Week 7

Things are wrapping up here with my management rotation. I only have two more weeks after this week, time has really gone fast!! This week I was busy getting ready for my Employee In-service presentation. I've been waiting to do this for a while and was anxious complete this project. 

On Wednesday I was able to meet with Lauren from the TOD department. I learned a lot about staffing for OU Food Service. It was exciting to see her passion and enthusiasm for getting students ready to work and have a great experience. I loved hearing about the on-boarding and orientation process for workers. It's not just about making sure workers know what's expected, it's also about making sure workers feel confident and comfortable in the work environment. One thing she said stuck out... This job is a great experience for anybody no matter what their major is. Whether you're trying to become a doctor or an engineer, you learn valuable skills. This job teaches customer service, communication skills, and leadership skills among other things. I hadn't really thought about it that way before. 

Thursday was the big day. I spent the majority of the day preparing for the presentation and making sure I had everything put together and ready to go. I was pretty nervous beforehand, but once the meeting started I knew it was going to be fine. Everyone was kind and willing to listen to what I had to say. Plus, there were tons of jokes and teasing going on among mangers beforehand...so I totally felt at home. It definitely broke the ice and made me feel less nervous. 

Week 1

I'm Michelle, the new OUHSC Dietetic Intern.  I'm originally from Minnesota, but completed my Bachelors degree in Dietetics at Brigham Young University in Utah. Needless to say I'm pretty far from home, but I'm excited to be here in Oklahoma completing my internship. It's my first week in my management rotation working at OU Housing and Food with Dot Flowers. I'm excited to experience food service on OU Campus.

My first week was pretty slow just getting familiar with the campus and meeting everyone. When I first came in to Dot's office, the first thing I noticed was about 20 boxes of shoes stacked up in front of her desk. I wondered why she had so many shoes. I soon found out that on top of working with food allergies and food ingredients, she was in charge of ordering and returning shoes for the food service employees and managers. I spent most of the week helping her with shoe orders. It's sometimes a lot more complicated than you think.

Dot also mentioned that she was preparing for a Food Allergy Training for food service workers at the end of the week. I helped Dot with her presentation and also ended up grading the Food Allergy Training Quizzes.

The next thing we had on our schedule was Move-In day the following week.

Week 6

I'm starting week six here at OU Housing and Food. I was supposed to work with Windeon at Cate the other day, but apparently he was out sick. After talking to Dot about my upcoming assignments I needed to complete, I started preparing for my Presentation next week. For this presentation I will be giving a 30 minute Employee In-Service on Food Safety and Sanitation. The bulk of my presentation will go along with my Performance Improvement Project involving Sanitizing Solution and Procedures.

After my Quality Safety and Sanitation Inspection with Kevin, I realized that coming up with a standardized Sanitation Policy and Procedure to be used across OU campus would be beneficial. It was brought to my attention as I traveled around different dining areas on campus that some dining halls still used cotton rags for sanitizing instead of special sanitizing rags. There were other small changes that needed to be made as well.

For my in service I will be covering food safety: 1. Time and temperature of foods and 2. Sanitizing solutions. The main point I want to cover however, is the WHY of using special sanitizing rags instead of cotton rags. As this in service will be given to managers, I will spend some of my presentation covering the importance of policies and procedures and also of training and re-training employees.

This presentation will help me complete both my In-service assignment and my Performance Improvement assignment. The only assignment left for me to complete will be the Management Review which I probably should have completed first ;) I might be making my rounds to ask questions, so be prepared with answers over the next few weeks.

Week 5

Another week with OU Housing and Food! I had off on Monday for Labor Day so I started the week on Tuesday in Walker Tower. We had two days until our next event, the Sustainable Food Terms Info Fair. Dot wanted me to make the ingredient tags for all the recipes she was using at the event. There was going to be a lot of food. Sweet Potato Hummus, Vegan GF Fruit Dumplings, Vegan Three Layer Dip, GF flax Garlic Flat Bread and a Fusion Bowl which included Quinoa, Crispy Roasted Lentils, Cucumber Sprout Kimchee, and Roasted Butternut Squash.

Besides putting together the ingredient tags, I was in charge of putting together a sheet of paper with the recipes for each food item. I had fun organizing and designing the handout even if it took me a long time to put together. I finally finished it on Wednesday and spent the rest of the day helping to load the wagon and make sure everything else was ready for the event. Dot, Cheyanne, and I met up early the next morning at the Cate Rock Garden to start setting up. The event didn't go quite as we had planned, mainly because some of our recipes weren't made and we were missing several things for our booths. We eventually got things set up and had several people stop by to try our food and learn about sustainable food terms. It was great having a Adrian as our DJ, it helped attract more students to our event and made it fun! The info fair went from 10:30 to 2pm and the rest of the day we spent tearing down.

