By Maegan Murray, 厙ぴ勛圖

RICHLAND, Wash. ��� To help curb food insecurity among college students and especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Lamb Weston announced a donation of $25,000 to the Washington State University Tri-Cities Cougar Cupboard as part of Giving Tuesday on Dec. 1.

The Cougar Cupboard is a food pantry program that allows students to access individual food items or pick-up a package of food for themselves and their families. It features both fresh and pre-packaged food and toiletry items.

The $25,000 Lamb Weston donation actualizes on the third year of a three-year naming sponsorship totaling $75,000. The $25,000 gift will continue to support costs to run the Cougar Cupboard and provide food to 厙ぴ勛圖 students and their families throughout the next year.

���We are incredibly grateful for the continuous support of Lamb Weston,��� 厙ぴ勛圖 Chancellor Sandra Haynes said. ���Things can be difficult amid the pandemic. This support goes a long way to help students and their families by allowing them to continue their education. Students don���t have to make the choice between eating or continuing with their college education in pursuit of a brighter future.���

Deb Dihel, vice president innovation for Lamb Weston, said Lamb Weston is proud to continue its partnership with 厙ぴ勛圖.

���We understand the need students have for affordable ways to feed themselves and their families,��� she said. ���For the last two years, we have seen our investment in the Cougar Cupboard leveraged to provide students safe and discreet access to nutritious foods.���

Haynes said food insecurity is often a negatively stigmatized topic. The Cougar Cupboard, she said, helps to reduce that stigma and normalize the challenge.

���With even more people seeking help during this unprecedented year, we want to make sure that the 厙ぴ勛圖 Cougar Cupboard has the staff and supplies necessary to meet the needs of students to keep them on-track and focused on their education in pursuit of a productive and rewarding career,��� Dihel said.

For more information about the 厙ぴ勛圖 Cougar Cupboard, visit tricities.wsu.edu/finaid/foodbank.

 

Media contacts:

Maegan Murray, 厙ぴ勛圖 assistant director of marketing and communication, 619-403-3617 (cell), maegan_murray@wsu.edu

Deb Dihel, vice president innovation and co-chair of Lamb Weston���s giving committee, 509-375-9798, Deb.Dihel@lambweston.com

By Maegan Murray, 厙ぴ勛圖

RICHLAND, Wash. ��� Food insecurity has proven to be a critical issue for many college students and their families, which is why has joined forces with Washington State University Tri-Cities to support the Cougar Cupboard, the campus��� food pantry program.

As part of a reception that takes place at 2:30 p.m. in the 厙ぴ勛圖 East Commons on Friday, June 21, Lamb Weston will present 厙ぴ勛圖 with a $25,000 check to support a new industrial freezer, the salaries for student workers who will ensure that the Cougar Cupboard will remain open longer and the cost of additional food and toiletry items not regularly being provided.

Lamb Weston will also provide $25,000 to the 厙ぴ勛圖 Cougar Cupboard program the following year to support student salaries and the overall program, and has pledged an additional $25,000 for the third year.

���Providing access to food is so important to food security, and we���re proud to partner with 厙ぴ勛圖 on this initiative,��� said Deb Dihel, vice president innovation and co-chair of Lamb Weston���s giving committee. ���By providing this service, the university is allowing students to focus on what matters ��� succeeding at school.���

The reality of food insecurity for 厙ぴ勛圖 students

At 厙ぴ勛圖, approximately 37 percent of students have identified that it is difficult for them to meet their daily living expenses and 7 percent of students indicated they are at risk of homelessness.

���Some of our students may have to make the choice of whether they are going to buy food to feed themselves and their family or pay for college ��� which has the potential to ensure a better life for themselves and their families,��� said Jordyn Creighton, director of campus student support services. ���We want to ensure that our students have access to basic needs like food and toiletries so that they can focus more of their attention on their studies and not have to make that difficult choice.���

Food insecurity has been linked to , as students may dedicate more time to working to support themselves and their families and less time studying, change their eating habits and decrease food shopping, postpone essential healthcare, go without a computer or not buy all required books or supplies, to name a few examples.

