To make his case for a new dining center stronger David May, assistant vice president for business affairs at the University of New Hampshire, in Durham, decided the best way to show the need was to take photos of their current hall's problem areas. May speaks about how the photos were an important part of proving a need for a new dining hall.
When the 15,000-student University of New Hampshire was in desperate need of a new dining center, it was up to David May, assistant vice president for business affairs, to prove it to the university. May recently gave advice at the NACUFS national conference in Washington, D.C., about how he made his case to the university’s administration that the time had come for a program expansion.
“We were at a point in time where we had this dining hall that was really in old-service mode. We had huge lines that would go down a hallway, downstairs, wrap around and out of the building. We took pictures of the students standing and waiting in line, as well as some photos of the antiquated services the dining hall still used. We then compared them to the services of a recently renovated dining hall and we made the case that it was time for us to do something. It really worked. Pictures tell a thousand words. We used the one dining hall we’d already renovated to show what the new hall could be. It really helped sell the fact to the higher up administration that the campus needed to expand the dining program. So out of that small step, we were able to build a much larger facility with a much larger seating capacity.”