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Carnegie Mellon Campus Dining Study

I worked with two other design students to create a proposal for a redesigned campus dining system. Carnegie Mellon University lacks a central dining hall, replacing this through a series of small eateries catered by CulinArt. We wanted to investigate this system and see if there was a correlation between the lack of upperclassemen eating on campus and the CulinArt catering system. By surveying a diverse sample size of CMU students (around 40 were interviewed in total), we found the quality of the food to be only one side to the issue. The eateries are spread out all over campus, such that chinese food is in one building, where as the salad bar is across campus in another building. There is no sense of community through this system. Our results led us to focus our efforts on location more so than the actual food quality. We propose that CMU brings in a broader range of food venues, places of higher quality and with healthier options. Additionally, based on the pathways we mapped as a result of student walk-routes, we found that the organization of the eating system should be relocated to rest on these central paths that students often take. We organized our findings and presented them to our peers and professors. 

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