It helps to both satisfy the students and keep food waste to a minimum.

One month down and I still can’t believe how fast it went by! So far I’ve survived the weather, let’s see what July brings!