Since 1966
Vol. 38, Iss. 7
Monday, October 14, 2013
News Vets New program aimed at providing support for UCCS vets 2 Health care Affordable Care Act to impact local health care 3
Science & Business Cool Science Festival kicks off at UCCS 4
Culture Pumpkin flavors Easy-to-make seasonal recipes 6
Opinion Shutdown Terrorists 9 Life on the Bluffs
Natural beauty Wildlife on bluffs 10
UCCSScribe.com University of Colorado Colorado Springs
UCCS to end Sodexo contract, run food service Nick Beadleston nbeadles@uccs.edu
Jesse Byrnes jbyrnes@uccs.edu
Food service on campus is about to change hands. UCCS announced last Monday that it will opt out of its contract with food service provider Sodexo on May 23 and switch to its own self-managed food service operation the following day. The move ends a 16-year relationship with the company. “We’ve certainly been studying it very seriously since January,” said Vice Chancellor Susan Szpyrka. Szpyrka indicated student opinion was a driving factor in the decision. She also cited the university wellness initiative and the student population crossing the 10,000-student mark as contributing to the decision. After the shift, the school will run all retail operations on campus, including Clyde’s, Café ‘65, four Dazbog coffeehouses and Jazzman’s, which will be rebranded. Sodexo currently employs approximately 80 workers on campus. More than 40 percent of these are part-time or fulltime student positions. According to Szpyrka, the university is looking to hire 100 employees to staff vacant positions, 75 of which would be student positions.
The university plans to hold a job fair to fill open positions. It is tentatively scheduled for early spring semester. After the handover, the university will be responsible for obtaining its food from wholesalers and plans to expand dining facilities. “We really want to source food local,” said Szpyrka. The university will enter a bidding process through the CU system’s central procurement service center based out of Denver, according to Szpyrka. Contractual obligations UCCS has used Sodexo as its food service provider since 1997. Since then it has renewed Sodexo’s contract three times, most recently in February 2012. The current contract was slated to run through May 23, 2017. According to Szpyrka, the university chose to utilize an out clause in the current agreement that allowed for a more general termination without cause. The university was required to provide Sodexo with a 180day notice of the decision. The school will also be required to pay back $540,000 of unused funds from a $900,000 Sodexo investment package used for food service-related campus improvements that would benefit the company. “I want to make it clear that the investment money is really just an up-fronting of back-end
commission,” said Szpyrka. The existing greenhouse, for which Sodexo supplied $200,000, will remain operational. Szpyrka expects to see revenue returns from the changeover in 2017. Those will then be reinvested in campus growth projects. “Business as usual” Russell Saunkeah, Sodexo’s general manager for food service at UCCS, stated services on campus will remain the same. “It’s business as usual,” he said. Saunkeah, who has worked at UCCS for 13 years, informed Sodexo campus personnel of the school’s decision last Monday. “I came in Monday [Oct. 7] to speak personally to as many of our employees as I could,” said Saunkeah. He stated all on-campus Sodexo employees have been informed of the May 23 contract termination date. Keith Livingston, executive chef, did not speculate on the employment future of current Sodexo employees. “At this time it’s pretty early, we just found out yesterday, so it’s too early to bring any details,” he said. “There will be opportunities as well for some folks when the contract is ended,” he said. “There may be some employees who choose to stay with the Sodexo, and some may decide to stay with UCCS.”
Clubs flip switch on Mountain Lion Connect Cynthia Jeub
cjeub@uccs.edu
The school’s more than 180 clubs is a selling point – they have been mentioned in everything from radio ads to orientation pitches. But a new organizational system to keep track of clubs has brought mixed feelings from club leadership. Mountain Lion Connect, powered by OrgSync, is an online program available to all
students with their portal logins. The system was made mandatory for club affiliation at the beginning of the semester. Students looking for a list of clubs were directed to a website where they had to sign up to see their options. “The increasing student population coupled with the explosion of student activity on campus demanded that we look at more efficient and effective ways to support students,”
wrote Sabrina Wienholtz, assistant director of Student Life and Leadership, in an email. “We looked at a variety of solutions and OrgSync (Mountain Lion Connect) was the best fit,” Wienholtz said. Sarah Mayer, graduate student activities coordinator and president of the Graduate Student Association, expressed surprise that UCCS took so long to make the switch. “For my undergraduate, we had OrgSync, and we
Sports Rugby Tackling competition on the road 11
While Saunkeah also declined to talk about his future with Sodexo or with UCCS, a committee has been formed to fill several managerial positions. Additionally, Szpyrka stated the university plans to post a job listing for a director of food services sometime this month. “There will certainly be transitions in the months to come,” said Saunkeah. “My intention is to see that the transition goes as seamlessly as possible with no change in quality of product or service to our customers. “We’ve been there for a long time. It’s not a performance issue, it’s more of an alignment Continued on page 2 . . .
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found it to be very effective.” Mayer, who had an advanced technical writing class during her senior year at University of Houston, researched OrgSync to help students there. The assignment was to write a user manual. “I realized, ‘I want to make something that is not a waste of my time just for an assignment,’” she said. “I want to Continued on page 3 . . .