The Division of Student Life fosters student success by creating and promoting inclusive educationally purposeful services and activities within and beyond the classroom. The departmental program review process empowers departments within the Division of Student Life to critically evaluate their work and their effect on the UI student experience through a lens of continuous improvement. University Dining engaged in a program review in February 2019. The process included a self-assessment by staff members in University Dining and a review by a set of external reviewers using the National Association of College and University Food Services (NACUFS) standards. University Housing Dining created the following action plan in response to the review team's findings.

Table of contents

Recommendations

Recommendation: business and technology operations

Plan

  • Evaluate the development of interfaces between software systems that are used by UI Dining

Success measures and updates

  • A Blackboard and Sequoia interface and a Blackboard and CBORD FSS interface
    • Initial discussion regarding how to identify the needs driving this recommendation was completed (spring 2020)
    • An interface developed by Blackboard and Sequoia or Blackboard and CBORD is highly unlikely. In discussion with ITS regarding a 3rd party, either ITS or a commercial firm, providing this service (spring 2021)
    • The cost of having this type of interface developed outways any value that it would provide. UI Dining will continue to manually manage any data needs from dining systems. (spring 2022)

Recommendation: use marketing to more effectively tell the UI Dining story

Plan

  • Market meal plans for off campus students
  • Develop consistent external messaging that unifies UI Dining as one unit providing residential dining, retail dining and catering
  • Create marketing for flex meals and how to get the most value from them
  • Pursue branded label for products made in the cold food production kitchen

Success measures and updates

  • Increase in the number of off-campus meal plans year over year
    • Worked with a senior marketing class to evaluate best approaches to reach off-campus residents; working through results of survey and determining what direction we should focus moving forward ( spring 2021)
    • The continued use of social media is the best way to reach off-campus residents. We will continue with our current social media efforts. (spring 2022)
  • Alignment of branding in catering and retail to University Dining/ University Housing & Dining (complete spring 2021)
  • Analysis shows better use of flex meals throughout the year by students
    • A virtual orientation program is in development for use with incoming students for fall 2020 (complete spring 2020)
    • Messaging in virtual orientation programs is being developed to more fully explain flex meal (spring 2020)
    • Flex meal usage was impacted by changes enacted because of and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We will continue to analyze flex meal use to determine the impact these changes had on behavior. (spring 2022)
  • New labels for all cold food production kitchen (CFPK) items
    • Hardware and software to provide branded labels for products made in the cold food production kitchen has been evaluated (spring 2020)
    • The logo for branding the cold food production kitchen (complete spring 2020)

Recommendation: expand the scope and availability of nutritional information

Plan

  • Continued implementation of NetNutrition
  • Develop and implement a process of monthly nutrition related tabling events in select retail dining operations
  • Develop and implement a program of monthly nutrition related tabling events in market place operations

Success measures and updates

  • 90% of menu items have nutritional information available online
    • Significant work has been done entering nutritional data into the database that supports NetNutrition (spring 2020)
    • Substantial work completed to load nutritional data into CBORD. NetNutrition is offline due to technology issues. Upon resolution of these issues, an analysis of how much information is available online will be conducted (spring 2021)
    • Evaluating the use of a 3rd party software to replace NetNutrition to provide more nutritional information in an enhanced format. (spring 2022)
  • Completed monthly nutrition-related tabling events in select retail dining operations
    • Due to service concerns around COVID-19, tabling events have been put on hold for fall semester 2020. We will reevaluate this decision for spring 2020 as updates related to COVID-19 protocols are released (spring 2020)
    • Put on hold due to COVID concerns. Working at rebuilding staff to resume tabling events (spring 2021)
  • Completed monthly nutrition-related tabling events in marketplace operations
    • Due to service concerns around COVID-19, tabling events have been put on hold for fall semester 2020. We will reevaluate this decision for spring 2020 as updates related to COVID-19 protocols are released (spring 2020)
    • Put on hold due to COVID concerns. Working at rebuilding staff to resume tabling events (spring 2021)
    • Tabling event resumed in spring 2022 (spring 2022)

Recommendation: evaluate meal plans

Plan

  • Review meal plan usage data
  • Investigate the variety and features of meal plans internally and at peer and aspirant institutions
  • Conduct SWOT analysis of current meal plan options
  • Conduct focus groups with stakeholders to determine desired features of meal plans

Success measures and updates

  • Report of meal plan usage for the past five years
    • Discussions regarding the scope of meal plan usage data requested are completed (spring 2020)
    • This evaluation was put on hold as focus on COVID issues took precedence (spring 2021)
    • Focus on COVID-related issues continued throughout the 2021-22 school year. We will refocus on this during 2022-23 (spring 2022)
  • Report outlining the variety and features of meal plans
    • This review was going to occur during the summer of 2020; however, issues regarding service during the COVID-19 pandemic took precedence (spring 2020)
  • Completed SWOT analysis of current meal plan options
    • SWOT analysis is planned for spring 2021. It may be postponed if the impact of service changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic impact the ability to do an evaluation (spring 2020)
    • SWOT analysis to be scheduled for early spring 2022 (spring 2021)
  • Report of stakeholder feedback of desired features of meal plans
    • Focus groups will take place following completion of the SWOT analysis (spring 2020)
    • Focus groups will be planned for spring 2022 (spring 2021)
  • Final report with recommended meal plan changes/improvements