It's Official: We Are One!

Kicking off the 2016-17 Academic Year AND Housing, Dining & Auxiliary Enterprises with Fun and Laughs!

This past May we had a cross-unit forum with 85 attendees from each of the eight Housing, Dining & Auxiliary Enterprises (HDAE) units (University Center Campus Dining Services, Residential Dining Services, University & Events Center Operations, Transportation & Parking Services, Business & Financial Planning, Residential Operations, Residential & Community Living, and the UCSB Bookstore). The purpose of this forum was to gather as HDAE and share what groups of four teams and the HDAE directors have been working on the past eight months. This work included planning a celebratory fall kick-off known as the HDAE Launch Party, which took place on Thursday, August 25th, 1pm-3pm in The Thunderdome. The party was a great opportunity to meet new colleagues, chill with co-workers, win prizes, and be entertained. Highlights of the event included...

• Receiving different color headbands representing each unit in order to cheer on our team during the basketball shooting competition.

• Having a chance to win really cool raffle prizes that were handed out throughout the event.

• Olé getting in on the action.

• The Directors sharing interesting facts about their areas, such as...

  • 32,595 work orders were submitted in the past year to the Residential Operations Service Center.

  • The capacity of the Events Center is 6000, which makes it the largest venue between LA and San Jose.

  • All told, we have 3,294 toilets in our communities and Dining Commons!

  • In 2015-16, Residential Dining served 10,653 gallons of ice cream, 800,000+ slices of pizza, and 114,662lbs of bananas.

  • Transportation & Parking Services maintains 418 vehicles. Of the latter, 38 are located off-campus. Some of those are relatively close by, while others are quite far like Belize, Tahiti, and the Virgin Islands!

  • The Bookstore is an Apple reseller, has certified technicians for on-site repairs, and a trade-in program for old laptops. They also oversee the University Center Post Office, which has 3500 P.O. boxes making it the largest P.O. box supplier in Santa Barbara.

  • UCSB Housing has 10,376 residents, which is the first time we’ve exceeded 10,000 residents (making us larger than the population of Buellton & Santa Ynez combined!)

The basketball players warming up and then competing was the highlight extraordinare. Ballers included James Sanchez (Bookstore), Jill Horst (Residential Dining), Martin Shumaker (Business & Financial Planning), Antoine Dunson (Residential Operations), Mickael Blancho (the talented “Soup Guy” from UCen Dining), Sweets Underwood (Residential & Community Living), Martell Grant (Mail Services), and Oscar Prado (Transportation & Parking Services). The competition was fierce, but Sweets (an ex-UCSB basketball player no less!) claimed victory for R&CL.

A special shout out and THANK YOU to the planning committee for an awesome time: Angella Tai, Debora Pentecost, Ron Varenchik, Marylu Diaz, Mark Valencia, Amy Boyle, Danielle Kemp, Chris Arguedas, and Melissa Cordial. And kudos to the Master of Ceremonies Brad Gray and Disc Jockey David Velasquez for doing a fantastic job keeping us entertained.

By Julie Levangie

Enjoy the slideshow below!