Understanding what drives food choices can help high-volume food service operations like universities reduce waste, according to a new study.

Researchers have concluded that food waste in places like university cafeterias is driven by how much people put on their plates, how familiar they are with what’s on the menu and how much they like – or don’t like – what they’re served.

Food waste has been studied often in households, but not so often in institutional settings like university dining commons. What drives food choices in these “all-you-care-to-eat” facilities is different because diners don’t perceive personal financial penalty if they leave food on their plates.

Published in the journal Foods, “Food Choice and Waste in University Dining Commons — A Menus of Change University Research Collaborative Study” was conducted by a team of experts from Rice University; the University of California, Davis; Stanford University; Lebanon Valley College; the University of California, Santa Barbara; and the University of California, Berkeley. Eleanor Putnam-Farr, assistant marketing professor at the Jones Graduate School of Business, led the effort at Rice.

The researchers conducted student surveys during the 2019 spring and fall semesters to study foods types, diner confidence and diner satisfaction. They used photos taken by diners themselves before and after eating to measure how much food was taken and how much of it went to waste. “Diners were intercepted at their dining halls and asked if they wanted to participate in a study about food choices and satisfaction, but the objective of investigating food waste behavior was not disclosed,” the authors wrote.

The study found the amount of food wasted didn’t significantly differ among types of food. Instead, researchers discovered waste was related to the amount of food diners put on their plates, how satisfied they were with their meals and how often they went to the dining commons. If students were satisfied with their food, they tended waste less of it. And diners who visited the commons most often — making them more familiar with the menus and more confident in their choices — tended to waste less.

Mixed dishes, like sandwiches or stir-fry, took up a greater percentage of the surface area on surveyed plates than animal proteins or grains and starches. Those three types of food took up a greater area of the plates than fruits, vegetables or plant proteins. The amount of food wasted, however, did not significantly differ among the various food categories.

The mixed dishes and animal proteins that took up greater portions of the plate tended to be pre-plated by the commons staff or have a suggested serving size. The study’s results showed that greater amounts of food taken by diners correlated with the item being pre-plated or served by others.

The authors recommend future research on the topic uses their multicampus approach — which enabled them to study food choice among a large and diverse group — to better understand what causes food waste and find out if it can be reduced by interventions such as posting signs that encourage healthier choices.

Whether parents prefer a conformance-oriented or independence-oriented supplemental education program for their children depends on political ideology, according to a study of more than 8,500 American parents by a research team from Rice University and the University of Texas at San Antonio.

“Conservative parents have a higher need for structure, which drives their preference for conformance-oriented programs,” said study co-author Vikas Mittal, a professor of marketing at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business. “Many parents are surprised to learn that their political identity can affect the educational choices they make for their children.”

Supplemental education programs include private tutoring, test preparation support and educational books and materials as well as online educational support services. The global market for private tutoring services is forecasted to reach $260.7 billion by 2024, and the U.S. market for tutoring is reported to be more than $8.9 billion a year. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 100,000 businesses in the private education services industry. Supplemental education program brands are among the top 500 franchises in Entrepreneur magazine’s 2020 rankings, and they include popular providers such as Kumon (ranked No. 12), Mathnasium (No. 29) and Huntington Learning Center (No. 39).

For over five decades, education psychologists have utilized two pedagogical orientations — conformance orientation and independence orientation. A conformance orientation is more standardized and guided, emphasizing lecture-based content delivery, knowledge and memorization, frequent use of homework assignments, standardized examinations with relative evaluation and classroom attendance discipline and rules. In contrast, an independence orientation features discussion-based seminars and student-led presentations, an emphasis on ideas rather than facts, use of multimodal interaction instead of books, and highly variable and unstructured class routines. The two approaches do not differ in terms of topics covered in the curriculum or the specific qualities to be imparted to students.

The research team asked parents about their preferences for different programs framed as conformance- or independence-oriented. In five studies of more than 8,500 parents, conservative parents preferred education programs that were framed as conformance-oriented, while liberal parents preferred independence-oriented education programs. This differential preference emerged for different measures of parents’ political identity: their party affiliation, self-reported political leaning and whether they watch Fox or CNN/MSNBC for news.

