Hunger on college campuses is a nationwide problem, with one in three students experiencing food insecurity. This episode of the Advance Rutgers podcast explores what food insecurity is, what makes students particularly vulnerable, and the steps Rutgers is taking to address this critical issue. The episode features Cara Cuite, an assistant extension specialist with Rutgers Cooperative Extension and an assistant professor in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers–New Brunswick, and Kerri Willson, associate dean of students and director of off-campus living and community initiatives at Rutgers–New Brunswick. Cuite has conducted several surveys to better understand the scope of student hunger at Rutgers, and Willson leads the team that operates the Rutgers Student Food Pantry in New Brunswick. Together, they help us understand the many ways the university is working toward the day when no student goes hungry.
Visit Rutgers’ website to learn about more initiatives taking place at Rutgers and how you can support them.
Hunger on college campuses is a nationwide problem, with one in three students experiencing food insecurity. This episode of the Advance Rutgers podcast explores what food insecurity is, what makes students particularly vulnerable, and the steps Rutgers is taking to address this critical issue. The episode features Cara Cuite, an assistant extension specialist with Rutgers Cooperative Extension and an assistant professor in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers–New Brunswick, and Kerri Willson, associate dean of students and director of off-campus living and community initiatives at Rutgers–New Brunswick. Cuite has conducted several surveys to better understand the scope of student hunger at Rutgers, and Willson leads the team that operates the Rutgers Student Food Pantry in New Brunswick. Together, they help us understand the many ways the university is working toward the day when no student goes hungry.
Visit Rutgers’ website to learn about more initiatives taking place at Rutgers and how you can support them.
Christine Fennessy (00:05):
Welcome to Advance Rutgers, a podcast about the many ways that Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is addressing the critical issues of our day. At Rutgers, we believe a better tomorrow starts with bigger thinking today. And our talented and driven community is improving the human condition with transformative, multidisciplinary projects. This podcast will explore those groundbreaking initiatives: what they are, why they matter, and who they benefit.
Today's episode takes a hard look at hunger—specifically the rate of food insecurity among students on the Rutgers–New Brunswick campus. We explore what food insecurity is, why students are particularly vulnerable, and the measures that Rutgers has taken to address this critical issue—in particular, the work of the Rutgers Student Food Pantry. We also learn why the fight against hunger is far from over and how the university as a whole is devoted to working toward the day when no student goes hungry. Thanks for joining us.
Dean Kerri Willson (01:22):
We had a student come in one day to use the pantry. This was very early on. He hadn't eaten in two days, and the last meal he had was from the garbage. And it wasn't sort of a dumpster diving philosophy; it was [that] he had no food.
Christine Fennessy (01:38):
That's Kerrie Willson. She's the Associate Dean of Students and Director of Off Campus Living and Community Initiatives at Rutgers–New Brunswick.
Dean Kerri Willson (01:47):
And I've worked with the Rutgers Student Food Pantry since it opened six years ago.
Christine Fennessy (01:52):
The pantry is in the College Avenue Student Center on the New Brunswick campus, and it looks a lot like a convenience store.
Dean Kerri Willson (01:59):
We have beautiful shelves with pasta, sauce, canned vegetables, canned beans, cereal, oatmeal, snacks. We have a refrigerator and a freezer. We carry toiletry items. We have the space set up like you were going into a store and shopping. You walk down different aisles.
Christine Fennessy (02:21):
The pantry opened in 2016. It opened because Rutgers and community members working in food pantries across the city of New Brunswick were hearing of too many students going hungry—students who sometimes had to resort to extreme measures, like digging through the garbage, because they were food insecure.
Professor Cara Cuite (02:43):
So we used to call this hunger, right? But hunger is really an individual-level condition that we all experience at some time or another, right? And food insecurity is really more about being unable to afford food.
Christine Fennessy (02:55):
Professor Cara Cuite is an assistant extension specialist with Rutgers Cooperative Extension and an assistant professor in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers–New Brunswick.
Professor Cara Cuite (03:06):
For some people, food insecurity might look like that they're worrying about where their next meal is going to come from, that they're concerned that they're not going to be able to afford their food. But that is sort of the low end of a continuum of food insecurity. And it goes all the way up to people who miss meals because they can't afford food, who lose weight because they can't afford enough food.
Christine Fennessy (03:29):
We all know that being hungry can make us pretty irritable, and it makes it a lot harder to focus. But when hunger becomes a constant state, it can take a terrible toll.
