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Retail giant Amazon partnered with Western Washington University last fall to launch its new Catalyst program to harness the ideas of the campus community to solve pressing societal issues.

The focus of all submissions for the first competition of the program centered around food insecurity on the nation’s campuses. For several weeks in Fall 2019, Amazon launched a special website designed to receive submissions from Western’s students, faculty and staff around the chosen topic; a six-member judging panel reviewed the 28 entries submitted through the site, and has announced three winners.

First prize, and an award of $7,500, went to students Aztlan Chavez, Pablo Flores, and Jennifer Kastner for their concept involving opening a new student store and food pantry in the Western Libraries available at no cost and attained by showing their student identification card.

Second prize and an award of $1,500 went to student Laurel Peterson for her idea about building a smartphone app that would show the locations and times of events on campus that offer free food, so food-insecure students could easily find and plan for the events.

Third prize and an award of $1,500 went to staff member David Engebretson for his concept of using special tags easily read by smartphones to deliver food and price information for campus community members with diverse learning techniques, such as those who are blind or have dyslexia.

“All three of these submissions show real promise in attacking various aspects of food insecurity,” said Brian Burton, Western Washington University associate vice president for Academic Affairs. “I’m pleased we can support them and look forward to helping these ideas become reality at Western.”

Food security is vital to success in any educational setting, and no student should experience hunger.

Burton added, “I want to thank the judges for their hard work. They did an amazing job evaluating a number of submissions and coming to consensus in a short period of time. I also want to say that there were many good submissions, and I appreciate all the people who made the effort to think about this important issue and respond.”

Food security is defined by access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. A late 2017 study of more than 30,000 college students found that approximately half of two-year and four-year students are food insecure. In fact, at least one-third of two-year students are also housing insecure, while up to 14 percent are battling homelessness on top of hunger – and lack of housing goes hand-in-hand with food insecurity.

Though the fundamental cause is lack of money in all cases, there are various contributing factors. Students experiencing this level of food insecurity show lower academic performance than those who are not, and although statistics are hard to come by, food-insecure students likely also show lower retention and graduation rates. Food security is vital to success in any educational setting, and no student should experience hunger.

For information about the Catalyst program, contact Brian Burton, associate vice president of Academic Affairs, at Brian.Burton@wwu.edu.