“By understanding the underlying motivations behind parents’ preferences, educational programs’ appeal to parents can be substantially enhanced,” Mittal said.

"Supplemental tutoring will be a major expenditure and investment for parents grappling with their child’s academic performance in the post-pandemic era. Informal conversations show parents gearing up to supplement school-based education with tutoring. Despite this, very little research exists about the factors that affect parents’ preference for and utilization of supplemental education.”

Mittal cautioned that these results do not speak to ultimate student performance. “This study only speaks to parents’ preferences but does not study ultimate student achievement,” he said.

The paper, “Political Identity and Preference for Supplemental Educational Programs,” which is forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing Research, was co-authored by professor Jihye Jung of UTSA. It can be downloaded at https://doi.org/10.1177/00222437211004252.

The George R. Brown School of Engineering, which ranks No. 29 nationally (up from No. 33 last year), has four programs or specialties in the top 25: bioengineering (tied for No. 10, up from No. 12), civil engineering (tied for No. 20, up from No. 27), computer engineering (tied for No. 22, up from No. 23) and environmental engineering (tied for No. 14, up from No. 15).

Other Rice Engineering programs rank in the top 30: chemical engineering (tied for No. 26), electrical engineering (tied for No. 27), materials science (tied for No. 28) and mechanical engineering (tied for No. 26, up from No. 29).

The Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, which ranks No. 25 nationally, has four programs in the top 25: entrepreneurship (tied for No. 10, up from No. 11), management (tied for No. 25), full-time MBA (No. 25), and the professional MBA program that U.S. News ranks in its part-time MBA category (tied for No. 17).

These rankings are among the nation’s most closely watched annual surveys of academic excellence. U.S. News evaluates universities across six major disciplines — business, education, engineering, law, medicine and nursing — and publishes the results to help inform prospective students.

The Best Graduate Schools rankings are based on expert opinions and statistical indicators measuring the quality of faculty, research and students. The data came from statistical surveys of more than 2,125 programs and from reputation surveys sent to more than 23,000 academics and professionals in fall 2020 and early 2021.

For more information on the rankings, go to the U.S. News Best Graduate Schools website.

Rice University’s Board of Trustees has approved a plan to enlarge its undergraduate student body by 20% to 4,800 by the fall of 2025.

The university will open a 12th residential college and expand the number of students living on campus by about one-third to 3,525. Although decisions on graduate student enrollment are more decentralized, Rice’s current population of roughly 3,500 degree-seeking graduate students is also expected to grow, bringing Rice’s total enrollment to approximately 9,000 by fall 2025.

This expansion will follow a roughly 35% increase in undergraduate enrollment between fall 2005 and 2013, as well as enlargement in graduate programs. With the newly announced expansion in enrollment, Rice’s student body will have grown by about 80% over two decades.

“Rice’s extraordinary applicant pool has grown dramatically despite the challenges posed by the pandemic,” President David Leebron said.

“With the previous expansion we greatly increased our national and international student applications, enrolment and visibility. We also dramatically increased diversity on our campus, and we were able to extend the benefits of a Rice education to many more students. As before, we must undertake this expansion carefully in order to assure that we retain the best aspects of Rice culture, student experience and sense of community.”

Higher enrollment will help Rice not only continue developing a more diverse and dynamic environment on campus, but also add more faculty members strategically recruited for specific objectives in teaching and research.

“The Board of Trustees strongly supports the expansion of the student body as a strategic imperative. Expanding the student body now will also expand Rice’s future alumni base across the nation and around the world,” said Robert Ladd, chair of the Rice Board of Trustees. “Welcoming more students to the Rice campus today will have an impact on the university for generations to come.”

Demand for a Rice education is high. The number of students applying to Rice has grown about 75% over the last four years, and especially after the university’s 2018 launch of the Rice Investment, a financial aid program that significantly expanded support for domestic students from families with incomes up to $200,000. In 2004, Rice received about 11 applications for every entering student; by 2020, the ratio had grown to roughly 28 applicants for every student opening. Almost 30,000 students applied for fall 2021, an increase of 26% from the previous year.