Professor Cara Cuite (03:39):
Even beyond just kind of low-level worry, depression, anxiety in a more clinical sense for sure, food insecurity can lead to eating disorders. It can really affect people's sleep.
Christine Fennessy (03:54):
She says students are especially vulnerable.
Professor Cara Cuite (03:57):
So it has all of these psychological and physiological things that are related to it, [and] it can really affect student performance. It can affect GPA, it can affect whether students drop out, whether they actually complete their degrees. So, it can have really wide-ranging effects on students.
Christine Fennessy (04:16):
So what causes food insecurity? It's pretty simple.
Professor Cara Cuite (04:20):
Basically, the primary cause of food insecurity is a lack of money. That's it. Now, the reason that students don't have enough money can be different than the reason that other people in different populations don't have enough money.
Christine Fennessy (04:33):
She says those reasons are complex, and [they] have a lot to do with education policy issues and the simple fact that being a student takes up a lot of time.
Professor Cara Cuite (04:43):
One main reason is that students have to spend time studying and going to class, and they can't work and supplement their incomes—or at least not work as many hours as they might need to be able to afford as much food as they need.
Christine Fennessy (04:58):
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, can help students. The program helps people buy healthy food. But students have to meet a lot of requirements to be eligible. And one of those requirements [is] they have to work at least 20 hours a week.
Professor Cara Cuite (05:13):
It's really hard to do—to be a full-time student and to work 20 hours a week. It's really hard to succeed as a student when you're working that many hours just to be able to feed yourself.
Christine Fennessy (05:23):
The government did relax some of the SNAP work requirements for some students when the pandemic started, but Professor Cuite says they may be reinstated soon. So, some students face tough choices. Do they buy books or food? Dean Willson calls it heartbreaking.
Dean Kerri Willson (05:43):
We tell society that the root out of poverty is education, but then if we don't have supports in place for those folks once they get on a college campus, they're not going to succeed. And so here they come to campus, they start school, they don't finish because some sort of basic need isn't being met. Stress impacts their ability to be successful in the classroom. They fail out or they withdraw. They owe all that money, and they don't have a degree to show for it. That cycle of poverty just continues.
Christine Fennessy (06:18):
The food pantry opened in 2016, and it was around this time that Professor Cuite and Dean Willson first met. Dean Willson will tell you she got involved in this work because she's a helper by nature—and because she knows what it's like to need that help.
Dean Kerri Willson (06:40):
I did grow up in a low-income home. When I went to public school, I did have reduced lunch. But we didn't talk about it in the same way then. It was shameful. My sister was mortified that she would have to show this card at lunch and that the cafeteria ladies would know this was an issue.
Christine Fennessy (07:02):
For Professor Cuite, her interest in researching food insecurity started in 2008. She was the head of the Parent-Teachers Organization at her daughter's elementary school in New Brunswick. The school's family coordinator reached out to her.
Professor Cara Cuite (07:16):
[They reached out] in probably October or November and said, "Look, our students are really struggling. Teachers are telling me that kids are stealing food from the classrooms because they have no food at home, that the families are struggling." They're coming in and telling her that they're struggling, they cannot afford to eat, and is there anything that the parents group can do to help?
Christine Fennessy (07:36):
At the time, Professor Cuite worked at the Food Policy Institute at Rutgers–New Brunswick. The institute had helped create Rutgers Against Hunger, a university-wide initiative that still exists today and is devoted to addressing hunger across the state of New Jersey. She connected her daughter's school to the initiative, and that connection helped the school start its own food pantry.
Professor Cara Cuite (08:00):
And we were able to really make a difference in the lives of the families there by providing quite a bit of food.
Christine Fennessy (08:07):
Now, fast forward to 2016. Professor Cuite was working on a project looking at food insecurity across the city of New Brunswick, which involved, in part, interviewing people who worked in the city's food pantries.
Professor Cara Cuite (08:21):
And a number of the people who were running the pantries said to us, "Look, something is going on with Rutgers students. We've never seen this many Rutgers students coming into our food pantry to get food." And that was alarming and not something that we were expecting to hear. And we followed up with someone in the Rutgers administration who said, "Oh, we have also heard this. And because of that, we are starting a Rutgers student food pantry." This was 2016.
Christine Fennessy (08:48):
Dean Willson was leading the effort to open the pantry. So, Professor Cuite went to meet her and learned that Dean Willson was also in the process of developing a survey to better understand how widespread food insecurity really was on the New Brunswick campus.
