Photo by Emma Quirk ’26
Dining went over many new programs with Senators on March 10, 2026 during a town hall, answering questions about food preparation and disposal.
BY SARAH ANN FIGUEROA ’28
STAFF WRITER
The SGA Senate town hall on March 10 hosted three senior members of the dining staff at Mount Holyoke, who shared exciting new additions coming to the Mount Holyoke dining experience.
Adorning their signature white chef jackets embroidered with the College’s logo, Shawn Kelsey, associate director of culinary operations, Peter Haas, director of dining services, and Dino Giordano, campus executive chef, all attended Senate for the monthly town hall meeting.
Beginning with what has already been implemented, Kelsey announced the creation of the Dining Ambassador Program. Inspired by the language tables that used to exist in individual dining halls before the creation of centralized dining in 2018, the purpose of this program is to bring meaningful, authentic meals to dining. The dining ambassadors are current students of Mount Holyoke College who represent the diverse communities that exist on campus. They are meant to be accessible for every student to voice their concerns and feedback for dining.
Through these ambassadors, dining staff will learn more about how the dining program can be improved to better serve the needs of our campus. Note that this is not a replacement for preexisting ways of communicating with dining. The QR codes posted around Blanchard Hall are still valid, as well as the MHC dining email, dining@mtholyoke.edu.
Kelsey addressed that everyone at dining really appreciates the positive feedback they receive from the community. “It does genuinely mean a lot to us,” he said. He further added that any high praise given gets printed out and posted around the different stations in the dining hall for staff to see, creating a motivating and encouraging environment.
One of the first dining ambassadors is Cedar Xiao ’29. In an interview with Mount Holyoke News about her perspective on the new program, Xiao said “I feel like I'm really contributing to my community.” Another major component of the dining ambassador role is to provide dining with new recipe suggestions, and Xiao shared how her experience with that aspect of the role has been. She had received feedback from many of her fellow Chinese international students that the meals served at the Wok station are too sweet compared to how they are traditionally made. The fix to this problem isn’t as simple as adding less sugar, as all recipes served in dining are prepared months in advance, and chefs must follow them to the ounce.
“What I got to do was I found recipes online for other universities in China, and I translated that into English,” Xiao said. “We just did a taste testing yesterday afternoon for more authentic Chinese recipes.” Having invited her friends to provide feedback, many approved of the new recipe.
Hopefully, students can anticipate the quality and authenticity of dishes served in dining to increase with this program. Recounting this taste testing session during the town hall, Giordano noted, “When we get to sit down and eat a meal together, it’s a wonderful and meaningful thing.” If anyone would like to join the dining ambassador program, they should reach out to Shawn Kelsey at kelsey@mtholyoke.edu.
Anyone who has been in the dining hall this semester will have noticed the new dish drop, which was changed over the 2025-26 winter break. Dining shared that the new dish return system is a major improvement for those on the other side of it.
“It's really helping out the dish room staff,” Haas said. “They are smiling, and the floors are clean, and they're not getting piles of dishes.” It was noted that there are a few technical components in the back of the house that are not yet operational, which may explain why there has been a buildup of dishes during the popular meal time rushes.
One student during the town hall brought up how many students with mobility aids have expressed that the new dish return system is not accessible to them. Kelsey said that the new dish drop is compliant to the Americans with Disabilities Act, however, they are willing to talk with individuals facing challenges to see what they can do to improve the system.
In terms of other back of house updates, the kitchen now features a new walk-in fridge. This allows for better, more sustainable food storage, and will open up more opportunities for different meals. The expansions to Blanchard Hall in 2018 were not designed with enough storage space for food. As a result, a large refrigerated truck has been parked in the back of the building on weekends to store dairy, produce, and other highly perishable items. With the new fridge, the truck will no longer be needed.
The last new addition to Dining Services is the Grab & Go donation system. Uneaten leftovers from the Grab & Go stations across campus are now being shared with the Food Recovery Network, and sent to Kate’s Kitchen in Holyoke to be distributed. As of March 10, 34 meals have been donated already. These leftovers will be picked up every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
Kelsey, Haas and Giordano also unveiled many things that are to come to Dining Services in the near future, the first being a collaboration with the Miller-Worley Center for the Environment. At the Frances Perk cafe, located in the Williston-Memorial library, students will soon be able to check out and return USEFULL cups. Any drink that is ordered with a USEFULL cup will come with a 15 cent discount.
Following spring break, raw fish will enter the sushi program once a week. The first raw fish included will be Ahi Tuna. The program will start slowly and gradually be built upon. Ahi Tuna will be included in premade poke bowls on Tuesdays and premade sushi rolls on Wednesdays, alternating every other week, to be served at both the Sushi station and the Grab & Go stations.
Another announcement that had many Senators excited was the new smoothie bar to come to the Cochary Pub & Kitchen. The bar will replace the espresso machine, and operate in the same fashion as everything else in the Pub does. Smoothies will be available for purchase via cash, credit or dining dollars. It will be a build your own style experience, with a wide variety of fresh fruit, vegetables, yogurts, smoothie bases and other toppings to choose from.
Finally, a small yet significant piece of news to come out of this town hall is that food waste across campus is reducing overall, and Dining Services will be doing what they can to continue this trend. It was disclosed that they use an AI program centered around food waste management solutions known as Leanpath to track post consumer food waste leaving our college, and will be taking the usage of it a step further.
With the Leanpath Spark Program, all of the food coming off of students' plates will be weighed in real time, as workers in the dish room dump all uneaten food into a bin atop a scale. A screen that will be installed in the dish drop area will display and live update the scale’s measurements. Leanpath’s AI will compare the numbers with important metrics, such as how many people could have been fed with the food that has been wasted.
Though there may be something contradictory about using artificial intelligence, a known energy waster and massive consumer of resources, to track food waste in our college, dining made an effort to focus on the positive aspects of this program.
“It's the right thing to do,” Kelsey stated. “That's why our mission is to reduce that food waste. Not because it's going to save the college money, but because it's the right thing to do. It's something that we can do as a community to help with the global warming issue that we're dealing with.”
Quill Nishi-Leonard ’27 contributed fact-checking.
