Administrators and students discussed dining options and student space at the first Hoya Roundtable of the semester Tuesday evening in Sellinger Lounge.
Chief Operating Officer Christopher Augostini established the Roundtable series two years ago to facilitate student engagement on key campus issues.
Deborah Morey, chief business officer for university services, began the discussion with commentary on the larger theme of student engagement, which has seen a shift this year to more frequent, smaller engagement sessions instead of these larger roundtable forums.
“I’ve been really pleased with how we’ve engaged with students over the past year,” Morey said. “We had a lot of students coming to meetings, and I can’t tell you how important that is with decision-making, and we hope that they will continue to come as the voice of the students.”
Associate Vice President for Auxiliary Services Joelle Wiese led the initial discussion on dining services. She described the success of the Georgetown Dining Food Services Committee.
“Dining is going to be looked at as part of master planning – what the food will look like, in three years, four years, five years,” Wiese said. “We’re going to be looking at top selling items, what are the trends of the industry, from a global perspective and on campuses.”
Wiese cited a group of students’ collaboration with architects to design Hoya Court as evidence of this trend. She further announced that in coming months, Auxiliary Services will begin issuing surveys to garner student input on dining options.
Josetta Moore, the resident district manager for dining on campus, spoke about O’Donovan Hall, inviting head chef Andy Cole to talk about menu changes that have occurred over the past year. According to Cole, the Leo’s staff is seeking to further diversify options for student dining, including adding “sustainable fish Friday,” as well as breakfast sandwiches and international barbeque varieties.
Shifting to student space, Associate Vice President for Community Engagement and Strategic Initiatives Lauralyn Lee addressed the impact of student input in the master planning process including a recent user survey on the Office of Campus Facility Activities website used to reserve study space on campus. She announced the creation of focus groups in coming months to further facilitate student input in administrative decisions.
“We’ll be using it to inform any policy decisions made or how we go about educating people and making better use of the spaces we have,” Lee said.
The roundtable was mostly attended by students in the Georgetown University Student Association. Freshman GUSA Senator Chris Fisk (COL ’17) expressed his appreciation of the roundtable’s ability to enable discussion between students and administrators.
“I think that it’s great that they came and answered questions, and it’s refreshing to see that initiatives are happening that we don’t know about, that they’re actually taking care of things,” Fisk said.
Freshman GUSA Senator Mandy Lee (SFS ’17) agreed, but expressed disappointment over dismal student attendance.
“I definitely wish more students could have come to this, as this is an opportunity to speak directly with administrators that we never get to see,” Lee said.