Professor Cara Cuite (09:03):
Just sort of as an aside, as I was talking, I said, "Well, I do surveys. That's one of the big parts of my job, is I'm a survey researcher. So, if you want me to just take a look at your survey, I would be happy to do that."
Christine Fennessy (09:16):
She said Dean Willson said absolutely, she would love the feedback.
Professor Cara Cuite (09:19):
So she sent it to me. I took a look at it. I had comments. We went back and forth and then eventually she said, "Look, this is not what I do. This is what you do. Do you want to take the lead on the survey?" And I said, "Sure."
Christine Fennessy (09:31):
While Professor Cuite developed the survey, Dean Willson and her colleagues were trying to figure out the scope of the food pantry—what it would look like, how it would work.
Dean Kerri Willson (09:40):
We opened the pantry not knowing a lot about food insecurity. And so, we very naively thought that we were just going to have this closet here that had food in it, and some dean or some faculty member was going to know that this resource existed and refer a student here.
Christine Fennessy (10:00):
They talked about advertising the pantry, but decided they didn't think it was necessary.
Dean Kerri Willson (10:05):
It was silly. I think about it now and I'm like, "Why did we say that?"
Christine Fennessy (10:12):
Silly, perhaps because when the results of Professor Cuite's 2016 survey eventually came back, the data showed that one in three students at Rutgers–New Brunswick was food insecure. According to Professor Cuite, about one in 12 people in New Jersey are food insecure. When it comes to kids in the state, one in 10 are. So, finding out that one in three Rutgers students was food insecure should have come as a shock to her. But it didn't.
Professor Cara Cuite (10:53):
I don't think I was surprised because I had seen the national data, and we came out really right at the same level that the national studies were showing.
Christine Fennessy (11:05):
Those national studies looked at students in four-year institutions around the country. Although, she says, it's important to note that those studies aren't great. For example, they didn't include every school. But, she says, no study is ever perfect.
Professor Cara Cuite (11:21):
But it was the best estimate that we had of what the national food insecurity rate among college students looked like. And we came in right at a very, very similar [rate]—about one in three of our students were experiencing some level of food insecurity. And that's what the national [studies were] saying.
Christine Fennessy (11:38):
In other words, Rutgers–New Brunswick wasn't alone.
Professor Cara Cuite (11:42):
Our students look like students across the country.
Christine Fennessy (11:46):
Their students may have looked like those across the country. But even before the results of that survey came out—and especially after—Rutgers–New Brunswick has taken a distinct approach to helping its students. The food pantry is always stocked thanks to generous donations from students, faculty, staff, alumni, other donors, and local food banks. Rutgers is also a land grant institution, which means that it's a public research university that also teaches practical skills like agriculture. And so, the Rutgers Garden Student Farm regularly gives the pantry fresh produce. The pantry also collaborates with the New Brunswick Community Farmer's Market, which gives vouchers for students to use on produce sold in the market.
Professor Cara Cuite (12:32):
… Which is great. Students want healthy, fresh food, and Rutgers has been really a leader in being able to provide that through those two programs.
Christine Fennessy (12:42):
But if the pantry isn't the best solution to a student's food needs, Dean Willson and her team are always ready with alternatives.
Dean Kerri Willson (12:50):
We also have meal swipes that we can give to students, because maybe they don't have a kitchen. Maybe it's better for them to be able to go into the dining hall and have lunch and dinner there. We have meal plan scholarships; we have gift cards to grocery stores. We really try to meet the needs of the student.
Christine Fennessy (13:12):
Meeting those needs is part of their philosophy, and it often means helping students who need more than just food.
Dean Kerri Willson (13:19):
We had a student who came in and something didn't seem right. His coloring didn't look right; he was trying to sneak stuff, take additional stuff, more than he needed. We finally were able to get him to engage with us and share what was going on. And he had a terminally ill mother and his little sister was struggling, and he just looked malnourished himself. And so, we were able to connect him to the student support area within the Dean of Students’ office and get that person some additional help as well.
Christine Fennessy (13:55):
That additional help encompasses just about everything—from how to find help with housing and tutoring to finding mental health services, diaper banks, and warm winter clothes.
Dean Kerri Willson (14:06):
However this basic need insecurity is impacting their ability to succeed in college, we want to be able to provide them with those resources—because ultimately, our goal is student success. And my definition of a successful student is somebody who graduates ideally in four years, because the longer it takes them to graduate, the more debt they incur.
