SGA talks with Chartwells and how Southeast can retain students

On Monday Student Government Association met with Trevor Sumner from Chartwells. Sumner announced Subway's catering menu is available to student organizations and groups hosting on-campus events. He also announced Chartwells is in the process of creating an app for iPhone users where they can look up anything being served on campus and the nutritional facts of those food items.

"It's very comprehensive, and there's a lot to it," Sumner said.

Chartwells is also now partnered up with "MyFitnessPal," which is a free calorie counter and is available online, and has an app for iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows phones.

"We are in the process of uploading all of our recipes onto that platform as well. So if you're tracking any workouts or your diet through there, all the Chartwells recipes are going to be available there as well," Sumner said.

Sumner also told SGA that Chartwells will team up with Southeast's Agriculture department to start a compost at the greenhouses on campus. They will use green material left over from the kitchen from Towers and used napkins to start the compost. Sumner said they are hoping to start it up at the end of February or in early March.

Patrick Vining, SGA President, talked about Southeast receiving federal funding by achieving proficiency in five different areas. Southeast met the criteria in all areas but student retention. They discussed ways to go about improving Southeast's first-year-student retention rate and many of the senators said helping get freshman involved would be beneficial.

"It's important to feel part of a community," Amanda Graven, senator for the College of Business, said.

Bruce Skinner, assistant vice president for Student Success and Ddrector of Residence Life, said they lose more students who live off-campus than they do students who opt to live on campus.

"It's that off campus, just graduated high school, still living with Mom and Dad, doesn't feel that connection with campus. We tend to lose them at a faster rate than we do on-campus students," Skinner said. "It's grabbing those commuters that maybe aren't connecting to the university that's part of our challenge."

Also mentioned at the meeting was the upcoming showing of Annie at 7 p.m. on Feb. 21, which SGA is funding by providing 200 free tickets for Southeast students, which will be available on Wednesday in the University Center. They are co-sponsoring the event with the Office of the President.