Vanderbilt University has amended its meal swipe donation program to enable students to donate side items from campus dining halls on a year-round basis. The initiative, established last year, initially allowed donations during select periods throughout the semester.

Virginia Tech is the latest campus to install touchless biometric readers in its dining halls, deploying MorphoWave hand readers from IDEMIA. Virginia Tech is now the second university in as many weeks to announce its use of the MorphoWave product to enable student access to campus dining, following a release from St. Thomas University last week.

Students at East Carolina University are now able to use their student ID cards to make purchases at more off campus locations. The university’s card office has added the ability for the ECU 1 Card and declining balance tender, Bounty Bucks, to be accepted a host of new dining retailers.

Purdue University has joined the list of early adopting campuses to deploy autonomous delivery robots from Starship Technologies. The unmanned delivery robots are equipped with GPS and geofencing technology and can navigate college campuses to deliver food and beverage orders to students.

After a long partnership with mobile ordering provider, Tapingo, Texas State University is set to continue providing mobile ordering to its students through Grubhub. The new partnership with Grubhub, who purchased Tapingo in 2018, is expected to offer many of the same features as before along with improved delivery benefits.

Minnesota’s St. Thomas University has installed touchless biometric hand scanners that students will now use to gain entry to campus dining halls instead of their ID cards. The initiative will leverage IDEMIA’s MorphoWave biometric readers, and will see all members of the campus community with meal plans be enrolled in the system.

Food service and facilities management provider, Aramark, has acquired the privately-held Good Uncle — an app-based, on-demand food delivery service. The deal will see Good Uncle’s “freshly prepared, restaurant quality meals” delivered to popular pick-up points around college campuses.