Christine Fennessy (14:33):
To further fight hunger on campus, Professor Cuite says that Rutgers–New Brunswick started a “screen and intervene” program. She says, as far as they know, they're the first school to do something like this. The idea for it came during a talk she was giving to the Student Affairs leadership team about the findings of that 2016 survey.
Professor Cara Cuite (14:53):
And someone in the audience raised their hand and said, "Wow, so a third of our students are food insecure. Why aren't we screening them when they come into Rutgers Student Health for appointments? Why aren't we screening them then for food insecurity, because we could refer them to the food pantry?" And I said, "That is such a great idea, and I am going to bring your idea to the director of Rutgers Student Health and propose it." And she said, "I am the Director of Rutgers Student Health. So why don't you reach out to me and we can talk about it?"
Christine Fennessy (15:27):
It was one of those moments academics dream about: the opportunity to put their research into practice.
Professor Cara Cuite (15:34):
So the director of Rutgers Student Health led us in developing this program where any student that comes into Rutgers Student Health for an appointment—they already were completing this questionnaire about all kinds of things like sexual assault history, depression, exercise—and we added two food insecurity screening questions onto that. If they do screen as food insecure, the provider will speak to them about it briefly and give them this card and they'll say to them, "It sounds like you're having a hard time affording food. There are some resources on campus for you. I am suggesting to you that you use these resources. They're important for you to be healthy and to succeed as a student."
Christine Fennessy (16:18):
These efforts didn't stop when the pandemic hit, especially at the pantry. In fact, Dean Willson says…
Dean Kerri Willson (16:26):
There was never a break in service.
Christine Fennessy (16:29):
She says that before COVID, the pantry served about 84 students a week. But right after the shutdown, they got 200 over two days. So, they started an appointment system and packed bags for students to pick up outside the pantry. But some didn't have cars, or they were too nervous to ride the bus, or they couldn't leave their kids home alone. So, Dean Willson and her team started a mobile food pantry. They borrowed a van from the recreation department, packed it full of bags, and dropped them off to students at four locations across the campus. Dean Willson worked that mobile unit for nearly 10 months.
Dean Kerri Willson (17:09):
I laugh. I think I had more in-person interaction with students during the pandemic than I did last semester.
Christine Fennessy (17:17):
Some of those she'll never forget, like the student who was always forgetting to come outside and pick up his food.
Dean Kerri Willson (17:24):
And so I would send him a text, "Hey, I'm here." And he'd come out. And he graduated in May and he sent me a text and he said, "I just want to let you know I just got hooded for my PhD." And then sort of went through this whole thing about how myself and other members of my team, how much we supported him and how much he appreciated everything we did and always appreciated the extra nudge to remember to come outside.
Christine Fennessy (17:53):
Those early days of the pandemic were especially scary. But for Dean Willson, there was something special about that time, too.
Dean Kerri Willson (18:02):
It was so stressful. Everybody was trying to figure out what's happening in the world. But you have these moments where it was like, "Oh my gosh, this is why I do the work that I do."
Christine Fennessy (18:11):
In 2020, Professor Cuite and her colleagues, including Dean Willson, published the results of a second survey. It was conducted prior to the pandemic in 2019. And again, it looked at students on the Rutgers–New Brunswick campus.
Professor Cara Cuite (18:35):
We know that things can change, and we wanted to see if food security levels had changed at all. We also wanted to look at housing insecurity and homelessness, which was something that had not been looked at. It's sort of like, first people were recognizing food insecurity, and then I was like, “Wait, it doesn't stop at food insecurity. It's more than that. If you can't afford food, you're probably also struggling to afford housing.” And so, we really wanted to expand and look at those things, which we did.
Christine Fennessy (19:04):
But what they found was that when it came to food insecurity, things hadn't changed. One in three students were still food insecure.
Professor Cara Cuite (19:13):
That's not to say that the food pantry isn't helping. That's not to say that all of the work that we're doing isn't connecting students to important resources and helping students. But it's a problem; it's a big problem. And it's a problem that Rutgers alone is unlikely to be able to solve for all of its students. And it's a problem also at schools across the country.
Christine Fennessy (19:34):
Because nationally? That one in three number hasn't really budged either.
Professor Cara Cuite (19:39):
No one is out there saying, “Oh, we've solved this problem. Right? It's still there.”
Christine Fennessy (19:43):
The survey did reveal valuable insights into how students are affected by food insecurity. That's because about 350 of the respondents had also completed the first survey back in 2016.
