University of Maryland Dining Services won a national award, announced April 27, for its “Nutrition Month Madness” event, which combined health education with bracketology, said Sister Maureen Schrimpe, nutritionist and quality coordinator for Dining Services.
The National Association of College and University Food Service Horton Award for Most Innovative Wellness and Nutrition Program is given annually to outstanding dining hall programs, according to the NACUFS website. Judges review submitted reports and award colleges in categories based on size — small, medium or large — with either a gold, silver or bronze award. The “Nutrition Month Madness” program was awarded gold.
Nutrition Month Madness was held March 23 in both campus dining halls and offered healthy meals developed by Dining Services’ nutrition staff. Students were offered the opportunity to fill out a “nutritional” bracket for a chance to win a Terrapin Express gift card, Schrimpe said.
“This is our very first entry, and to win it all the first time, we were all up in the air,” she said. “But because we are a basketball school, it was an easy fit for us.”
The brackets prompted students to select the meal they thought had more nutritional value in categories such as fiber and vitamins, said Amber-Ray Davidson, a student Dining Services employee who worked with Schrimpe on the program. About 150 students completed the bracket, and six were completely correct, she said.
Davidson, a senior dietetics major, said the team researched the nutritional information for the competing meals and worked with Senior Executive Chef John Gray to develop the recipes and create promotional materials.
“I didn’t expect so many students to actually be fully intent on the brackets,” Davidson said. “They were asking their friends. They were taking 20 minutes on their bracket. Hopefully they did actually learn something, and so I feel like it was a really fun event for everyone.”
Schrimpe, Davidson and student employee Emily Tolino, had worked on the program since October, Tolino said.
“It was basically just a five-month cycle of planning, presenting and revising, so every time we would come up with something, we would present it to Sister or the director of Dining Services, Colleen [Wright-Riva], or all of the people in between,” said Tolino, a senior dietetics major.
Nutrition Month Madness specifically chose to highlight the women’s basketball team, which at the time of the event had just won the Big Ten Tournament, Schrimpe said.
“Dieticians as a whole are probably not very sports-minded, where I love sports, and so I always thought we always do so much for the men’s team that we took the women on this,” Schrimpe said.
Dining Services provided free souvenir women’s basketball cups to customers at the event, Dining Services spokesman Bart Hipple said.
“It was important to us that we were highlighting women’s sports for this because we don’t usually do that,” Hipple said. “This was something new for us.”
Schrimpe will join Wright-Riva to accept the award July 16 at the Loyal E. Horton Dining Awards Lunch in Anaheim, California.
“It gets Maryland’s name out there — that we’re doing creative things — and that’s important,” Schrimpe said.
