Campus matters December 2014

CAMPUS MATTERS

December 2014 The newsletter for Campus Services

SEASON’S EATINGS The Christmas festivities began in earnest on campus at the beginning of December at the Festive Food Festival, organized jointly between the SU and Campus Services.

The catering team did us proud once again with a selection of delectable seasonal treats.

Mouth-watering savoury main meals included turkey and stuffing burgers, pigs in blankets and pretzels, with festive sweet treats of Christmas loaf, stollen, brandy butter popcorn, mince pies and many more.

The housekeeping team held a little Christmas incentive to encourage students to recycle last week.

Housekeepers spent the day ‘Standing by the bins’ in their halls , ready to reward those students who were recycling correctly with chocolate Santas!

Meeting Dasher, the reindeer

Head of Conferences & Catering, Mike Hoare said, “The event attracted a huge crowd of people and there was a real Christmas buzz in the air. Well done to every one for their hard work in making the event such a great success”.

A large crowd gathered to “Meet the reindeer” and there was also the opportunity to try a selection of festive activities including face painting, a bucking reindeer and Santa style sumo wrestling.

Stand by your bins!

The day’s festivities concluded with the Christmas tree light switch on by the Principal and President of the SU outside the Windsor building.

Rosa Dias rewards a student at Founder’s

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone in Campus Services!

2014 at a glance It’s the end of another year and time to take a look back at what we have achieved as a department over the last 12 months. Here is a selection of some of the highlights.

New legislation for food labelling Our Catering team has been busy preparing for major changes to food labelling legislation, which will see certain allergy information on food which is pre-packed, sold loose or served when eating out become mandatory.

Catering outlets Manager, Rebecca Nurse said, “We are making significant changes to all of our menus and labelling to ensure we comply with the new law. It’s a very time consuming process, but the results will be good news for our customers. The changes will provide allergen The new legislation, which came into force last information in a clearer and more consistent way, week, requires all suppliers offering food items to making it easier to make safer food choices when customers, to highlight specific food allergens buying food or eating out”. such as peanuts and gluten.

Allergens will need to be highlighted on menus, packaging and displays. Although verbal information can be provided to customers by staff, backup written confirmation of the details will be required and can be requested by the customer at any time.

At Royal Holloway, these icons will be used to notify the customer of the existence of specific allergens within our food.

THE 14 ALLERGENS ARE:

1. Cereals containing gluten 2. Crustaceans 3. Molluscs 4. Fish 5. Peanuts 6. Lupin 7. Tree nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds etc.)

8. Soya 9. Eggs 10. Milk 11. Celery 12. Mustard 13. Sesame seeds 14. Sulphur dioxide (sulphites)

Parcel tracking technology - the story so far In the September issue of Campus Matters, we learnt about the new parcel tracking technology which had been installed into The Hub and Founder’s Post Rooms as well as Highfield and Kingswood receptions in time for Start of Session. Campus Matters caught up with Premises Manager, Angela Muswell to find out how effective the new system has been in the three months since its installation.

“The new software has been fantastic!” begins Angela. “The system is so much quicker and more accurate than before. It sends an automated email to the student within an hour and a half of their parcel arriving, which means that students are coming to collect their parcels much more quickly too. We are also now able to track exactly how many parcels we receive and where they come from – since Start of Session, we’ve received 29,315 parcels! Feedback from students towards the new Darren technology has been very favourable – it’s definitely had a very positive impact on their student experience”.

Conference season ends with tree planting Our 135 acres of beautiful parkland provided the perfect backdrop for the 50th anniversary Arboricultural Association tree conference.

To reflect the subject matter of the three-day event, the Windsor Building and the Hub were transformed with greenery.

Earlier in the year, the gardening team had helped the organisers to apply a successful test treatment against leaf miner virus, to two of our Horse Chestnut trees. They also secured a generous donation of ornamental and fruit trees from one of the conference sponsors, which will be planted around the campus soon.

Rob Kemp, Deputy Principal, Henry Girling, VP, Arboricultural Association, Cllr Derek Cotty, Deputy Mayor, Runnymede & Jago Keen, Chair, Arboricultural Association.

During the conference the ground was prepared for the planting of a rare Wollemi Pine, next to the Monkey Puzzle near the steps between Founder's and The Hub. The delegates created a treasure trail of 50 trees of interest on campus, describing our Arboretum as “a fantastic resource”.

Conference Account Executive, Matthew Woodham commented, “We have had some great feedback from the organisers, acknowledging several months of careful planning across the College. It was great to have the involvement of our gardeners and the support from the Principal's Office and Runnymede council was fantastic".

