Brie Radis, West Chester University, West Chester, PA (USA)
Melanie Hagerty-Griffin, West Chester University, West Chester, PA (USA)
Ryan Scott, West Chester University, West Chester, PA (USA)

Food and/or resource insecurity is a growing problem for many undergraduate and graduate students. Food insecurity can have many effects on people, including major health concerns, lowered performance at school or work, higher levels of stress, and mental health or sleep concerns. This presentation will focus on the steps one campus took as a team of students, faculty, staff, and community partners worked together to create a fully functioning resource pantry on an urban campus.

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Presentation Description:

The goals for this presentation will be to share the data and also the journey to establish the resource pantry for others who are curious about learning more about resource insecurity. Although there has been more focus brought to the issue of food insecurity on college campuses in recent years, there is still not enough being done to support students who are on campuses that do not have resource pantries. This need is further exacerbated when we look at student population trends nationwide and see that non-traditional students make up most of the general student population. This is especially significant as non-traditional students typically face even more barriers in the path to college completion compared to that of their traditional student cohort. On the issue of food insecurity alone, we see non-traditional students are even more likely to be food insecure and as a result oftentimes have lower GPA’s, lower rates of course completion and have more withdraws from classes than their traditional aged classmates. In order to help combat food insecurity for our students, our campus has come together to develop a resource pantry to address this significant need. On this campus prior to this addition we also been working to increase student engagement on an urban campus consisting of adult learners using monthly workshops and events used to support students both academically and socially whether it be APA workshops, to happy hour events on the weekends for students to catch up. In doing so, we’ve helped build an even stronger community where students have been coming on campus even more and are feeling more supported overall. Further, this project has pushed for collaboration among students, community partners like Sharing Excess and Philabundance and campus staff/faculty as we are all working collaboratively to help make our university become the most supportive learning environment it can be for our students.

References:

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