Week 4

I spent the next few days over at Dunham College with Chase Wiens. It was neat to see the differences in layout with each dining area. Dunham shares it's kitchen space with Headington College and each dining hall has the same stations and foods served. I was impressed with the equipment and layout but that's probably because these dining halls and residential colleges are newly renovated.

My first day I was at Dunham working in the stir-fry station. Before we switched to lunch, we made egg scramblers and waffles.  I had never used their equipment so that was definitely a new experience. When lunch time hit, I was glad we didn't have too much of a lunch rush. I enjoyed working with the other employees cooking.

The next day I started working at the salad station with Anita. It was a great day being able to help her prep the food and make salads. We were busy the whole time and I had fun interacting with the students who came in for lunch. I even became more familiar with where foods were stored and how prep was done for the next shift.

I had a break from working at Dunham on Wednesday so we could pack up the wagons and make sure our recipe orders were completed for the S.W.E.E.P. Event on Thursday. I was lucky to have Samantha help me get the Citrus Infused Water made last minute. Everything seemed to be in place for getting our booth set up by 10:45 am. I also made handouts for the event and we reused my boards for the event.

Thursday came and weather was actually a bit of a problem. It was a windy day and everything seemed to be blowing away. Eventually we got things under control and our booth had little problems. We didn't have as many students stop by, but everyone seemed to enjoy my salsas. The favorite was the Strawberry Mango Salsa. Looking back, we could have talked more about the resources that OU Housing and Food offers to students, but it was still a good event. I was just glad that my recipes made enough and turned out great!

Week 3

I completed my Quality Sanitation and Safety Inspection assignment this week with Kevin Barker. We headed to Couch at around 11 am to check out the main serving lines and kitchen. We arrived a few minutes before the Couch Restaurants opened. Kevin told me he always just observes first to see what employees are doing, if they are washing hands, if the sanitation buckets are set up correctly. He also told me particular things to look for when doing an assessment. One of the things he stressed was food temperature logs. Besides getting the temperatures of foods on the line, it’s important for that the dining hall restaurants keep logs of food temperature before it is set out on the line. If a food item is under temperature on the line then we can find out what temperature it was at before-hand. There is about a two hour time period to take corrective action before the food needs to be thrown away for food safety reasons.

Another item that was brought up was the sanitation solution. An interesting thing I learned while going through this Safety Assessment was that in using quat solution there needs to be a special rag to use with it. A cotton rag immersed in quat solution actually neutralizes the solution making it ineffective. There were a few sanitation buckets that had cotton rags in it instead of sanitizing cloths. As soon as we found this, Kevin made sure to tell the student managers and Couch Restaurant about this so they could fix it right away and re-enforce it. The other common problem found with these safety inspections is having “magic bullet” towels lying around. “Magic bullet” towels are towels that might be used to wipe up one area and then end up lying around a counter top. While it is okay to use cotton towels to wipe up spills, they should be thrown in the dirty rag bin once done being used.

I definitely learned a lot by following Kevin around and completing the Sanitation and Safety Inspection. It was good to see how corrective action was taken right away to keep foods at safe temperatures.  

The rest of the week was busy. I spent the rest of the week at Couch Restaurants with Sam. I was trained at Freshens which was pretty fun. I made several smoothies and dished out several bowls of frozen yogurt. I was also busy preparing recipes for another event Dot had coming up the S.W.E.E.P. event; Safety Wellness Environmental Emergency Preparedness. We needed to do recipe development for the recipes I found - Fresh Salsa and Strawberry Mango Salsa. I was able to get that completed and put the recipes into CBORD so we could send out the order. Overall, it was a successful week. 

Week 2

It's my second week with OU Housing and Food! This week consisted of preparing for the big Move-In day. My job was to put together several poster board displays for this event. I spent most of the week brainstorming topic ideas for each board and eventually created sketches for each board. I created three boards each covering a different topic; Food Allergy Myths and Facts, Food Allergy: Tips and Tricks for Navigating Campus Dining, and a Healthy Eating board. Overall I thought the boards were very professional and looked great!

The Big Day was Thursday. We all got to the Walker Adams Mall early to unload our wagons and start setting up. We had tons of food to display and give away, along with the recipes we had ordered from Couch. Our table probably had the most appeal with Vegan, Gluten-free, and Top 8 allergen free chocolate donuts and muffins. We had several students stop by our booth and talk to us. It was exciting to see all the other booths set up and all the freshman getting ready for the school year. The pictures below show our booth with displays and food to give away.