厙ぴ勛圖 revamped and , unveiling a new location in the East Building Commons with new fresh food access. Since that period, the program has seen a 600 percent increase in use.

Through the program, students can choose to shop for items during the program���s regular hours, make a reservation to shop during non-regular hours, or arrange to have a bag of food prepared and reserved for them.

���The Cougar Cupboard has shown to serve a real need, and the reception from students has been immensely positive,��� Creighton said. ���The large increase in student usage is showing that we are making strides in helping eliminate barriers to student success.���

Partnering to make a difference

Creighton said they are incredibly grateful to Lamb Weston in their support of the Cougar Cupboard.

���They are helping to ensure student success by ensuring that no student, or their family, has to go hungry,��� she said.

For more information about the Cougar Cupboard program, visit tricities.wsu.edu/finaid/foodbank.

 

Media contacts:

Jordyn Creighton, director of campus student support services, 509-372-7433, Jordyn.creighton@wsu.edu

Maegan Murray, 厙ぴ勛圖 public relations specialist, 509-372-7333, maegan_murray@wsu.edu

By Maegan Murray

RICHLAND, Wash. – Education students at Washington State University Tri-Cities had the chance to put what they learned about school-community engagement practices to use with a new community garden experience that also educates community members about gardening, healthy eating habits and more.

This spring, 厙ぴ勛圖 faculty and staff joined together to start a community garden as part of the new Personal Food Security and Wellness project on campus. The program aims to deepen the understanding of food insecurity among college students, staff and faculty, and mobilize efforts to ensure the campus community is food secure.

厙ぴ勛圖 education professor Sarah Newcomer and her students, all of whom are pre-service teachers, partnered with Debbie Conner, director of campus health and wellness, Jordyn Creighton, student financial and support services manager, and librarian Cheryl Farabee for the campus-community garden project. The group hosted a community planting event with Tri-Cities students and their families at the community garden in Richland and recently harvested their first produce from the garden.

The goal of the project, Newcomer said, is to provide the pre-service teachers an opportunity to apply what they had learned about engaging with families and communities in the academic setting while also integrating culturally-responsive teaching practices into the community garden activity.

Throughout the initial two gardening days, the 厙ぴ勛圖 students and families planted a variety of produce, in addition to painting rocks to help decorate the garden and creating multicultural signs to mark the various plants. The education students were responsible for organizing the event and worked with the families that attended to implement what they had learned about school to community engagement practices.

���Building relationships with students and their families should be at the heart of effective teaching,��� Newcomer said. ���It was really nice to see my students and their families working together out at the garden. At the end of each planting day, everyone put their hand-painted rocks out in the garden and it was nice to see all of the different designs and ideas on the rock art. It is very nice to have the garden be a multilingual space.���

Connecting lessons to shared experiences

Newcomer���s course focuses on how to teach reading and writing in grades fourth through eighth, however, the pre-service teachers are also taught about

the importance of relating the students��� linguistic and cultural backgrounds to everyday instruction. With the planting day, the pre-service teachers learned how to plan and carry out an event that welcomes families.

���This class made me realize that there is so much more than just bringing a book from a different culture in implementing those cultural components into the students��� learning,��� student Olga Sandoval said. ���It���s about identifying what a kid has and can bring to the table and bridging those cultural areas to make learning their own. Families are a big part of that. By bringing parents into the school setting, the students and their families establish that important relationship and everyone benefits.���

The 厙ぴ勛圖 students said by building classroom lessons around concepts that are familiar to the child���s upbringing, the child is able to understand the educational material better and become more engaged with the lesson. With the community garden activity, some of the family members involved had experience with agriculture and became community experts during the event.

