Alumni Spotlight: Agnes Sherman
By Beth Olson
The course NS540: Community Nutrition and Health Equity, includes speakers working in different areas of community nutrition to expose students to possible career opportunities in the dietetics profession. An alumni of the Nutritional Sciences department’s Nutrition and Dietetics program, Agnes Sherman, RDN, recently spoke to the class about food insecurity among college students. Agnes began her career in clinical dietetics, moved to food service administration in K12 nutrition, and then shifted into university food service.
College students all over the country are experiencing food insecurity and UW Madison is no exception to this. A Hope Lab study conducted in 2018 found that nearly 36 percent of university students were food insecure. This means that many students have times where they have limited access to adequate food to sustain themselves. This is due to several reasons including higher tuition costs, increased cost of living, and imbalance in wage increases. According the a Georgetown University report, the cost of a college education has gone up 169% since 1980, although wages have only increased 19%. With this being such a prominent issue on college campuses, what is UW Madison doing to help?
Agnes’s current position provides her with insight on large scale food operations and how that can help assist in programming to combat food insecurity. She has used her position in Housing and Dining Services to create a program aimed at addressing this problem of student food insecurity. The Nutrition Access Program was started by Agnes in partnership with former UW Food Science lecturer, Monica Theis. Dr. Theis’s connection to grant funding, through the American Family Dreams Foundations, kick-started the program and continues to support the annual costs of running it. Their program works to repackage and freeze unserved dining hall food, which is then distributed to several freezers on campus where students can pick up meals with no eligibility requirements and no questions asked. Currently, they produce 200-350 meals a week which go out to UW students.
An example of another successful program on campus is the Swipe Out Hunger campaign, which the Office of Student Assistance and Support (OSAS) sponsors every semester. With this program, students can donate their meal swipes on a UW Housing meal plan to other students in need. Meal swipes are preloaded onto meal cards that can be used at any of the six UW Housing dining locations. A monetary donation can also be made at a Wisconsin Union or UW Bookstore location.
The Open Seat is another example of an on-campus organization. Student-run food pantry, the Open Seat is a place where students can go to get food when in need. Located at the Student Activity Center, The Open Seat provides students with both shelf-stable and fresh foods free of cost with no eligibility requirements. While food insecurity remains an issue on campus, there are there are people working to fight student food insecurity. Here is a list of resources in Madison and Dane County for anyone needing food assistance.