Campusdish winthrop

Statement of Purpose

The goal of this project is to identify the needs for Winthrop student-athletes of having time to get healthy meals between classes and practices. My solution is to have a Grab and Go vending machine at the Winthrop Coliseum that would offer healthy food for student-athletes.

Winthrop students would benefit from this Grab and Go vending machine and student-athletes as well. It would allow them to perform better on the fields and improve their health in general.

Summary of Findings

The information gathered during my research helped me to write this report and to support my idea about launching a Grab and Go vending machine. The people that I interviewed, the surveys that I conducted, the research from the online websites that I found, allowed me to gather various information from different categories. I did a literature search, I interviewed three people from Residence Life, and Athletic Department from Winthrop University and Dining Services from Duke University. I also conducted surveys among students. My findings showed me that students are in big favor of launching a Grab and Go vending machine at the Winthrop Coliseum, but the budget is restricted.

Summary of Recommendations

After gathering all the information from interviews and surveys I recommend that staff members should use the old vending machine from the West Center and install it in the second floor of the Coliseum where they usually have the concession stands during the games. Students, student-athletes and staff members would benefit from it. Later on, if Winthrop gets enough money, building more cafeterias, restaurants and fast foods at Winthrop University should be considered.

Background

Winthrop University offers undergraduate and graduate degrees through five colleges and schools. It has been recognized as South Carolina's top-rated university and received numerous Top-10 Regional Public University rankings. Winthrop University offers a number of extracurricular activities to its students, including athletics, honor societies, clubs and student organizations, as well as fraternities and sororities. Fielding athletic teams known as Winthrop Eagles, the university participates in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) at the Division I level as a member of Big South Conference.

Student-athletes are known for having a very tight schedule. Combining classes, practices and social life requires being very organized punctual and responsible. One of the biggest issues for them is to manage their time correctly to be able to follow their schedule and not fall behind. Sometimes, they do not really have time to eat between classes and practices being obliged to skip meals during the day which can affect their health. Most of the student-athletes have classes in the morning and practices in the afternoon. In some cases they have evening classes, and they have to do their study hall hours sometimes having to stay in the Winthrop Coliseum until 9pm. They find themselves having to go back and forth from campus to the Winthrop coliseum several times a day. Moreover, some of the student-athletes do not have cars so they have to walk or bike all the way to practices and classes and as a result waste even more time and have no time eat. Where it becomes really a problem is when the student-athletes have classes the whole morning, finish class at 1:45 pm and have to be at practice on time at 2 pm, this very short time between classes and practices does not allow the student-athletes to stop on campus and have a complete meal.

It is proven that in order to perform better athletes have to eat healthy regularly including carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and avoid fat. Therefore, with not enough nutrients and vitamins in their bodies, it is nearly impossible to train fully for hours and as a consequence can lead to severe health problems.

Winthrop University has different kinds of food courts and cafeterias such as Thompson, Dinkins, DiGiorgio Center and vending machines located in almost every building. Among all these, Thompson cafeteria might be the one offering the healthiest choices of food for the students; as a result it is the most used from student-athletes. However, as mentioned before it tends to be hard for student-athletes to have time and sit down in Thompson and eat at their ease.

Being an athlete myself, I experience this daily. It is one major reason why I decided to research the possibility of having a Grab and Go vending machine at the Winthrop Coliseum, which would be very convenient for the student-athletes to eat healthier during the day before or after practices. I believe that most student-athletes will appreciate this accomplishment.

Literature search

During my research I have visited the following websites to gather all the necessary information.