Under the university’s plan, the total number of degree-seeking undergraduates will scale up annually for five years, from just over 4,000 in fall 2020 to 4,800 in fall 2025. The full-time instructional faculty is expected to increase by nearly 50 by fall 2025. Rice’s undergraduate student-faculty ratio would remain roughly the same — about six faculty members for every undergraduate student.

An expanded student body will be accommodated by new construction on the campus, including a new engineering building, a new building for the visual and dramatic arts, an additional residential college and an expanded student center. In the first quarter of next year, the university will break ground on a new student center that will largely replace the Rice Memorial Center (RMC) familiar to generations of Rice students and alumni. Designed by the international architecture firm Adjaye Associates, the architects behind the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Rice’s new three-story, 80,000-square-foot student center will incorporate all of the RMC’s current functions, a multicultural center and a plethora of gathering and event spaces.

As the student body grows, so will Rice’s research capabilities. Despite the unusual circumstances imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the university has recently announced a series of major new initiatives as its external research funding has significantly increased.

The Welch Institute at Rice University, a sweeping strategic partnership launched in September 2020, will accelerate the discovery, design and manufacture of the next generation of basic materials. The $100 million commitment from the Robert E. Welch Foundation constitutes the largest single gift in Rice University’s history. The new materials developed at this institute could literally transform the world.

Carbon Hub, inaugurated in February 2020 with a $10 million commitment from Shell, is working with industry partners to create an energy future with zero carbon emissions. Instead of burning hydrocarbons and releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, hydrocarbons will be split to create clean-burning hydrogen fuel. Instead of carbon residue becoming a gas polluting the air, it will become a solid material that can be used to make everything from buildings to cars to household appliances. Carbon Hub will direct $100 million of basic science and engineering on an array of technologies, several of which have already been proven in the lab.

The Rice University National Security Research Accelerator laboratories, opened in October 2020, will accelerate the discovery and development of technologies for both military and civilian applications. The partnership with the Army Futures Command and the Army Research Laboratory represents a new model for collaborative research on critical technologies to enhance national security.

The new students will also be able to take advantage of another recently approved initiative. Rice’s top-ranked Jones Graduate School of Business will provide the faculty and administer the curriculum for the university’s first undergraduate major in business, which will be offered beginning this fall. Current freshmen and incoming undergraduates will be eligible.

Owl Have You Know

Season 1, Episode 17

Dr. Tom Kolditz, founding Director of the Ann and John Doerr Institute for New Leaders at Rice University, joins host David Droogleever. Tom explains why institutions of higher education don't necessarily deliver on their leadership development promises and what the Doerr Institute is doing to change that.

Subscribe to Owl Have You Know on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

By Jennifer Latson

None of us shed a tear for the commutes we lost when we first started working remotely. Their loss, we thought, was our gain — an extra hour (more or less) to do whatever we wanted with. Get in a workout! Cook a gourmet breakfast! Or, for some: More time to work!

Now, a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve started to miss our old routines — even the ones we never valued in the before times. It’s why the “fake commute” has become a thing: people put on “real clothes,” pack a lunch, leave their house, walk around the block, and then go back inside and sit at their desk to start the work day.

These people haven’t cracked: They’re taking an essential step toward rebuilding the boundaries that have blurred during lockdown, according to British researchers. “Engaging in a ‘pretend commute’ at the beginning and the end of the day not only provides an opportunity to build some physical activity into your daily routine but also provides an opportunity to transition between work and non-work parts of lives,” says University College London Professor Anna Cox.

Scott Sonenshein, an organizational psychologist at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, has been a fan of the fake commute since the early days of lockdown. It started as a way to get his two daughters to settle down for a day of virtual school, he says.

“At first there was nothing — there was no structure, there was no virtual program, and it was quickly obvious that they were languishing. My wife and I divided up the homeschooling responsibilities, and we talked about how to signal when the school day starts and stops,” he says. “I needed that marker for myself, too. So very quickly, probably within the first week, we decided to walk around the block and then come in, and that means you’re in school. They took it seriously — they’d put their backpacks on — but they also had fun with it. After a while they were like, ‘Can we ride our bikes to school? Can school be further away?’”

