Below is a transcript of our conversation with Campbell Geary, CMU graduate student and Program Coordinator for the Mary Ellen Brandell Volunteer Center
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty. Many CMU students give back and serve others through the Mary Ellen Brandell Volunteer Center on campus. Campbell Geary started at the center in his freshman year, finished his undergrad degree in May 2025, and now, as a grad student, is serving as program coordinator for the Brandell Center, where he directly oversees the student food pantry. We sat down to talk about their work and about a term often used to broaden our understanding of a challenge confronting many people, food insecurity…
Campbell Geary:
It can be beyond just; I don't have access to food. It could mean, I have access to food, but I only have access to like one meal a week or one meal a day, or I don't have access to great like nutritional food. I only have access to like. bare basic food. And so, we kind of try to serve all students on that spectrum of food insecurity. So, we get all types of students in the pantry. There are some students who are there every single week. There are some students who come just once in their entire four years that they're at CMU. And in both cases, like that's us doing our job. That's us meeting the need that we need to meet for students. And we know that through the data tracking that we've done, most students only visit the pantry an average of seven times across their entire career at CMU. And so, we know that most students really only need it a couple of times to help them out, but some students need it more often and some students don't need it as much. And either way, we know we're helping all students out in that way. And you see all types of students. We get undergrad students, we get graduate students, we get PA students, we get med school students. we get students who are part-time, full-time, as long as you're registered for at least one credit at CMU, you're eligible to use it. And so, we work really, really hard to make sure all students know about it outside of just, you know, your typical expected like undergrad population.
DN:
Are there basics that you always have on hand and how are you supplied with those with those basic staples, if you will?
CG:
Yes. So, we always try to keep certain staples on hand to provide like a basic necessary nutritional base for students. So, we always try to have rice and pasta, certain types of beans, especially dried types of beans. We always have canned goods, and usually there's no limit on the canned goods because those are shelf stable and they last for a really long time. We always try to have milk. We always try to have eggs. Sometimes it's a little more difficult to get those. And then we always try to have some type of frozen protein, usually chicken. It's usually the easiest for us to get. We also try to keep some non-food staples on hand. So, we also have a care pantry. So, students are able to get like hygiene products, essentially. And so, in that part of the pantry, we always try to have like toothpaste, toothbrushes, toilet paper, hand soap, body wash, that kind of stuff. We get everything kind of through a wide variety of sources. Our biggest partner and like biggest supplier, I guess I would call them is Greater Lansing Food Bank. So, they are a large food bank in Michigan that serves a lot of counties and in Michigan. We're basically an agency underneath them. They provide us a lot of support and we get a delivery truck from them every single Friday. And so that always includes, usually it's where we get our milk, it's where we get our eggs, it's where we get our meat, it's where we get a lot of our canned stuff, a lot of our rice. It's usually five or six pallets from them every single week.
DN:
Volunteer centers like this that we have on campus, the Mary Ellen Brandell Volunteer Center, do a lot of good work in a lot of areas of our community. And in your role then, now as program coordinator and overseeing the operation of the CMU food pantry, Campbell Geary, thanks very much for sharing the insight, the look inside to what you do and the students that you have a positive impact with. And all the best as those efforts continue.
CG:
Thank you for having me.
