![\"i3Vp5BGS\"](\"http:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/i3Vp5BGS.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
How can I go about starting a cooking club on my college campus?<\/p>\n
While this process is going to vary from school to school, at the small
\nliberal arts college that I attend (Goucher College in Towson, MD), the
\nprocess of starting up a club is simple.<\/p>\n
What you need:
\n\u2022 A student president (i.e. yourself)
\n\u2022 A treasurer (i.e. your best friend or your roommate or that random
\nguy you connected with over X-hobby)
\n\u2022 A faculty advisor (i.e. your favorite professor)
\n\u2022 Student interest (i.e. some number of interested students that
\nprobably varies from campus to campus; at Goucher, there is no set
\nnumber; it is judged based on the club, though they do provide space to
\nlist ten members on the club petition form)<\/p>\n
Once you have all of these items, you simply fill out a form and prepare
\na little speech to present in front of Club Council. At Goucher, Club
\nCouncil consists of about 15 students, who represent various clubs.
\nAfter you petition to start up your club, the fate of whether or not
\nyour club gets approved is in their hands. Clubs are more likely to be
\napproved if
\n1. they fill a niche that was previously unfilled,
\n2. there is a lot of student interest, and
\n3. they contribute something worthwhile to the campus community.<\/p>\n
If your college does not have a cooking club and you can find enough
\ninterested students (Free food? Who wouldn\u2019t be interested?), then you
\nshould be good to go.<\/p>\n
Another thing Club Councils will probably be looking for is a cohesive
\nmission statement and a plan for the structure of the club. How is it
\ngoing to work? What kinds of events are you going to have? Where are you
\ngoing to get funding (most colleges have some sort of allotted club
\nbudget)? Consider these questions carefully.<\/p>\n
Because Goucher is so small, a lot of the clubs are the product of a
\ngroup of friends getting together and starting them up. Unfortunately,
\nit often happens that when those students graduate (or study abroad),
\nthe club dies out, especially if the club leaders do not actively look
\nfor club members to continue their legacy. So if you do decide to start
\na new club, be aware of this issue, and keep your eyes peeled for a
\nsuccessor.<\/p>\n
The way that the Goucher\u2019s Cooking Club functions (started by a couple
\nof my friends) is that we have weekly meetings, during which we either
\ncook a meal or dessert. We meet for a pretty long period of time\u2014usually
\nthree hours\u2014so that we can cook multiple dishes or several desserts.
\nTypically, we choose the recipes at the beginning of the week and send
\nout an email saying what we are going to be making that week (usually,
\nour meetings are on Fridays). At this point, Cooking Club has a
\nsubstantial email list, with over 100 people.<\/p>\n
How did Cooking club get so many people on its email list? It started
\nwith posters. Also, the club president set up a table at a number of
\ndifferent events, like \u201cclub rush,\u201d at which clubs set up tables and
\ninterested students can move from table to table to learn about clubs
\nthey are interested in. Word of mouth is also one of the best ways to
\nget people interested.<\/p>\n
Because of the large email list, the club does not really do any
\nadvertising for weekly meetings other than sending out emails. The
\nmeetings can typically only support about 10 people, because you don\u2019t
\nwant too many cooks in the kitchen. However, we do hope to have some
\nlarger group activity, at some point, for which we might engage in other
\nadvertising techniques, like putting up posters or making a Facebook
\nevent (there is currently a Facebook page). Cooking club has cooked food
\nfor several events, like a fall festival and International Students Day,
\nbut it has yet to host any event involving non-club members.<\/p>\n
To prepare for weekly meetings, after emailing members about what we are
\ncooking, the club president makes a list of all the ingredients and the
\namounts of ingredients that we are going to need. A day or so before the
\nmeeting, we go shopping for ingredients. When the club was first
\nstarting, we often purchased cooking supplies as well as ingredients,
\nbecause, as we planned meals, we would discover more materials we
\nneeded. For example, we would want to make cupcakes, but we wouldn\u2019t
\nhave a cupcake pan.<\/p>\n
At Goucher, the club treasurer deals with reimbursements for all of the
\npurchases. Fortunately for us, because Goucher has such a large budget
\nfor clubs, all Cooking Club\u2019s purchases are paid for by the college. In
\nfact, in comparison with some of the other clubs, cooking club does not
\nspend that much money.<\/p>\n
Because of my own veganism, I was able to persuade the president and
\ntreasurer of cooking club (who happen to be my roommates) to host some
\nvegan cooking. Before this, we also had made some dishes that happened
\nto be vegan, like a very delicious Thai curry butternut squash soup.
\nAlso, almost all of the food we have cooked (if not all of it) has been
\nvegetarian (in part because meat just makes everything more complicated,
\nas well as the fact that two of the club leaders are vegetarian).
\nWhen we were purposely cooking vegan, we had a vegan dessert night, for
\nwhich we made cupcakes, no-bake cookies, and baked cookies. At another
\nmeeting, we made soft, chewy vegan chocolate chip cookies. Having these
\nkinds of meetings that focus on vegan cooking is a great way to get
\nconversation started about alternative diets like veganism and
\nvegetarianism. Food (especially if it is paid for by your college!) is a
\ngreat way to raise awareness and interest. Alas, there is no vegan
\ncooking club on campus. But perhaps there will be soon\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How can I go about starting a cooking club on my college campus? While this process is going to vary from school to school, at the small liberal arts college that I attend (Goucher College in Towson, MD), the process of starting up a club is simple. What you need: \u2022 A student president (i.e. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8926"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8928,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8926\/revisions\/8928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}