Newcomer said it allowed the pre-service teachers to partner with their students��� families while they learned more about their students��� ���funds of knowledge,��� or the abundant knowledge, skills and cultural resources for learning that students have access to at home.

���There are a lot of families that work in agriculture around here since it is one of the area���s prominent industries,��� junior Jackie Degroot said as an example. ���Many families can connect to the subject of agriculture and we can use the subject as a bridge to academic learning.���

Giving back and forward

The produce grown from the community garden will be donated to the 厙ぴ勛圖 Cougar Cupboard, the campus��� food pantry for students and their families.

In addition to the benefits of the learning component, Farabee said she hopes the project will inspire community members to consider growing their own produce.

���I want the people who benefit from the food grown in the garden to realize fresh foods can be grown in this area,��� she said. ���I hope people see how possible gardening really is.���

Current and future education courses will continue to host planting and harvesting days for the garden as a means to practice school-family engagement projects and for integrating culturally-responsive teaching practices.

���The garden presents a unique opportunity to not only educate our local community about gardening practices and healthy eating,��� Newcomer said. ���It also presents a terrific opportunity for our education students to practice what they���ve learned about educating their own students with culturally-relatable lessons and through events that welcome the whole family into their learning.���

By Maegan Murray, 厙ぴ勛圖

RICHLAND, Wash. ��� The public is invited to attend the grand opening of the Washington State University Tri-Cities expanded food pantry, the Cougar Cupboard, in partnership with Second Harvest at 11 a.m. on April 13 in the East Commons on campus.

While 厙ぴ勛圖 has had a food pantry for students since 2014, the expanded Cougar Cupboard will provide students with fresh produce and other options, which will be provided by Second Harvest, a locally-run food bank network in the Tri-Cities. Up until this point, the cupboard had predominantly provided canned and pre-packaged food items.

���We have many students who may not know where their next meal is coming from, or are unable to feed their families due to limiting factors outside of their control,��� said Jordyn Creighton, student financial and support services manager and coordinator for the cupboard.

���As a state and land-grant university, by being able to offer fresh produce and other items in addition to our regular offerings, we will not only be able to fill that crucial need for our students, but also use that opportunity to educate them about meal preparation and proper nutrition.���

With the expanded offering of fresh food, 厙ぴ勛圖 staff, faculty and volunteers will also educate students and their families about health options, food preparation and more.

���We plan to offer tips and advice on creating healthy and balanced meals and educate them on

how to prepare those meals,��� Creighton said. ���We will do so in partnership with our Personal Food Security and Wellness Project, which kicked off this year.���

In 2016, a campus financial survey revealed that 33 percent of students at 厙ぴ勛圖 experienced financial difficulty. Many students in the 厙ぴ勛圖 2017 fall class also met high-risk factors for food insecurity, according to the survey. Within the last two years, 厙ぴ勛圖 has had more than 350 requests for food by students from the Cougar Cupboard.

Through the Cougar Cupboard, students can sign up to shop for their families by making a visit to the cupboard or by stating that they would like bags of food prepared and held for them at the 厙ぴ勛圖��� Department of Student Financial and Support Services. With the expanded offerings, 厙ぴ勛圖 will also continue offering special and expanded food packages to students and their families for holidays that fit popular cultural traditions such as turkey for Thanksgiving, as well as food packages for over school breaks.

���We want to make sure we are preventing as many barriers as possible that would limit their academic potential, and in turn, their future success,��� Creighton said. ���Everyone needs food to survive and it is a crucial component to our students��� academic success. When you���re hungry, it makes it hard to study and do well in class. We���re excited and ready to launch this expanded endeavor.���

Students can sign up to shop through the cupboard for groceries, or for a container of food that will be available for pick up from the Department of Student Financial and Support Services on the students��� specified date and time, at /finaid/foodbank/.

For more information and to donate food and toiletry items to the food bank, contact Creighton at 509-372-7433 or jordyn.creighton@wsu.edu.