Duke University Dining Services website

http://studentaffairs.duke.edu/dining

Winthrop Athletics website

http://winthropeagles.com/index.aspx

Winthrop Dining Services website

http://www.campusdish.com/en-US/csse/winthrop

Winthrop Student Life website

http://www.winthrop.edu/student-life/

Approach

As soon as I was assigned to do a feasibility study for my WRIT 465 course, I right away thought about creating a Grab and Go vending machine at the Winthrop Coliseum. Being a student-athlete myself I would never have time to have regular meals during the day between classes and practices. I always wanted this idea of having a place to eat near the athletic facilities where it would be so much more practical. I realize how important it is to eat healthy every day for student-athletes in order to perform well on the field. The problem with the cafeteria is that the students have to sit there and take their time to eat, whereas student-athletes are most of the time in a hurry because of their tight schedule, and sometimes either late to practice or to class. So in order to make it on time, they don’t have a choice other than to skip meals. I have experienced this myself so many times throughout my college life. Even though we have different places to eat on campus, most of the food isn’t appropriate for student-athletes. The food is mostly fried and contains so many calories and not enough nutrients. That was the first motivation about launching the Grab and Go vending machine. Because student-athletes give so much effort on and off the athletic fields they deserve the best food possible for their health and their comfort. As a result, I started researching all the possible solutions for my project. I began looking for the right persons to address my questions and concerns to advance towards the implementation of the new Grab and Go vending machine. I decided to contact the Dining Services, the Coliseum staff members and the Student life department at Winthrop University. As well as the Dining Services at Duke University.

First, I contacted Winthrop Dining services. I interviewed Pam Yurkovic, Director of Dinning Services, in order to find out the costs of such a project and pros and cons of launching it. Also, to help me understand the procedure I have to go through and explain to me the steps needed to launch the Grab and Go vending machine.

Second, I interviewed Tom Hickman, the Athletic Director, and Dan Murray the Associate Athletic Director of Facilities, Operations and Sales, to figure out the perfect location for the Grab and Go vending machine where student-athletes can have easy access to it. I believe it is very necessary to know their opinions based on the fact that they have a direct impact on my project.

I also got in touch with the Vice president of Student Life, Doctor Frank Ardaiolo, to know a little about what he thinks about the Grab and Go vending machine at the Coliseum and his opinion whether it would be successful among the student-athletes, Coliseum staff members as well as regular student and visitors.

Moreover, I contacted Mr. Robert Coffey, Director of Dinning Services at Duke University to know what kind of food system they implement at Duke University and if they have a cafeteria that would serve healthy food, so student-athletes could benefit from it.

Lastly, I conducted surveys that I distributed to the students and student-athletes in particular because they would benefit the most from my project about whether they would be interested or not in that idea, and analyzed the results and the different responses I received from the students’ opinion. I surveyed 100 students, 85 of them were student-athletes and 15 were just regular students. Most of the students that took the survey were between 18 and 25 years old and with various academic areas. They provided me with much important information that will help me implement my project correctly and back up my research.

Results

I interviewed Pam Yurkovic, Director of Dining Services, and she told me that the idea of creating a Grab and Go vending machine at the Coliseum would be hard to achieve but not impossible. She informed me that it would be somewhat expensive because they would need to buy and set up the vending machine which is not cheap. Nonetheless, it is feasible because they would not need to hire many employees to run it, maybe 2 or 3 employees a day that would shift between each other after working a certain amount of hours would be enough. The only problem is that the meals provided by the vending machine might be a little more expensive for the students compared to the meals provided in Thomson cafeteria or the Digiorgio Center, which the students might not like. As a result in order to open the Grab and Go vending machine they would have to make sure that there would be enough population interested in using it, so it would make a profit. On the other hand, she stressed the fact that there are many choices of healthy foods on campus. Thomson cafeteria has different choices of food, the Digiorgio Center has a grab and go bar, a stir fry chinese restaurant, Zoca that offers mexican food like burrito bowls, Topio's pizza offers a side salad as well as a grab and go bar in Einstein Bros bagel. She told me that there is a lot of space on campus where they could build another cafeteria, but they did not have the financial support.

