Former ASPEC President Lynne Schrum, Ph.D., and her husband, Dave Hall, sort the collected groceries for summer students living on campus.
Like Santa’s helpers in polo shirts, three members of the Academy of Senior Professionals at Eckerd College walked into Eckerd’s West Lodge lounge on a recent Monday morning pulling carts filled with nonperishable food—cereal, mac and cheese, tuna pouches. The group had just arrived from Lewis House, where they had collected the food donated by ASPEC members and others during the previous week.
Now former ASPEC President Lynne Schrum, Ph.D.; her husband, Dave Hall; and current ASPEC President Bob Hopewell were stacking the boxes and bags on a counter for students to take whenever they passed by, or after they received an email that the food had arrived.
Corralling a meal on the College campus during summer can be tricky, especially if you have an internship. “The cafe is open for [kids’] camps throughout the summer, and the hours vary,” explains Jamey Handorf ’06, associate dean for campus auxiliary operations. “Students are able to pay the door rate at the Main Cafeteria throughout the summer when the cafe is open. The summer schedule for the cafe is dictated by the amount and size of the camps that are on campus. The campus community gets an email weekly with updates about the hours for that week.
“When the cafe is open, it has an assortment of options available—including pizza, salad bar, grill station, among many other assorted offerings,” Handorf adds. “It is very similar to what is offered during the normal academic year.”
Handorf says roughly 200 students live on campus during the summer, all of them housed in areas that have functional lounges left undamaged by last year’s hurricanes.
ASPEC President Bob Hopewell joyfully delivers the nonperishable food to the common areas for summer students to collect.
Lynne, an ASPEC member since 2020, came up with the idea of a food pantry for summer students in July of 2024. Now retired, she had worked as a professor at the University of Georgia, a department chair at The University of Utah and George Mason University, and finished her career as a dean of colleges of education at West Virginia University and Nova Southeastern University Fischler School. She has written 21 books and numerous research articles, and she was the editor of the Journal of Research on Technology in Education from 2002–2018.
Lynne started the food pantry by focusing on donated, nonperishable food. Originally located at the Triton’s Pub on campus, the pantry has since relocated to the three residence halls that house summer students: Iota, Omega and West Lodge.
“Last July [in 2024], I had just become president of ASPEC, and we started collecting food for the students on campus—many of them doing internships,” Lynne explains.
“There was only one place where anybody could cook anything. So we figured it all out. Many of us have grandchildren in college and know how much they need food during the summer.”
This summer, new president Bob picked up where Lynne left off. “[We delivered] once a week through July,” Lynne says. “Mostly, students [look] for shelf-stable food they can grab and go for a quick breakfast, lunch or snack—no can opener or cooking required.”
