Courtesy of Lewis & Clark
Lewis & Clark’s Director of Dining Services of almost 7 years, Ryan Jensen, recently finalized his resignation from the college. He will continue to work within Bon Appétit, but will be relocating to George Fox University. In his now former position here, Jensen spent the majority of his workday engaging with the community.
“We talk about plans, issues and ideas, and then I take that back to our team and figure out how we can best implement those,” said Jensen. “On a micro level, I train and support the team to successfully provide the myriad of food service operations.”
This change is the effect of a recent shift within Bon Appétit. George Fox was left without a General Manager, and Jensen has decided to step up and use his experience to assist.
“(Company movement) has created an opportunity for all of us to look at our careers and figure out what we still haven’t done that we would like to do,” said Jensen. “There have been some vacuums created. My work will be relatively lateral, I will be at George Fox in a similar capacity.”
Leaving the LC community he has come to love is bittersweet for Jensen; he will miss the people he has come to know, but is also looking forward to making the most of his new opportunity.
“Lewis & Clark is an amazing community, but after doing something for as long as I have, it can be invigorating to get into a new environment and work on new projects,” said Jensen. “I like and will miss the open thought and communication that a community that is so open to diversity and critical thinking brings — I hope I have that at my next location.”
His successor, Talish Barrow, has spent his career in food service. Before joining Bon Appétit’s staff, he worked with Levy, another company under the Compass Group parent organization, at the Moda Center, as well as in a more traditional restaurant setting working as an operations manager for ChefStable at popular restaurants such as Lardo and Grassa.
“I have been at Moda Center for about two years,” said Barrow. “They were big operations, with events of up to 20,000 people all at once, so it’s a little different but the scale of things is very familiar. Before that, I spent my whole career in restaurants.”
Barrow expressed his excitement in learning more about collegiate dining services, and already has ideas for small-scale changes to make to LC’s dining hall experience.
“There are always going to be little things that change, little evolutions. With any large food service operation, a lot of it is going to be dependent on the personnel,” said Barrow.
It is important to Barrow that we are engaging with local farmers and salespeople not only to support our community, but also to provide the highest quality dining experience possible.
“One thing I am really excited about is that it is baked into our budget that we have to do a certain amount of locally-sourced food,” said Barrow. “I have worked with dedicated farm-to-table restaurants where we were going out to the farms, meeting the people who made the cheese, actually petting beautiful highland cows. It’s something you don’t really get an opportunity to do too much when you’re in (a) huge stadium.”
As of Oct. 31, Jensen has concluded his full-time schedule at LC, and Barrow is officially the new Director of Dining Services.
“I have had the pleasure of feeding over 9,000 students in my time here,” said Jensen. “For any of the wonderful students, alums, staff and faculty that I’ve worked with on and off for the past two decades, it has been a treasure. For anyone I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to, I am sorry. But I will still be around and I will still be a resource, and I will still come back and say hello to the community that I feel is family after this many years.”
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