Mr. Dan Murray provided me with very interesting information. He was very helpful and tried to help me with my project. Unfortunately, I couldn't interview him in person due a schedule conflict, so I decided to contact with him via email. He was really quick replying to my e-mails and gave me accurate and precise responses. When I asked him about the possibility of having the Grab and Go vending machine, he was first very excited about this idea; he thought that this Grab and Go vending machine would be very convenient for the athletics teams, especially during their respective seasons. Then he told me that this would have to be discussed with ARAMark, the food provider for Winthrop University. He affirmed that if I would think of creating a cafeteria then it would not be feasible mostly because of the lack of space at the Coliseum and the difficult distribution of food from ARAMark due to the long distance between them and campus. However, a vending machine would most likely be easier to achieve because it required less space and storage than a cafeteria. He also told me that the price of the vending machine should be discussed with food service as they take care of that. He mentioned the fact that they use concession stands with fast foods during the basketball or volleyball games on the second floor of the Coliseum. Nonetheless, according to him there would not be enough usage of the vending machine so they can make profit because the only people who would use it are student-athletes before or after their practices. He believes that the staff members of the Coliseum would not use it unless there is a game going on.

I also interviewed Mr. Robert Coffey, Director of Dinning Services at Duke University via e-mail to know a little more about their Dining Services at Duke University and I discovered some really interesting facts. He told me that Duke is actually the home to one of the most innovative, dynamic and cutting-edge collegiate dining programs in the country. They features more than 40 restaurants and cafes with an abundance of options and nutritious choices that helped Duke earn top rankings as one of the best campuses for college dining. He said that they do not have a cafeteria just for student-athletes, but they do have a great amount of places to eat with all different kinds of food depending on what the students like. The restaurants they have can be used by any student, student-athlete, staff member or workers at Duke University.

The surveys were a big part of my project. They provided me beneficial feedback and opinions from many students. My target group was student-athletes in particular because they are the ones benefiting from the Grab and Go vending machine. I conducted 100 surveys among all classifications of students and different age groups. I surveyed 61 females and 39 males. Surveys were created to discover and understand students’ opinions about my idea. Below is all of the data and information gathered that I will analyze and put it in empirical form.

Figure 1: Classification of surveyed students

Figure 1 shows the classification of Winthrop students who have taken surveys. There were 15 freshmen taking surveys, which is 15% of all the students, 26 sophomores which is 26%, and 33 juniors which is 33% and 26 seniors which is 26%.

Figure 2: Number of students and student-athletes surveyed

Figure 2 shows that among the 100 people that I surveyed 15 persons were students from Winthrop University and 85 of them were actual student-athletes. The number of student-athletes is much bigger than students because my goal was to target more the student-athletes group.

Figure 3: percentage of student-athletes that do not have time to have healthy meals during the day

Figure 3 shows that 78 student-athletes which is 78% do not have time to have healthy meals during the day between classes and practices, and 22 student-athletes which is 22% do have time to eat. This illustrates that a very big number of student-athletes experience the same problem regarding the lack of time to eat.

Figure 4: Amount of people who agreed on the idea of launching a Grab and Go vending machine at the Winthrop Coliseum

This figure shows that 96 people who were surveyed, which is 96% of the people, agreed on the idea of launching a Grab and Go vending machine at the Winthrop Coliseum. The other 4 people, which is 4% disagree on the idea. This illustrates that most of the student will be willing to have the vending machine at the Coliseum and will be using it daily at their convenience.

Discussion

I believe I gathered enough information to discuss and support the implementation of a Grab and Go vending machine after conducting all the surveys, gathering information from online resources and interviewing faculty and staff members. Moreover, most of the students that I surveyed were excited about the idea of opening the vending machine, especially student-athletes because they are obviously the ones that would benefit the most from it.

When I first thought about this project, I didn’t think that it would be that hard to open a Grab and Go vending machine at the Winthrop Coliseum. But then, after interviewing all the people who are in charge of that, I realized it is much more difficult than just to bring a vending machine and place it whatever you want. It definitely requires a lot of money and investment in such a project. Unfortunately, most of the staff members told me that at this time Winthrop cannot afford to develop this project because of some money issues, but they would consider this in the future.