Replacing the old routine with a new one helped make the “new normal” less daunting, explains Sonenshein, the author of “Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less — And Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined” and the co-author, with Marie Kondo, of “Joy at Work.”

“Routines allow us to habituate action. They mean we don’t have to think about certain things; they happen automatically,” he says. “And they provide predictability, which these days is hard to come by. The paradox of the pandemic is that people are struggling with the monotony of lockdown, but we’re also longing for these routines that have been upended. This goes down to the deep-seated need humans have for control — that’s what we’re missing during the pandemic.”

Humans are hardwired to make and keep routines, in part because surprises are biologically alarming to us. We are, at heart, prediction machines, writes Kate Murphy, the author of “You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters.” Disrupting the way we’ve always 
done something — from driving to work to shopping for groceries — pulls the rug of predictability out from under us, sending our brains into a tailspin. 

“Our brains are literally overburdened with all the uncertainty caused by the pandemic,” she writes. “Things we had already figured out and relegated to the brain’s autopilot function — going to work, visiting the gym, taking the kids to school, meeting friends for dinner, grocery shopping — now require serious thought and risk analysis.”

In retrospect, our commutes may have been the unsung heroes of our old workdays. Not only did they create a valuable transition between our “on” and “off” hours, they gave us the opportunity to operate on autopilot, freeing up brainpower for new ideas and insights, Sonenshein says.

“Studies show that doing something mindless — just walking around the block or playing with a fidget spinner — allows your mind to wander and make connections. So even though it seems like you’re not working, the brain is working and coming up with ideas. Activities that don’t require a lot of concentration, but stimulate the brain really mildly are typically when the best insights come to you,” he says. “For many of us, those activities were built in to our old workdays. Just having a routine like walking to lunch or walking to get a coffee help make you more productive because you need that space to make the connections that don’t come to you when you’re thinking really hard about something.”

In addition to sparking good ideas, these mundane moments can also increase our sense of joy and purpose, says Samantha Heintzelman, a psychology professor at Rutgers University. By infusing our lives with pattern and regularity, they add a sense of coherence and comprehensibility to the world around us.

“When the world makes sense, life feels more meaningful,” she writes.

And while we tend to think of finding meaning in life as a grand, lightning-bolt moment, Heintzelman’s research shows that it’s more closely intertwined with the small habits we often take for granted: our morning hygiene regimen, our daily coffee runs, our weekly grocery shopping excursions.

“Some correlational research suggests that routines (e.g., consistently sitting in the same seat in a classroom or routinely visiting the same neighborhoods) are associated with feelings of comfort, confidence, safety, and control,” she wrote in a 2018 paper.

Those feelings are the scaffolding around which our sense of a larger purpose is constructed. The good news is that the routines themselves don’t matter as much as the sheer fact that they are routines: regular, reliable and consistent. Every routine was brand-new once, of course, and just doing something new once a day for two weeks will make it feel automatic—and likely to stick, King’s College London researcher Benjamin Gardner tells The Economist. That means the routines we established during lockdown are likely so well established by now that they’ll linger long after the pandemic ebbs. 

But it’s never too late to create new routines, Sonenshein says. We can start by letting go of the ones that no longer make sense in our new normal.

“Don’t focus on what you don’t have,” he says. “Find potential in what’s around you. That starts with taking stock of what you’re able to do and the places you can go.”

If your fake commute starts to get old, infuse it with the kind of (limited) novelty you might have done with your real pre-pandemic commute, he suggests. On their “commute” to “school” every morning, Sonenshein and his kids try to spot three new, interesting things each time.

“The commute is always the same, but there’s always at least three new things we notice,” he says. “It could be something new in someone’s yard, a flower sprouting from a gutter, or an interesting doorknob. I would bet you can get through the whole pandemic on your same route and find new things each time.”

The commute itself may be pretend, after all, but the benefits of sticking with it are very real.

Jennifer Latson is an editor at Rice Business and the author of “The Boy Who Loved Too Much.”