Bits of Business | Student-run food pantry set for PSU
After paying for tuition, room, board and textbooks, some students don’t have much money left for food, leaving them desperate for nutrition throughout the semester.
A group of students hope to change that with Lion’s Pantry, an on-campus food pantry for students, which will open its doors next to the Blue Band Building Thursday.
Junior energy engineering major Alex Mendonca is one of 10 students leading the effort two years after a friend wentto him and other Chi Phi brothers with the idea.
“Cliff Hamilton came to us with this cool idea, and we were going to do it for Chi Phi, but we also saw a universitywide need,” Mendonca said. “We talked to students and people in the community and decided there was a need for it.”
Students can register to benefit from the pantry from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m Thursday at the pantry and can get food from pantry from 6 to 8 p.m. The same process will take place Dec. 11 and will be open at the same times every Thursday in the spring semester.
Mendonca expects about 100 students to register in the first week.
“We’ve looked at different models at a lot of other universities, and every model based on the honor system was set up by students,” Mendonca said. “We believe students will follow the honor system, and with the support of students and the community we believe we can meet the needs of those students that need a little help.”
For more information, email lionspantrypsu@ gmail.com.
Sheetz to open
in Centre Hall
Sheetz has had success in Centre County, so the company is going back to the well with a new store in Centre Hall.
They plan to open the store Dec. 11 at the Old Fort intersection.
“We don’t have a bad store in Centre County, so that’s one reason that we wanted to build one in Centre Hall,” Sheetz spokesman Steve Augustine said.
The intersection is a prime location for the store, Augustine said.
“It has a lot of criteria we look for in a new store,” he said. “We do well when we find a corner location with about 15,000 vehicles that pass through each day, and there are over 15,000 vehicles that pass through there each day.”
The store will be 6,474 square feet with interior dining and will employ about 40 people.
AccuWeather increases global presence
AccuWeather, a weather forecasting company based in State College, expanded its MinuteCast service to 12 countries in November.
MinuteCast is a minute-to-minute forecast of precipitation, which includes precipitation type and intensity, for users’ street addresses or GPS locations for the next two hours.
The company expanded the service to France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Netherlands, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic in addition to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Japan.
“Providing AccuWeather MinuteCast in these new nations supports our continued focus on bringing the best available forecasts to users at every location on Earth,” Chief Digital Officer Steven Smith said in a statement.
AccuWeather offers other types of forecasts throughout the world.
This story was originally published November 29, 2014 at 11:45 PM with the headline "Bits of Business | Student-run food pantry set for PSU."