Executive Summary Fall InternshipShannon Cochran Introduction I started working for The Real Food Challenge, RFC, at Messiah

College on September 2, 2013 under Craig Dalen, Professor of Sustainability. The Real Food Challenge started in 2008 and is a nationwide program that examines food purchases of various colleges in order to promote the purchase of real food. I worked closely with two other interns, Julie Price and Courtney Walton in the sustainability office and dining services. My learning objectives and primary responsibilities were the following: Increase the procurement of real food in dining services Increase the institutional transparency related to dining services purchases Increase student and campus engagement related to food sourcing on campus Research the food and companies from which Messiah College purchases food Collect data on vendors via web searches, industry publications and phone calls Make phone calls, send emails, set up meetings with internal constituents (Dining Services staff, Office of Sustainability) and external constituents (vendors, farmers, distributors, representatives from the Real Food Challenge) Review food purchase invoices and inventory records Complete the Campus Food Baseline Survey and the Real Food Calculator Correlate and interpret results of various assessments Disseminate findings to campus stakeholders via public presentation/written report Provide recommendations to Dining Services, Office of Sustainability and the Division of Operations for tangible next steps to increase the purchase of real food in campus operations.

Work/Projects The overall goal of The Real Food Challenge is to have Messiah purchase 20% of real food by the year 2020. This is the first year Messiah College has taken on this challenge and it is proposed to be completed in three years. Julie, Courtney, and I shaped and formed this internship ourselves and set goals for future plans in order to be sure this process is carried out on time. I started this process with the Food Baseline Survey to obtain information about the current state of the food supplying process. This survey examined how Messiahs Dining Services functions and how much money is spent on food and drinks from Lottie Nelson, The Student Union, The Falcon, and Caf Diem. Our team did not perform this survey on our own. We sat down with Mark Wirtz, Director of Dining Services and walked him through the survey in order to help us learn about the ins and outs of dining services while preparing to use the Real Food Calculator. The Real Food Calculator was the next project I began working on after the Baseline Survey was completed. The calculator is a tool that allows our team to enter in all 6,000 food/drink invoices in order to see how much money is being spent and it provided us with a place to enter research data we performed on each product. The bulk of calculator is reliant on the research done outside of entering invoices. We had to research each company Messiah uses

(such as Frito Lay, Strohemanns Bakery, etc.), meet with various company executives, and decipher if its products are real food or not according to some of the following criteria: 1) Humanely Produced Animal Welfare Approved by Animal Welfare Institute Biodynamic Certified by Demeter 3) Fairly Traded Ecocert Fair Trade Certified Fair Food Standards Council Fair Food Program (Coalition of Immokalee Workers tomatoes) Fair for Life Certified by IMO Fair Trade Certified by Fair Labeling Organization (FLO) Fair Trade Certified by Fair Trade USA* Food Justice Certified by Agricultural Justice Project 4) Locally Grown Producer1 must be a privately-traded or cooperatively owned business that grosses less than 1%of the industry leader.

2) Ecologically Sound

Biodynamic Certified by Demeter Food Alliance Certified* USDA Organic** Protected Harvest Certification Rainforest Alliance Certified**

Independently owned businesses must have full autonomy and decisionmaking power about business processing, & distribution practices. Its parent or family companies, and contract farmers must be within 150 miles of the institution.

The next project is something I am currently working on as I finish out my time with RFC. My team and I are compiling all the information we have discovered thus far and plan to present these findings to dining services and at the upcoming Humanities Symposium. From here, the next team of interns can take this information and continue to dig deeper into the system to move Messiah forward to signing on to The Real Food Challenge. Learning The first learning objective I had was to increase the procurement of real food in dining services. In order to accomplish this objective I learned how to start the process of the internship in general and build it up to something tangible and sustainable. This meant outlining our team goals, establishing relationships with key players in dinning services and student affairs, attending regular meetings with our internal and external staff, and compiling weekly reports from our internal group into a PDF format to measure the status and input of information about real food. These tasks taught me how to shape an organization and establish credibility amongst other groups. The second learning objective I had was to increase institutional transparency related to dinings purchases. I accomplished this task through meetings with various organizations on campus to spread the word about the work we are doing (especially The Pulse and other forms of college news). This taught me how to manage relationships with the media and what media outlets need in order to carry out a story or idea (i.e. a media kit). This also taught me that

honesty is the best way to establish credibility for an organization. The more an organization is transparent with its audience, the more likely that audience will be to find value in its work. The last learning objective was to increase student and campus engagement related to food sourcing on campus. This objective was accomplished through Sustainafest, which was an event showcasing all the work done by sustainability majors and outside companies that affect Messiah College. Through this objective I learned how to plan, execute, and evaluate an event. My team and I had to calculate numbers from a survey we provided, set up and tear down the event, and evaluate the effectiveness of the event through attendance numbers, participation in events, and the level of involvement in the sustainability department post-Sustainafest. This event not only taught me about the detail that goes into planning an event, but also showed me how to work survey sites, such as Qualtrix, and how to interpret the data received from it. Future Plans This internship has opened my eyes to what I want to do in my future career. After planning parts of Sustainafest, I discovered I have a knack for event planning and that I am actually a very detail-oriented person. Putting the event together and evaluating the effectiveness afterwards was something I really enjoyed and I hope to incorporate these skills in my career somehow. Also, prior to this internship, I was not highly skilled at research. This internship provided me with opportunities to use various researching websites such as Communication and Mass Media Complete and taught me how to effectively navigate these sites. I also learned that research starts with looking at broad information and using scholarly journals and experiments to narrow the findings. Performing research outside of the classroom allowed me to see the importance in the research process and how many employers are looking for people who can perform research. I hope this experience in research will set me apart from other candidates in the future because research is becoming one of the top necessities in the job market. Lastly, I realized how flexible I can be in terms of position. Typically, I have been the leader in any job or internship Ive had but during my time with RFC I was just another team player and I really enjoyed playing this role. This helped me to see how versatile I am and allowed me to adapt to various situations. All in all, I learned that the best leaders are those that lead from amongst rather than from above and I will certainly bring this mentality to my future career. Preparation/Recommendation As a Public Relations and Communications major, I felt very prepared to walk into this internship. Classes such as PR Writing, Interpersonal Communication, and Event Planning provided me with background in writing media kits, communicating in teams and one-on-one, and how to write event evaluations/proposals. I felt very prepared, yet learned a lot of hands-on tactics that have only enhanced my ability to perform in the classroom. Interpersonal Communication helped me communicate better with my supervisor and allowed me to understand the needs/wants of RFC on a more personal level, which increased my ability to understand it on a corporate level. I personally do not have any recommendations to my academic department because I felt more than prepared to step into my role as Communication and Research Intern for RFC. The Communication Department provides many hands-on experiences (such as PR Campaign class where we work with an actual client) that prepared me to step into the real world. Overall, I am confident that my time with The Real Food Challenge has prepared me for future employment.