The following messages was provided by the Vice President of Administrative Affairs by the Vice President of Enrollment Management and Student Affairs.

As HSU grows and changes through the years, it is imperative that our dining services keep pace with that growth and with best practices in the food service industry. To help us in this regard, the University has hired a consulting firm to help us evaluate how best to meet the changing food service needs of our campus community. The consultants will be looking into:

• Current Conditions—locations, catering, merchandising, menus, and sustainability efforts.
• Customer Interests—customer satisfaction, lifestyles, buying behaviors, and the food and restaurant trends of students, staff, and faculty.
• Best Practices—explore proven methods from the hospitality marketplace, as well as sister institutions that represent premier dining services operations. The goal is to feature quality food made from fresh preparation methods that support good nutrition, healthy lifestyle, and special dietary needs.
• Financial Results—identify key performance indicators to ensure the best financial outcomes for Dining Services.
• Food Service Providers—best sustainably—sourced options, Real Food Challenge criteria, local/regional/minority/women—owned businesses.

They will base their recommendations on these requirements for future dining services:

• A program that is convenient, innovative, flexible, clean, appealing, attractive, and affordable to students, parents, faculty, staff, and visitors.
• Customer service and hours of operation that meet the rapidly-changing needs of a dynamic university's demographics.
• Industry leadership in current dining trends, including accommodation of food allergies, sustainability, and environmentally preferable, and socially responsible, products and services.
• Financial resources and revenue growth to meet HSU's goals.

As part of the evaluation, the consultants will be on campus the week of October 27. They will tour the campus, observe meal services, interview administrators, managers, staff, and students; and hold focus groups with faculty, staff, and students. A randomly selected set of students, faculty, and staff will also be invited to take a survey and anyone else who is interested can send an email to dining-services-evaluation-2014@humboldt.edu with 'Survey' as the subject. Your input is vital to the future of HSU's dining services.

Dave Nakamura, the University Center's Executive Director; Heidi Chien, University Center's Assistant Executive Director; Ron Rudebock, Dining Services Director; and Marisa D'Arpino, Administrative Affair's Project Manager are this effort's core staff members. If you have any questions or comments about this evaluation effort, please direct them to dining-services-evaluation-2014@humboldt.edu.

Thank you for your participation.