Professor Cara Cuite (19:57):
They completed it in 2016 as first-year students and then completed it again in 2019 as fourth-year students. So, we were able to do some analyses that actually looked at those students over time, and we saw that there was a lot of change across those years.
Christine Fennessy (20:15):
For instance, students were less likely to be food insecure as first years and more likely to be food insecure as fourth years.
Professor Cara Cuite (20:24):
That makes sense, because more first years are living on campus. If you live on campus, you have to have a meal plan.
Christine Fennessy (20:28):
And a meal plan can be protective, she says, although it depends on how many meals are on it.
Professor Cara Cuite (20:33):
I will also say that we found—and we found this in 2016 too—that students of color and especially first-generation students were more likely to be food insecure. And first-generation students were actually more likely to become food insecure over time. They were more likely starting out to be food insecure and they were also more likely to become food insecure in that intervening period.
Christine Fennessy (20:58):
Their analysis revealed another hard truth: Being food insecure at any point in time had a lasting effect on a student's GPA.
Professor Cara Cuite (21:08):
So if they were food insecure in 2016, food insecure in 2019, or food insecure in both, their GPAs looked the same—and they were not as high as students who never experienced food insecurity. So even if you were food insecure early on and were able to not be food insecure later, your GPA was still lower than a student who had never experienced food insecurity. Which is hard to see, right? Because you think, "Oh, well, if we can address it then maybe they can get on similar footing." But the GPAs never quite caught up. It's not a huge effect, but we do see it.
Christine Fennessy (21:55):
So what does this kind of persistent need look like on the ground from inside the student food pantry? Dean Willson says, when the pantry first opened in the fall of 2016, they got about 30 students a week. A year later, they ramped up their advertising. After that, things changed.
Dean Kerri Willson (22:13):
We started to watch our numbers increasing. Well, we compared our fall 2018 to fall 2021. Between those semesters, our usage increased by 97 percent.
Christine Fennessy (22:28):
This semester (the fall of 2022), the pantry is getting about 240 students a week. When it comes to who those students are, Dean Willson says she's seen an increase in those who aren't of traditional age, who have families and are in college hoping to start a second career. She's also seen more first-generation and low-income students, a group that she can identify with.
Dean Kerri Willson (22:54):
Like I said, we did get reduced lunch growing up. And that was, to me, that was all part of the package of my mother being a single mom, my dad having just essentially abandoned us. And my vivid memories are my mother having to go to court to get child support—and then it's $25 a month. Hello? How is she supposed to stay in the house and raise three girls on that? But she did. She did it.
Christine Fennessy (23:29):
Her mom never went to college. And Dean Willson thinks part of the reason she got to go and was lucky enough to have all of her basic needs met as a student was because her mom had something called cultural capital. Dean Willson says she learned about the concept in a sociology class she took at Rutgers. And it's basically an accumulation of skills, knowledge, and behaviors that can help a person succeed.
Dean Kerri Willson (23:53):
If you look at our data in regards to food insecurity, the students with the highest rate of food insecurity are first-generation college students, low-income, Pell-eligible. Their parents may not have that cultural capital because they didn't go to college, and so they can't share their wisdom with their student. My mom didn't go to college, but she knew who to talk to. She was a secretary in an admissions office for a while at a college. So, she had those resources available to her. Whereas what we're seeing is students coming in who are dealing with all of these different basic needs insecurities [and] don't necessarily have those resources or folks that they've been able to gain that knowledge from.
Christine Fennessy (24:39):
So when a student walks into the pantry, Dean Willson and her team are ready. No matter what that student needs—food, housing, warm clothes—the staff at the pantry knows where to find it. As for the pantry itself, it got even bigger last year when Willson and her team moved it into the College Avenue Student Center on the New Brunswick campus. There's always plenty of food for everyone, but one thing keeps a lot of students from walking through the door.
Dean Kerri Willson (25:08):
There is a tremendous amount of stigma around seeking help just in general. And that's something that's a goal of ours—to normalize help seeking, whether it's for food, for mental health, whatever it may be.
Christine Fennessy (25:23):
So they do a lot of networking and outreach with the student community, asking them to follow and share their social media. And they recently began a new campaign advertising on all the buses that travel to the New Brunswick campus. The pantry staff is made up mostly of work-study students. They're employees, but some of them have also been clients.
Dean Kerri Willson (25:44):
The folks that work here in some respects are tied to the work that we're doing. Either their own passion is fueled by it or they've had a need before and they know what it's like.
