Week 4 at Penn State!

This past week I met with the Penn State marketing team, received training for FoodPro and worked at the university bakery and warehouse. The bakery is responsible for providing baked goods for the entire University Park campus, including the two on campus hotels, and nine other Penn State campuses, so they have a big job to do. While I was there I got to help bake and fill pastries and bake cakes. I also got to watch a cake being iced for a wedding that was taking place on campus. It was interesting to see the decorating room because they have a ton of cake decorations and every type of flavoring imaginable.

While working at the warehouse I helped make a pallet of goods to be delivered to one of the dining halls. For this I had to channel my Tetris skills in order to make the different sized boxes fit neatly on the pallet, which was a lot of fun. I then met with the marketing staff to learn about their role in residential dining. They shared information about the promotional work they do to get students excited about eating in the dining halls. One of the graphic designers told us about how she made ink prints from leaves she found around campus to create a flyer for a special meal one of the dining halls was hosting. It was really cool to see what they were working on and how creative their department is. I also received training on how to use FoodPro, which is the software program Penn State uses to manage their food service. Learning the basics of how FoodPro works was great because I’m sure it will be a good skill to have for potential jobs.