Minnesota Grants Help College Food Pantries Keep Their Students Fed
Credit: Kirby Lee / Getty Images- Minnesota’s Office of Higher Education gave its colleges and universities over $400,000 to combat food insecurity.
- The grants help the colleges and universities stock and improve their food pantries.
- Almost a quarter of college students were food insecure in 2020.
- SNAP benefits are available to qualifying students to receive extra federal support for buying groceries and some other necessities.
As it becomes more difficult for many college students to afford food, states like Minnesota are helping to support their schools by ensuring students have access to regular meals.
Minnesota’s Office of Higher Education (OHE) awarded a total of over $400,000 to 24 of its four- and two-year colleges and universities to fund new and existing food pantries.
“For too many students, food insecurity is a daily concern,” OHE Commissioner Dennis Olson said in a press release. “This initiative is providing those students with the nutrition they need to focus on their studies and finish their program. I look forward to a day when every campus in the state is hunger free.”
Food insecurity has become a nationwide issue.
BestColleges previously reported that 23% of college students were food insecure in 2020, meaning they had low or very low food security. Students who are food insecure may have to skip meals or eat less to save money for food, may not have consistent access to nutritious foods, and typically perform worse academically.
Two schools that received grants, Rochester Community and Technical College (RCTC) and University of Minnesota (UMN) Twin Cities, are eager to improve their food resources for students.
“I’m excited for our students. I’m excited for more fresh foods. I’m excited for all the things that we already have at the University of Minnesota, and we have great leadership support and commitment to centering our students and addressing food insecurity,” registered dietitian and director of public health at Boynton Health at UMN Twin Cities, Michelle Trumpy, told BestColleges.
Reducing Food Insecurity Stigma
Both RCTC and UMN Twin Cities are working toward ending the stigma associated with food insecurity, which is a roadblock to students getting the help they need.
RCTC received over $26,000 for equipment and supplies for the school’s HIVE Supply food pantry. The community college has over 4,400 students, most of whom attend classes part time and balance school and work.
The grant will support the main campus’ food pantry and build up the bank on a second campus. Dr. Teresa Brown, vice president of student affairs at RCTC, told BestColleges that the second campus’s food bank isn’t helping the cause of ending the stigma around food insecurity. It’s in a small, dark corner of campus, which makes it feel secretive.
The team plans to relocate to a central bright space on campus with shelves, a refrigerator, and a freezer to store produce and refrigerated and frozen foods.
On the main campus, Brown said that in the six years since the pantry opened, she’s seen students change from being timid to confident.
“They don’t seem concerned about who knows what they’re accessing,” Brown said. “They seem very open to the fact that this is just a support they need, and it’s here for them.”
UMN Twin Cities’ Nutritious U Food Pantry received $24,755 in an equipment grant for an additional refrigerator and freezer, additional shelving, and a pallet jack to carry the seven pallets of food it gets every Monday.
“We’re very interested in reducing the stigma around this topic,” Trumpy said. “And we regularly ask students, ‘Did you feel welcome here? What kinds of things would you change? What kind of food do you want to be seeing here?’ And we try to be as responsive as possible to that.”
Students can choose grains, proteins, fruits and vegetables, canned goods, frozen foods, safe sex supplies, and prepared foods by a vendor that donates items like sandwiches and breakfast burritos.
Students used to be able to receive only 4 pounds of food. Now, that has more than doubled to 9 pounds.
Different Approaches for Different Communities
UMN Twin Cities and RCTC are taking different approaches to serving their unique student populations.
UMN Twin Cities is a flagship university with close to 55,000 students, an on-campus meal plan, and an on-campus population, while RCTC is more rural and serves largely part-time students.
RCTC found that 70% of its students attend school part time, Brown said, so they work and commute to campus. The school has many rural students who come to class, go to work for a few hours, and come back for an evening class. The HIVE Supply is open more than 40 hours weekly from 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. to meet those students’ needs.
RCTC found that 38% of its students indicated being food insecure within the last 30 days, and 47% reported they were struggling financially, Brown said.
“Choosing to pay for gas versus food, those are the choices our students are forced to make,” Brown said. “So we try to look at this as holistically as we can. We have emergency grants that we also give to students, but, of course, those have limitations, too.”
UMN Twin Cities found in its College Student Health Survey that, from 2021 to 2024, the percentage of students worried about running out of food before they have money to buy more increased from 13.3% to 21.8%.
The Nutritious U Food Pantry began in 2017 with only one monthly opening. Now, it has grown to partner with the campus’s organic farm and emphasizes having fresh and culturally relevant foods twice a month in the heart of campus.
“Yesterday was our first time actually offering halal goat meat, and our students loved it,” Trumpy said. “We have a large East African population, and so that’s a really culturally appropriate food. And within 15 minutes, that was gone. So that was great information, and we want to make sure that we’re having more of that in upcoming pantries.”
RCTC’s main campus HIVE Supply is in a very student-run area on campus with an open door and run by friendly faces, Brown said. If a student is busy, timid, or can’t make it to the HIVE, they can find “grab-and-go” bags with quick snacks like granola bars and popcorn all over campus.
Creating Longer-Term Solutions
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government waived some college student requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). It made more students eligible for SNAP before the decision was reversed in 2023.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a June report finding that 59% of students eligible for SNAP in 2020 didn’t take advantage of the benefits. The reason: The rules and applications are confusing, and there’s little help for students on campus.
UMN is looking to change that.
The financial aid office works with Trumpy’s team to identify students who may be eligible for SNAP and message them information about it and where to apply. Through the university’s website, students can answer a screening questionnaire to determine eligibility, as well as video guides and other resources. Students can also get on-campus help filling out an application.
RCTC hopes to fund more education about food insecurity to give students more long-term support, such as helping them complete SNAP benefit forms.
“Our mission just requires that we do what we can to serve our students where they’re at and where our students are today, as many of them are housing insecure, and many of them are food insecure. That’s what we know,” Brown told BestColleges.
“And so this is one thing that we can do to try to help them transform their current situation into something better.”