Lecture today

As part of the Rodman Scholars Lecture Series, I'm giving a talk today at 5pm in Jeff Hall on Personal versus Institutional Responsibility and what that means for sustainability. This will be the first in a series of lectures throughout the semester that are appropriately linked by the theme "Engineering a Sustainable World."

For more information, check out the Rodman Scholars' website: http://www.rodmanscholars.org/index.php/Engineering_a_Sustainable_World

Hope to see some of you there!

Slow Food Piedmont?

This past Saturday night I had the chance to get a look inside The Haven, Charlottesville's newly opened day shelter just off the Downtown Mall. Renovations were completed on the historic structure - a former church - mid-December; the place now offers a variety of services for the homeless and underserved in town, including laundry and shower facilities, counseling, and breakfasts made with fresh and local ingredients. The kitchen space is really something, with state of the art equipment and a spacious dining area that can seat up to about 80 people. The kitchen director hosted a potluck there over the weekend as a way to introduce some of us to the facilities, as well as to guage interest in the potential creation of a Slow Food: Albemarle/Piedmont chapter here in Central Virginia. All potluck attendees seemed plenty excited at the prospect of an organization centered around good food!

I am sure there will be opportunities for this emerging chapter to connect with the Slow Food: UVa unit that just got started up this fall. Though Slow Food sometimes receives criticism for being elitist in nature (the working class simply doesn't have the luxury of making sure that this or that heirloom tomato stays on the menu of a - probably expensive - restaurant), the organization exists most fundamentally to recreate the feeling of community that stems from gathering around a table and sharing a meal with your friends and neighbors. The Haven's kitchen looks to be emerging as an ideal gathering space for accomplishing that community building.

SYFAS 2010

I spent last weekend in Chapel Hill, NC attending an inspiring summit based around the challenges and rewards of creating sustainable food offerings and opportunities at college campuses throughout the Southeast. Students from around the region - Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Tennessee, and even Florida - met at UNC for the Real Food Challenge Southeast Youth Food Activist Summit, a weekend of workshops and panels intended to arm students with the skills to return home and effect change on their own campus.

I helped lead one of the workshops, "Students Organizing for Real Food on Campus", in its morning and afternoon session, and was thrilled to hear about the efforts already underway elsewhere in the southeast. UNC has just opened a sustainably themed cafe; Davidson Dining has given its list of vendors to a group of students and charged them with finding suitably sustainable replacements; a student at Maryland has created her own sustainability internship with their Dining unit starting this semester; NC State has an on-campus weekly farmer's market; and the list goes on. We acknowledged that we are all a significant way off from seeing true sustainable food systems in our communities, but appreciated the chance to share best practices and to become well informed so we can better shape our respective colleges and universities.

Keynote speaker Anna Lappe put it well on Friday evening when she said that asking ourselves whether or not we were winning the battle against the conventional food system was not entirely the best question to pose; rather, we would do well to consider whether we are shaping history consciously. The group of passionate and motivated students at SYFAS 2010 are certainly doing so.

Vote for UVa's Reusable Mug Program

The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) is sponsoring Chill Out!, a video competition amongst colleges and universities from around the country. Students have been challenged to submit a video that explains what their campus is doing to combat global warming. Thanks to Laura Moynihan, my Sustainability Intern, Green Dining has entered its video about the reusable mug program underway on Grounds. Take two minutes to watch it here, and cast your vote for it on the GoGreen website by clicking on the "Vote Now!" hyperlink directly under the UVa video on this page: http://www.gogreentube.com/watch.php?v=MTA2MzcyOQ%3D%3D

Grass-Fed Beef at Newcomb Tomorrow

Come hungry to Newcomb for lunch (11am - 2pm) tomorrow; Wednesday, February 3rd! The dining hall is hosting a local burger station (where the nachos are usually located); the beef is provided by Grayson Natural Foods, which is a cattle cooperative composed of small family farms grown in and around Grayson County in Southwest Virginia. The cattle is free range and largely grass-fed -- those burgers are sure to be extremely tasty. While you're picking up your local burger, you may also want to check out the Green Dining display located at the far end of the table: new Sustainable Dining brochures, sustainable seafood pocket guides, reusable mug loyalty punch cards, and more.

