Kent State University faculty and staff now have the option to purchase a meal plan similar to the student plans. The university’s dining services announced this month that any interested faculty and staff can sign up for the new meal plan using payroll deduction.

The University of Oregon is devoting more effort to its food insecurity initiatives for students, and is leveraging the campus card to help disperse aid to students. Beyond helping students in need of a meal, the university also sees benefits in the classroom for students who leverage these services, as hunger hinders students’ abilities to focus and perform well academically.

A meeting of Duke University’s Student Dining Advisory Committee has cast doubt on the future of the campus’ food trucks after the trucks were found to be operating at a loss. The university has six food trucks operating on two evening shifts to serve the campus community. The committee has already decided to discontinue some of the trucks.

The University of Maryland has launched a one-year pilot to test the viability of a program that will provide free meal swipes for students in need. The university’s new Emergency Meal Fund will provide more than 1,600 meals at campus dining halls for students deemed food insecure.

Students at Ohio University donated nearly 500 meal swipes to their peers in need in just a single week. Now in the wake of its overwhelming success, university officials have decided to extend the meal swipe donation initiative.

Lehigh University Dining is adding another option to its on-campus repertoire with the deployment of its second food truck. The new Simply Skewered truck concept will serve Tarasco-Brazilian inspired barbecue fare to students and faculty on campus.

In the final installment of our three-part video series detailing hardware and software solutions from card system vendor, Blackboard, Kent Pawlak, Senior Director for Platform Strategy and Product Management, Kent Pawlak discusses the company’s transaction system solutions and gives a tour of the latest Blackboard reader hardware.