Once a week, Jate’e Kearsley, a senior at the State University of New York’s College of Technology at Delhi, can be found bustling about the community kitchen in O’Connor Hall, testing new recipes and perfecting old ones. Ms. Kearsely, a resident assistant and culinary-arts-management major, sees the full-size kitchen, which opened this academic year, as a place for students to come together. One friend taught her how to make baklava, she says, and another, from Japan, gave a sushi lesson.
As campuses build and renovate residential space to accommodate growing enrollments, they have tried to adapt to students’ current interests and preferences, including private space and the ability to cook for themselves. With a trend toward individual sleeping quarters, community kitchens often become not just a place to prepare a meal but also the main gathering space.
“It boils down to these basic ideas of community, flexibility, and being able to accommodate different needs,” says James A. Baumann, director of communications and marketing at the Association of College and University Housing Officers—International. “The kitchen has definitely proven to be valuable tool.”
In a survey last year, the association found that more than 60 percent of institutions had done some kind of residential construction or renovation between the winter of 2010 and the fall of 2011, and 74 percent of those facilities contained kitchens. That figure was up about 11 percentage points over 2005.
At Carleton College, renovations completed in January put a spacious kitchen equipped with full-size appliances and plenty of counter space in Evans Hall. While students tend to think of their rooms as personal space, says Andrea Robinson, director of residential life, they gather in the kitchen to cook and hang out. “The kitchen helps us serve that community feel,” Ms. Robinson says, “because they also want that interaction and connection.”
Carleton has no culinary program, but it is home to a fair share of student chefs who enjoy experimenting in campus kitchens, says Steven K. Spehn, director of facilities and capital planning. “They’re certainly getting their use,” he says. “And certainly for making more than just pizza rolls, like I used to eat in college.”
In fact, students are whipping up dishes like the Thai specialty Tom Yom soup and fulfilling classmates’ orders for custom-designed cupcakes, says Vayu Maini Rekdal, a sophomore who founded FireBellies, a campus culinary club. Its mission, he says, is “to promote an understanding of other cultures through the universal language of food.”
Members of the club gather weekly to plan or hold discussions, cooking classes, and competitions, like one last term requiring contestants to incorporate coconut milk into their recipes. The group has had to cap attendance at 10 to 40 members per event, says Mr. Maini Rekdal, a small fraction of the 400 students who have signed up for the club’s e-mail list.
“The idea is to be exposed to a vast array of different things and a diverse set of interests and backgrounds,” he says. “Cooking brings that together in an unpretentious way.”
“What we do,” he adds, “really speaks to the liberal-arts curriculum.”
Do-It-Yourself Dining
Along with residence halls, dining services, many of them run by private companies, are also adapting to students eager to prepare their own food.
Television programs like Iron Chef may be part of the reason for the interest, says Gregory M. Yost, manager of public relations at Sodexo, a food-and-facilities company. Society as a whole is also taking a closer look at food. “People are trying more things than ever before,” he says. “And that leads into wanting to make those things.”
At SUNY’s Oneonta campus, Sodexo installed what Mr. Yost calls a hybrid of a traditional dining hall and a dormitory’s community kitchen. Called My Kitchen, the four-year-old facility features two areas: one for presentations by Sodexo chefs, guest chefs, and culinary students, and the other with four stocked stations for students to make pasta, paninis, and stir fry for themselves.
More students are seeking healthful options, as well as information about the sources of their food and different ways to prepare it, says Jimmy Hamm, general manager of Sodexo at Oneonta. As part of their campus meal plans, students can reserve the presentation space for a meal with friends or a club’s event.
So far, My Kitchen has been the site of birthday parties, celebrity-chef visits, and a workshop on cutting calories from favorite meals like macaroni and cheese. In March, Oneonta’s Harry Potter fan club reserved the space to make treats for its second annual Yule Ball, modeled after those at Hogwarts. With recipes from The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook, students made chocolate frogs, licorice wands, and pumpkin pasties, among other delicacies.
“Everyone was like, ‘Oh, my God, Harry Potter food!’” says Sarah Vitro, a junior at Oneonta and the club’s president. She says members will continue to take advantage of the cooking space.
“We’re planning a ‘Welcome to Hogwarts’ event for incoming freshmen next fall,” she says, and the kitchen will be crucial to that. “And for every Yule Ball from here on out.”