See you there!

Events and Sugar Dispensers

The spring semester is officially underway -- and it seems as though there are enough Dining/sustainable agriculture related events taking place to keep us all busy these days!

Green Dining hosted a small but enthusiastic group of students and current members at its Open House and reception last week in the Garden Room. We handed out the new and improved coffee discount cards, handy Monterey Bay Aquarium sustainable seafood pocket guides, and assorted resuable bags and local ag magazines. People lingered over conversations about potential places around Grounds for satellite student gardens, the speculative environmental views that the newly elected UVa president may hold, and how to mitigate the effects of the average American's energy and water-intensive meat-heavy diet. I arranged for Catering to provide a sustainable array of appetizers: Virginia grown apples, Everona Dairy cheese, Albemarle Baking Company Bread, Black & Gold's Maya Gold (fair trade and organic certified) chocolate, and local butternut squash quiche... delightful!

Last Friday, one of those local ag magazines - Flavor, to be exact - hosted a group of faculty and staff and a few students that are involved in various aspects of research or promoting sustainable food systems here at the University. That lunch meeting was the first time we had all gathered around a table as a cohesive unit, and it was a remarkably diverse group. It's exciting to be aware of how much is already happening at UVa -- and to realize just how much more can be accomplished when we join forces across disciplines.

Yesterday, Dining hosted a Winter Carnival to welcome students back to Grounds and to start building excitement about the forthcoming EMPSU program. Aside from the cotton candy, funnel cakes, prizes, and Wintergreen Resort mascot, Green Dining had a booth where Laura (Dining Sustainability Intern) and I promoted a variety of sustainability initiatives and garnered a dozen or so additional sign-ups to the Green Dining mailing list. Hopefully we'll see some fresh faces at next week's first meeting of the semester. Speaking of which, according to the trusty doodle poll, Mondays at 1pm (as always, in Hotel E) have won out again as an optimal meeting time.

Other upcoming events include a free screening of Fresh at the downtown Jefferson Madison Regional Library this Thursday (1/28) at 7pm, which includes a presentation by Joel Salatin. Next weekend, the 2nd annual Southeast Youth Food Activist Summit is taking place at UNC's campus in Chapel Hill; it seeks to bring students together from the region to have a conversation about sustainable food and, in particular, to strategize ways to bring it into college dining halls.

I'll close with a mention of another small change that's coming to dining retail locations at UVa: bulk sugar dispensers. The first few containers are already out at Alderman Cafe, and are on their way in the West Range Cafe as well. If it's smooth sailing, they'll be added elsewhere, as well. As small a gesture as it may seem, the good news is that even the little things add up quickly at a large University like this one.

New and Improved

Happy New Year! While Grounds has mostly gone into hibernation over this long and cold break, Dining has stayed busy prepping for the spring semester.

To kick things off, Green Dining is hosting an Open House on Tuesday, January 19th, from 7-8:30pm in the Garden Room (directly above the West Range Cafe). This'll be in part a chance for Dining to express thanks to the group members that attended meetings and lent valuable insight to sustainable dining issues throughout the fall. This will also provide an opportunity for curious students/staff/faculty to learn about the work Green Dining does in a more informal setting. It'll be entertaining and informative! Light refreshments will be provided.

That evening will also coincide with the release of Dining's new (and very brief) reusable to-go container survey. The survey can be filled out by both participating or non-participating students, in-person or online at a forthcoming url. The survey responses will give Dining important feedback ways to improve the current program.

There are a couple of updated promotional materials that will be ready in time for the spring semester: the Sustainable Dining brochure has been edited to reflect some of the recent changes to our program. Copies of the brochure will start appearing around Grounds in the next week or so. Additionally, due to popular demand, Dining has expanded the coffee mug discount card program to include hot tea and soda. Now your Reusable Mug Loyalty Card can be punched for coffee, tea, or soda. The same concept still applies: purchase eight (of the aforementioned types of) drinks with your reusable mug, get two refills free. Pick up the new discount card at all UVa Dining locations.

Though there are quite a few other projects coming down the pipe, I am waiting to announce them once they've been confirmed more concretely or implemented. Stay tuned for further developments...