With the COVID-19 virus driving students back to their homes for remote learning, there are resources left on campus that are no longer being utilized. Recognizing this, the University of Virginia’s dining services department has decided to repurpose perishable food on campus at risk of going unused by donating it to neighboring food banks and charities.

University dining programs are having to shift operations to meet the needs of students left on or near campus, while still meeting requirements around the management of COVID-19. In an effort to provide guidance and information to universities serving students during this time, CBORD has scheduled a free webinar discussing ideas and best practices to manage dining operations during the COVID-19 crisis.

One of the most common campus implementations for biometric technology is in the dining hall, where quickly sending large numbers of students through a turnstile is vital. One university that seems particularly eager to deploy biometrics in this manner is Dartmouth University, where campus dining personnel are considering a future rollout.

The University of Montana is bringing food trucks back to campus dining fold after a long hiatus. It’s been almost two years since the University of Montana’s own food truck suspended its regular service, but following requests from students three outside food truck concepts will roll onto campus this week.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison recently partnered with Starship Technologies to enable students to place food orders to be delivered by the company’s fleet of autonomous delivery robots. Now, university officials have successfully added the Wiscard, UW-Madison’s student ID card as a form of payment with the service.

The University of Mississippi implemented a new campus dining initiative on campus to start the spring semester, adding Starship Technologies’ delivery robots. Ole Miss has deployed 30 of the autonomous delivery units and is supporting orders for a number of on-campus dining franchises.

Central Michigan University has launched a meal swipe donation program designed to help hungry students on campus. The meal swipe donation program will enable students to donate unused guest swipes to fellow students facing food insecurity, with donated swipes being be placed into a bank from which meals can be dispersed to students in need.

Indiana University has announced a collaboration with Grubhub to take effect this week that will offer students the ability to place mobile orders from on-campus dining locations. The partnership is supporting food orders for pick-up through the Grubhub app and will include on-campus dining locations and a campus C-store.

A startup company founded by two robotics experts at the University of Michigan is attempting to break into the recently expanding arena of robot delivery with a new delivery robot concept. Refraction has launched its autonomous delivery robot, the REV-1, and is delivering food orders from four independent restaurants within in a 2.5-mile radius of Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan.

The University of Texas at Dallas has reached an agreement with Starship Technologies that will see the company’s delivery robots deployed on the Dallas campus. The university’s food service provider, Chartwells, partnered with Starship Technologies to bring 30 delivery robots to the UT Dallas campus with the program officially launching on December 3.