To increase informal interaction between students and faculty, student affairs and dining staff members will again be offering Lunch and Learning, a program started last year.

“When students have the opportunity to connect with faculty on a deeper level than just as a student in the classroom, we feel that our students will benefit,” Michael Mills, director of housing and dining services, said. ”And since everyone needs to eat lunch, we figured this would be a great program.”

“We want to have more students and faculty take advantage of this program,” Mills said. “We also want students to enrich their academic experience by forming meaningful relationships with their faculty members.”

Keith Lamb, vice president of student affairs and enrollment management, helped to start the program last spring. Although the idea came in as a mere suggestion from a faculty member, he said the program had the potential to become something beneficial.

“We wanted to give our faculty the resources to engage with students,” Lamb said. “Faculty engagement and academic life engagement of students are the most important raw factors in college student persistence. Anything we can do to support our faculty in engaging with our students, we have an obligation to do because it helps our students succeed.”

Faculty members who arrive at the dining hall in a group with at least three students from their classes receive a free lunch. The faculty member has to inform the cashier that they are participating in the program and the students have to pay for their meal and print their name in the program log.

Director of dining services Michael Clifton said that participation last semester was low, with just 2 faculty members and 6 students taking advantage of the program. Even so, he is hopeful that this semester will have a better turnout.