In 2017, about a dozen students, faculty and staff at the University of Alaska Anchorage banded together with a shared goal to help students who struggled to meet their basic needs. Amanda Walch, a UAA associate professor of dietetics and nutrition, said the Hunger and Homeless Support Network formed in reaction to stories heard around campus about students stressed by the cost of housing, child care and food.
“All of it was related to the financial barriers of going to school,” said Walch, one of the group’s founding members.
In January, several dozen people gathered on campus to celebrate an idea, hatched back then, that has finally taken hold. The Seawolf Food Pantry now occupies a bright room in the Professional Studies Building where students can pick up nonperishable food for themselves and household members at no cost. The “re-launch” event celebrated the pantry’s recent expansion with games and tours.
“I love that they’re making a party out of it, because I know it is a stigma for so many kids,” said social work student Orsalia Hoynes. “There shouldn’t be shame. If you’re in need, come.”
Hoynes speaks from experience. She said she turned to the food pantry, launched on a smaller scale in 2022, after she ended a relationship. She recalled picking up granola bars and canned fruit. “It was such a blessing,” she said. “I think there’s a massive need for it, which is why this is amazing. Every time I get the chance, I tell someone about it.”
Organizers say word is still spreading of the pantry’s existence, but there is evidence that it’s reaching more people. After it first opened in 2022, the pantry helped 10 to 20 students a month, said Walch, who helps oversee it. Now it serves more than 50 students each month. Walch expects demand will continue to climb.
Once housed in a small office, the pantry now occupies a former conference room, and features sturdy shelving, a neon sign and a student employee. Quantities available are based on household size up to four people. Currently, six people — four faculty members, one staff member and one student — keep it going, Walch said. Funding comes primarily through the University of Alaska Foundation’s UAA Food Insecurity Fund and private donations. This semester, the pantry is open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2 to 5 p.m.
“We’ve kind of been piecemealing things together, but it’s working,” Walch said.
Keely Livingston, a master’s of public health student, checks in students and cold-calls Anchorage businesses to ask if they’d like to chip in. A tree-themed mural on the pantry wall names 21 organizations that have helped in some way.
“I just want to see people have the chance to have dinner with their families and not worry about where their next meal is coming from,” Livingston said.
Travis Hedwig, assistant dean for the Division of Population Health Sciences, said that concern is valid. In 2019, he co-authored a study with Kathi R. Trawver, professor in UAA’s School of Social Work, to gauge the extent of food insecurity in the UAA student population. The definition used for the study, which was published in the Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, was “the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, or the ability to acquire such foods in a socially acceptable manner.”
About 45% of 193 respondents indicated a challenge with food security at some point during their UAA experience, the study reported. Forty-four percent said they had experienced not being able to afford balanced meals. Forty-four percent said they had skipped or cut the size of meals due to cost. Fifteen students (8.4%) reported having not eaten for a day due to lack of funds.
The extent of food insecurity at UAA is consistent with national trends among university students. A study published by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in 2023 called food insecurity “pervasive” among college students in the U.S.
“College students have often been considered to be of a ‘privileged’ or ‘elite’ group, however many across the country, including those enrolled in private universities, struggle with food insecurity,” said the study by Brittany Loofbourrow, of University of California Davis, and Rachel Scherr, of San Francisco State University. “Students are a group which is highly impacted by food insecurity; prevalence estimates on campuses range between 19% to 56%, with many campuses reporting food insecurity prevalence around four times the national average.”
The expansion of the food pantry on campus reflects momentum in addressing basic needs at UAA, Hedwig said. “I talk to faculty who experience students in their class with all manner of vulnerabilities, including this,” he said. “So there’s this awareness-building moment, and I do think we’re moving the needle. I think there’s more awareness now than there was even last year.”
Walch said she’s exploring avenues to procure food at wholesale prices. For now, Jenifer Leigh, a program coordinator for UAA’s Human Services Department, obtains it the old-fashioned way. “I’m a thrifty shopper,” she said.
Once or twice a week, Leigh loads up the trunk and back seat of her two-door Honda with food she buys at retail grocery stores, including Red Apple, Walmart and Costco. On a Monday morning in February, she wheeled about $700 worth of items into the Professional Studies Building to complete a resupply mission.
At the January re-launch event, David Weaver, UAA’s executive director for dining, catering and housing, said he also has seen the need for the pantry in the student population. Inflation has hit students hard, he said.
“For middle-class, gainfully employed people, it’s maybe less of a hit. But for working poor, (which) includes working poor college students, (it’s a) huge, huge issue,” Weaver said. “We don’t see it. It’s hidden.”
“Hundreds of students a year will benefit from this,” he said of the pantry.
Kimmy Cao, a UAA political science student, said she’s helping to spread the word to students who struggled like she once did.
“I’m from California and the fruit and veggies there are super cheap,” she said. “And here everything is so expensive and I had some struggles trying to buy groceries.” Cao recalls picking up canned food, pasta, rice, pancake mix and apple sauce.
Walch said she hopes to be able to offer some fresh foods soon. A recent Rasmuson Foundation grant for expansion will include refrigeration. Help is also coming in from other campus organizations — like the Athletics Department, which recently held a food drive, and Parking Services, which three times has steered two weeks’ worth of parking fines to the pantry. Dining Services donates a portion of its catering proceeds to the UAA Food Insecurity Fund, which in turn helps the pantry. Mosaic, a campus ministry group, raised $1,000, Walch said.
“People care on campus,” Walch said. “Especially other students.”
On a recent Tuesday afternoon, anthropology student Valerie Tony selected only what she thought she’d be able to easily carry. She partially filled a shopping bag with items including pasta, rice, oatmeal and canned chicken as she chatted with staff.
“We just got in some herbal tea,” Walch said. “That’s my drug of choice,” Tony replied.
Tony, a mother of three, recalled a worry she shared with her niece when they both started classes at UAA years ago. “Our greatest concern as single parents, single mothers, was ‘How are we going to feed our kids?’” she said. She called current food prices “astronomical.” The pantry helps supplement her other shopping trips, she said.
This semester, Tony, who has three kids at home, is working on her final class before she earns her bachelor’s degree.
“It’s so standard to receive an undergrad degree, such a standard way of existing …” she said. “And yet it took so long, so much effort for me to get there.”