At the same time, Kraner believes that NACUFS' essential culture remains unchanged.

“The sense of welcoming I had at my first regional meeting was tremendously rewarding. You see that just as much today in terms of the willingess of members to reach out to new people and extend a hand.” he adds. “Yet the association has grown up since that time. We still pursue the original mission — to bring best practices to our members — but we are in a position to offer much more to them than ever before: in the future we may be educating them in areas like long term financing and bond sales or energy management as well as traditional foodservice operations.”

David Prentkowski, another past president, believes the association will have to evaluate its service offerings “to ensure that we are providing the right balance of services at the membership level and at the administrative/executive levels of our member institutions.

“Should NACUFS be helping administrators find the right people to run their operations? Should we devote more resources to encouraging new people to come into the field and to helping them develop so they will be attractive to administrators looking to fill those jobs? Should we emphasize building our credibility with administrators and educating them about issues related to contract and self-operation in an era when Boards of Trustees are showing they have more of an interest in these kinds of decisions?

“These are the kinds of policy decisions the membership will hash out over the next decade,” he says.

Such decisions will have much to do with how NACUFS positions iteself in future years, agrees former President Mona Milius.

“Who are we as an organization? Do we want to grow? Should we be the voice for higher education? The voice for the self-operated community?

“One issue we grappled with in the Visioning Summit was the very role of the director,” she adds. “Increasingly, he or she deals not just with food, but with issues related to the overall campus community. This is something we have to focus on in terms of getting the next generation involved and engaged.”

Annis believes “NACUFS' founders had it right at the time and the essence of their vision is very much the right thing for us now. We operate on college campuses and our focus is on young people, many of whom work for us. The goal is not to keep them forever, but to develop them, move them up, knowing that our job is to bring them along. It is part of our mission and our culture. That same idea works within NACUFS itself as we seek to bring our members along in the same way.”

A “culture of connectivity” is NACUFS' lasting achievement, suggests Joe Spina. “It is a culture that provides a professional and social community that complements its educational programming and services. Even though we compete with many external groups for that kind of programming, none of them can provide the sense of community that NACUFS can provide”

Spina, Annis and others consistently point to the need to remain relevant to a new generation of members.

“Our present leadership is only one generation away from the founder generation right now,” says Spina. “The next generation of leaders is in the wings, and they will have much to say about the future direction in which NACUFS will progress. NACUFS will go where its members take it.”

SELECTED REFERENCES

Early NACUFS newsletters, annual reports and correspondence, supplemented by member interviews. Special thanks to Walter Luecke, John Friese and Bill May for sharing information about the early association.

A History of the National Association of College and University Food Services — 1958-1976 by Shirley Bates, foreward by Kent Dohrman.

Twenty-Five Years, A History Of NACUFS, published by NACUFS

40 Years: 1958-1998, published by NACUFS

A Region IV History by Beryle Ostermiller, David Anderson, Sarah Johnson and Walter Luecke, revised 2008.

JULY, 1958

NACUFS' first meeting was held at Central Michigan University in July of 1958. Representatives from the following schools attended:

Purdue University

Ferris State College

Indiana University

University of Maryland

Ball State University

Western Michigan University

Miami University of Ohio

Central Michigan University

Washington University

Associated Colleges of Illinois

NACUFS' first officers were chosen at that meeting and included:

President Richard Lichtenfelt (CMU)

Vice-President Robinson Lappin (U. of MD)

Secretary/Treasurer Richard Bystrom (Miami U.)

Corresponding Secretary Helen Wild (Ferris State)

Publications Manager Paul Fairbrook (Northern Illinois U.)