Why Meal Plans?
Campus dining at Carnegie Mellon is about great food. But more importantly it is about creating community-oriented dining experiences for the entire university faculty, staff and students. Especially for first year students, dining on campus - like living on campus - helps students orient and adapt to life at Carnegie Mellon.
Our 24-hour, active learning environment, filled with new freedoms and responsibilities for most of our new students, can seem overwhelming at times. Our food locations and dining rooms are intentional places where students can meet and connect with each other, form friendships, find common interests or new and challenging perspectives - all in safe and supportive surroundings. Many students see their daily meals as times of day and at places where relaxing and recharging can be the priority.
Carnegie Mellon feels so strongly about the positive benefits of new students living and eating on campus regularly that we require housing and a meal plan for all first-year students. So we've created Plaid Plans - a selection of meal plans with varying levels of value meals and dineXtra available each week to support student preferences. You are given the opportunity to make more choices about when, where, and how often you eat on campus and with a few local vendors in the Oakland community.
Because of the variety of types of food available on campus and the many dining locations with varying hours per day, Dining Services has been very successful in serving the needs of a dining population with diverse tastes and requirements for international and cultural cuisine, vegetarian and vegan diets, and special food-related medical needs. We employ on campus an executive chef, a registered dietician and other food professionals who work with individual students on nutrition and diet choices.
A core emphasis in the provision of dining services at Carnegie Mellon is to teach students life-long habits around healthy diets and nutrition. We partner with many other departments on campus to also support the physical, social, spiritual and psychological wellness of our students.