After learning about the Dining Services at Duke University and now know all the different kinds of restaurants, cafeterias and fast foods that they have there, even though the school enroll only 14,000 students, I feel like Winthrop University should have more food variety and most places to eat for students. I know by experience and from other students’ feedback that many students are not very satisfy with the food system that is offered here. I believe that comparing to a school like Duke, Winthrop falls a little behind on this area.

The feedback that I got from my fellow students supported my idea of getting a Grab and Go vending machine. All of the students surveyed agreed that student-athletes would benefit from a vending machine that offers food specified for their needs and is close to the athletics facilities, which will help them to perform better on the fields. The majority of the students eat most of their meals in Thomson cafeteria and as I mentioned earlier they are not really satisfy with the quality of food offered there. According to Mrs. Pam Yurkovic, Director of Dining Services, there are a many different choices of healthy food in Thomson cafeteria but students do not take time to look for this food. I personally think that the salad bar and the pasta station are the only stations that offer healthy food. In all the other stations most of the time the food is fried and contains too many calories, which is not the best choice for a student-athlete. She stressed the fact that it would be expensive to launch this project and Winthrop cannot afford it at this time.

Somewhat similar to what Mrs. Pam Yurkovic said, Mr. Dan Murray, Associated Athletic Director of Facilities, Operations and Sales at the Winthrop Coliseum told me that there would not be enough usage of the vending machine even though my surveys show that 96% of the students would use it. However, I completely understand his concern and the amount of money needed to launch this project. If not enough student purchase meals there they would lose money after all instead of making profits. Although, he said that it might be feasible in the near future if the number of student at Winthrop University increases and student-athletes as well.

With all the information I gathered I present the following solutions:

Maintain the current situation

Maintain the current situation where students would use the available cafeterias around campus without making any changes.

Use the old vending machine from the West Center

Fix the old vending machine that was before installed in the West Center’s entrance, where bagels, fresh drinks and sandwiches were offered at that time, and install it permanently in the second floor at the Winthrop Coliseum where they usually have the concession stands during the games.

Conclusion

Maintain the current situation

Maintaining the current situation would be the easiest and cheapest solution. The only problem is that students are not satisfied with the current food courts that are offered to them. According to the surveys, students would love to have a Grab and Go vending machine at the Coliseum where they could purchase healthy meals. Also student-athletes would have enough time to eat and would not need hurry between classes and practices.

Use the old vending machine from the West Center

This idea would be very popular among students; they would love to have this project developed. Student-athletes would eat healthy meals at their convenience between classes and practices. In order to achieve that more and deeper research need to be made. When I talked to the staff members, none of them mentioned anything about this possible solution and when I ask them nobody really gave me a tangible answer. It is true that even though they could use the old vending machine which would not cost them anything, they would still have to pay for the installation of the new ventilation system that will keep the food fresh, and hire new employees that would run the vending machine. If this cannot be achieved students still have many food courts like Thomson cafeteria, DiGiorgio Campus Center and Dinkins and many of these places also offer grab and go food. Students just need to make good and healthy choices.

Recommendations

After analyzing the pros and cons of each of the solutions, I believe that the best solution would be to try to acquire the old vending machine from the West Center and install it in the second floor of the Coliseum. This solution would be by far the most beneficial. Even though, the staff members are scared not to make profit on this and lose money. I am sure that it would be very successful, students would be using it every day, student-athletes would benefit from it as well and will perform better on the field. Also student-athletes would not only use it between classes and practices, they would also use the vending machine during study hall hours.

Students Student-athletes 15.0 85.0

Do not have time to eat 78%

Have time to eat Do not have timeto eat 22.0 78.0 Yes No 96.0 4.0 Freshman Sophomore Junior Senior 15.0 26.0 33.0 26.0