Christine Fennessy (25:57):
Dean Willson calls her team a family.
Dean Kerri Willson (26:00):
Our goal is to create a warm and welcoming environment for the students when they come in. And I remember there were students who would come back at certain times because they knew Rachel was working in the food pantry or they knew this [other] person was working, because they were comfortable with them. And that's what I want.
Christine Fennessy (26:21):
It's not just stigma that makes it hard for students to come through that door. Sometimes it's the idea that they don't deserve help, that others have it worse. And sometimes it's fear of the unknown. For these students, Dean Willson gets creative.
Dean Kerri Willson (26:37):
I've had students who have reached out and said, "I have a friend who I think is struggling and I can't get her to come in. Can you help me?"
Christine Fennessy (26:48):
Her strategy? She arranges a fake meeting with a concerned student who just happens to bring her friend along with her.
Dean Kerri Willson (26:54):
And I said, “Just text me when you're coming and then I'm going to welcome you at the door and have whatever it is I need to give you. But then I'm going to say, ‘Oh my gosh, have you seen my food pantry? Come and check it out.’” And just kind of showing them the space itself. Because I know for me, if I can't visualize it, then it's scarier.
Christine Fennessy (27:13):
She wants these students to know the pantry is for them. There's no judgment, just a warm welcome into a big family. There's no denying that hunger is a very real presence at Rutgers and schools around the country. But the university is determined to keep researching and innovating to better serve its students and eventually end hunger on campus. This fall, Professor Cuite, together with Dean Willson and their colleagues, will conduct another survey. The previous two surveys have looked specifically at Rutgers–New Brunswick. This one will be university-wide.
Professor Cara Cuite (28:00):
And that will be our first large, post-pandemic survey—to be able to look at the numbers across all of the schools, all of the chancellor-led units, and to understand where there are differences and why.
Christine Fennessy (28:14):
She says that both Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS) and Rutgers–Newark have surveyed their own student populations as well in 2021. Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences found that one in five of their students were food insecure. And while final data isn't available yet for Rutgers–Newark, the campus has started its own “screen and intervene” program. And there are now food pantries on all four campuses across the university. Professor Cuite was also recently awarded a grant from the Tyler Clemente Center for Diversity Education and Bias Prevention. She and a colleague will create and promote a syllabus statement about basic needs insecurities and the resources available on the New Brunswick campus.
Professor Cara Cuite (29:00):
So that faculty can be another conduit for students to learn about the various supports on campus and for them to A, know that they're there, [and] B, to know that their instructors know about it and want them to use them and that it's okay to use them.
Christine Fennessy (29:16):
So what's next for the food pantry? Perhaps an evolution to something bigger, even more comprehensive. Dean Willson calls it a basic need center.
Dean Kerri Willson (29:27):
In that space [where] we have the food pantry, maybe we have a thrift store for professional clothing for students to go on interviews or cap and gowns that are available for students who can't purchase them. Emergency funding for students’ meal swipes if they need them. Financial literacy workshops. Maybe someone to help students enroll in SNAP benefits.
Christine Fennessy (29:55):
She wishes they didn't need a food pantry at all. But she's confident that together, the Rutgers community will solve the hunger problem. In fact, she says the students themselves are often the best problem solvers—like the group from the Honors College that's piloting their unique twist on a food delivery system.
Dean Kerri Willson (30:17):
This is a completely student-run initiative. And that's what I love about being at Rutgers. I've worked at several other institutions and I am just always blown away by the passion and the brilliance of our students and that entrepreneurial spirit that they have. They want to fix the world, and I believe they will.
Christine Fennessy (30:53):
That's it for today's show. I'd like to thank Professor Cara Cuite and Associate Dean Kerrie Willson for being so generous with their time and their insights, and for the important work they're doing to address and ultimately end student hunger. You can find student food pantries across the university. If you're on the Rutgers University–New Brunswick Campus, head to the College Avenue Student Center. If you're at Rutgers University–Newark, go to the Paul Robeson Campus Center. At Rutgers University Biomedical and Health Sciences, the pantry is inside the Stanley S. Bergen Building. And at Rutgers University–Camden, it's in the Campus Center.
Music in this episode is by Epidemic Sound, and you can subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Programs like the Rutgers Student Food Pantry embody the innovative drive of Rutgers, New Jersey's academic health and research powerhouse. I'm your host and producer, Christine Fennessy. Join us next time as we explore more initiatives that will better the world.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.