Dara Olmsted is the current coordinator of the  Food Literacy Project at Harvard. She graduated  from Harvard in 2000 with a degree in  anthropology and subsequently earned a  masters in urban and environmental policy &  planning from Tufts. She started her tenure at  the beginning of the current school year. 

How did you get to know about this position?

I went to a lot of FLP events in its first few years—  movies, screenings, lecutures, cooking classes,  farmers markets, and I met both of the previous  coordinators. I even entered the Iron Chef challenge  last year as a student and  won for my house (I was an RA  for the house and lived there). 

What are your responsibilities?

I manage the student coordinators  and meet with them all  at least twice a month to see  what they’re doing. Generally,  they have a lot of leeway to do  what they want. Most of what I  do is making sure they tell the  right people, order enough in advance and not  wait until the last minute. I also send an e-mail  about all the food events to up to a thousand  students each week, so I need to know about  their events. Basically, I just want to make sure  they’ve thought through the process. 

Are they realistic, usually?

Usually. They’ve seen the kinds of events we’ve  done before. Some of the freshmen might  have ideas that may be a little more difficult to  pull off or out of our price range. Also, I have  to make sure they don’t have too many events  involving chocolate (laughs), which is quite  popular. We want to make sure that there is a  variety in terms of different kinds of events. 

How do you make sure of that?

Well, they share their ideas on our internal communication  site. They tell each other what they  did, how it went, things they would improve and  that lets us leverage our resources and time so  that we don’t have too many people planning  wildly separate events or making the same mistakes  over and over.  A good example was a Make Your Own Chai  event that one of our reps came up with last  fall. It was really popular, so I  ended up buying ingredients  in bulk and putting together  kits all the reps could use to  set up their own chai events  more easily. Now, we’re doing  a bunch of them and people  really like it. 

What other ideas have they come up with?

Last fall, one did a sushi event  using brunch items like lox and  cream cheese. She also took some savory and  sweet quesadilla recipes we got while touring  a cranberry facility last October and set up a  make-your-own quesadilla bar with cranberries.  There was also a Finnish cooking class in one of  the dorms. Some did a spring roll study break  last week, while another did a bubble tea and  dumplings event for the lunar new year. 

What do you look for in the student reps you hire?

I do try to look for diversity. I want them to have  different interests, so that they’re not all just into  cooking classes, for example.