Campus Dining Today Spring 2021 - 23

Connecticut College students
wait socially-distanced for the
testing process to be explained.
Courtesy of Connecticut College

	 The Ties That Bind-
				Building Your Connection Bank
Kimberle Badinelli
Hospitality Systems, LLC.

Partnerships and collaboration are never
more obvious than during emergency events.
Unexpected, challenging times bring people
together almost seamlessly. When campus
worlds get turned upside down, there is no
shortage of helping hands. It is innate human
nature to help those in need. I think everyone
reading this would agree that there has never
been a greater example than the COVID-19
pandemic. This pandemic still manages to
dictate the way we do things-especially in
community places like campus dining centers.
" COVID-19 has heightened the need for
campus constituents to work together and
for various departments to have better
ideas on how others work-and where to go
for successful communication, " says Merrill
Collins, director of auxiliary operations,
Connecticut College. Setting up a massive
testing center on campus in August was a
highly collaborative effort. Working with
the Broad Institute, Connecticut College
collectively created a COVID-19 testing system
that relied heavily on the implementation of
Co-Verified. Co-Verified is a new app which
is utilized to track symptoms, book test
dates, and perform contact tracing in order
to maintain the essential COVID-19 testing
services that would permit on-campus classes
to return.

Connections with the right people and
organizations add efficiency and effectiveness
to your work. Without them, opportunities
for success are definitively lost-especially in
complex organizations such as colleges. Internal,
cross-campus, cross-industry, and cross-country
connections are all possible given the technology
available today. Developing and maintaining
them still requires personal initiative.
What about the " every-day " day-no pandemic,
flood, or hurricane? It's business as usual. The
work of feeding students with great food that's
sustainably-sourced and by well-trained staff is
what you do every day. You know-business as
usual.
When asked this question and how it helps
achieve goals, Dean Masuccio, director of dining
services at Central Washington University says,
" I'm a true believer in this. Campus partnerships
and relationships are a critical part of your
success, both as an individual and of the area you
represent. You are dependent on many within
the campus system to support your program.
That support is reliant on the foundational
connections you have developed between those
campus partners-not when the need arises, but
from the time that connection is started. "
Rebecca Miller, assistant director for Nutrition

Ties That B ind | CAMPUS DINING TODAY

23
Campus Dining Today Spring 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Campus Dining Today Spring 2021