New conference and wedding website launch Following several months of hard work, the informative and easy to navigate. We’re hoping Conferences and Catering team unveiled their that the new website will make potential customers find our offer more enticing and be newly branded website last week. confident to book with us,” she continued.

The primary aims in driving the new website were: - to increase conference bookings, wedding bookings, group stays and other services; - to create more interaction and engagement with the website on social media and to introduce a blog and - to make it clearer to customers what we have to offer.

Conference Sales Manager, Emily Perrier said, “The new website is clean, fresh and visually impactful but at the same time functional, Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter: /royalhollowayconferences and /royalhollowayweddings @ rhulconferences and @rhulweddings

CATERING STUDY TOUR TO THE USA Catering Outlets Manager, Rebecca Nurse recently joined a group of TUCO members, from eight different UK universities, on a study tour to Boston and New York The tour, which aimed to give an insight into educational in-house and contracted catering services in the US, included visits to Harvard University, Boston University, Boston College and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“My main objectives for the trip were to gain new ideas on the set-up of residential dining halls, menu development (particularly with regards to special diets), meal packages and choices of high street brands on campus”, said Rebecca. “The study tour was one of the most interesting learning and development opportunities I have ever had. I saw such a huge range of different operations and I couldn’t help but be inspired”, she continued.

The American catering providers shared several innovative initiatives with their British counterparts including the “Healthy Eating Pyramid”, which informs students of the mix of foods they should eat to ensure health and well-being and the “Food Literacy” programme, which helps inform customers of the provenance of food, its health benefits and also its sustainability in terms of our ongoing consumption.

After the university visits were over, the group visited New York City to explore unique food concepts, street food markets and dishes from around the world.

Obituary

Welcome to …..

In October, we very sadly lost a member of our Security team.

… two new members of staff who joined the Conferences and Catering team.

Vincente Buron-Rodriguez passed away quite suddenly aged just sixty. He leaves behind his wife, six children & two grandchildren.

Hanna Payne joins as a new Account Executive, having previously worked as an Event Manager at Beaumont Estate Hotel in Old Windsor.

Jonathan Main, David Paterson, Israr Haque and 5 other members of the Security team attended his funeral.

Vincente worked here for over 15 years and will be sadly missed by his colleagues.

have

Helen Earwaker is our New Business Executive. Helen previously worked in Sales and Marketing for a bespoke cake company and was also a student here.

Elite students shine at STARS evening Last month, 34 talented student athletes were recognised at a special STARS (Student Talented Athlete Recognition Scheme) awards ceremony hosted by Vice Principal, Bob O’Keefe.

the opportunity to demonstrate how proud we are of our elite student athletes. This year’s awardees span a large array of sporting disciplines from athletics, rowing and basketball to less common sports such as martial arts, fencing and bike polo.

Among the awardees were Emelia Gorecka, a Psychology student and international long- It has been a fantastic year for our athletes, with distance runner, and Tom Smallbone, who is study- Emelia Gorecka winning the 5,000m at the British ing Geography and plays rugby for London Irish.

Championships and Hannah Peters, Katherine Trotter and George Mitchell representing Royal Guest speaker Jim McNeill, polar explorer and TV Holloway at the World University Championships. presenter, addressed our future sports stars in his It’s a great honour to be a part of STARS and help speech with stories of his arctic adventures. our students achieve their full potential”.

The STARS has supported more than 90 worldclass athletes, including Paralympic champion Sophie Christiansen and Olympic rower Jessica Eddie, since its launch in 1996. The bursary scheme aims to reflect the amount of time, effort, enthusiasm and dedication its awardees put into their chosen sport and offers a programme of support for them that includes free access to campus sports facilities, a liaison mentor and access to strength and conditioning coaching.

Natalie Dobson, Sports Development Executive, said: “The STARS presentation evening gives us

Professor Bob O’Keefe with STARS awardees George Mitchell, Jennifer Ward and Darren Murphy.

FIRE IN KINGSWOOD! Assistant Catering Outlet Manager, Ann “All of our gas cylinders are kept in the yard and Butcher saved the day recently when she put my first reaction was to move them away from the blaze”, said Ann. “Luckily the fire was easily out a fire at Kingswood.

The fire started when one of our painting contrac- put out with a bucket of water, but it could have tors, who was on site re-decorating the outside of been so much worse”. the buildings, carelessly discarded a cigarette butt onto the dustsheets below. The butt, which was still smouldering, caused the dust sheet to go up in flames.

Ann, who smelt the burning from Kingswood dining hall, went out through the kitchen to the yard outside and saw the fire.

Please consult our procedures on fire safety which can be found here: N:\CampusServices\CSDocuments\Procedures\ FireSafety.