Penn State dietitian brings support, sense of belonging to campus community

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Heading off to college for the first time can be stressful enough, but for students with food allergies or dietary restrictions, finding the right meals can be an added source of stress and anxiety.

That’s where Katy Petrosky comes in. As corporate registered dietitian for Penn State, Petrosky works with students who have special dietary needs to navigate options at Penn State’s dining commons.

“When you have a food allergy or a special dietary need, when you think about going away from home for the first time and spending four years somewhere, certainly, academics and culture are important,” Petrosky said. “But you also want to know, ‘Can I eat?’”

Petrosky is one of two dietitians at University Park who help students to find meals that work for them at no additional cost to their chosen meal plan. She helps to implement training and plans to avoid cross-contamination within the kitchens on campus. In her line of work, she’s often face-to-face with the adjustments an incoming student is dealing with.

“Some people have never eaten outside of their home. They have never, ever, ever eaten anywhere but at their parent's house, at the grandparents’ house, these safe places,” Petrosky said. “And then they arrive on our doorstep.”

Petrosky previously worked as a hospital food service director. Her days involved a lot more administrative and higher-level planning, but her current position puts her directly in contact with the people she’s helping to feed. The work starts early, she said, to cultivate comfort and belonging before students arrive on campus.

Students indicate dietary needs during orientation or by contacting the Registered Dietitian’s Office by email at foodallergies@psu.edu. From there, Petrosky works with them to help ensure that they have what they need when they arrive. Often, that work involves consulting with parents and other family members — even in cases where students are coming to the University from overseas — as the dining plan is developed.

“We work with students one-on-one, sometimes before they're even students. When folks are juniors and high school seniors, trying to figure out where they want to go, we do a lot of back-and-forth emailing,” Petrosky said.

Petrosky will work with the student to come up with plans for where to eat and what meals are in line with their needs for that first year on campus. As students are juggling so many new factors, she said, her work helps to take one stressful thing off their plate.

That can include anything from finding meal options that don’t have peanuts, to working with students from India who practice Jainism — a belief system focused on escaping a cycle of rebirth through nonviolent living. Those who practice Jainism avoid anything grown underground, among other things.

“Our goal is to get the student to a place where they feel comfortable navigating on their own, advocating for themselves,” Petrosky said. “We always let them know we're here, whatever you need. But ideally, it's great to get students set up before they come to campus, so that they feel comfortable and that stress is gone.”

The work doesn’t always stop there, though. Students may choose to live in a different residence hall or area of campus after their first year or move to off-campus housing. In those cases, Petrosky said, her services as a dietitian are still available for additional support.

“Maybe they want to touch base with us and say, ‘Hey, can you tell me what’s safe at this dining hall? I just want to make sure I know the drill here before I start,’” Petrosky said. “We'll come back and help them through that transition, or with living off-campus with a commuter dining plan. We’ll help ease that transition.”

Petrosky’s office works with students at some of the Commonwealth Campuses, too. Nine of the campuses include Penn State-run food service operations, and students at those campuses will receive the same services a University Park student does if they need dining plans or accommodations.

While Petrosky is responsible for working with the students, she isn’t the one in the kitchen making the meals. Her work is possible, she said, because of support from managers and cooks within dining units who are preparing the meals students need.

“The culinary team, the chef team, the food service management team, we work to make sure that we have enough variety on our menu that we can accommodate students with various dietary needs,” Petrosky said. “Hiring the chefs and hiring the dietitians elevated what the program can do. There are more people doing the work, and more who are monitoring dietary trends.”

Petrosky's work also involves master’s degree students working toward becoming registered dietitians and undergraduate students working in the dining halls. Graduate students embedded within dining units learn aspects of food management with assistance from Petrosky and the Registered Dietitian’s Office to execute projects like a themed meal or special menu item, while undergraduates create social media posts and tabling events related to nutrition and healthy eating.

The entire team works together to ensure that menus have the options students need, and that the ingredients being used meet nutritional expectations.

“We have a food database, and we do a lot of work there to make sure that we know the ingredient information of the food items that we bring in,” Petrosky said. “If there has to be a substitution, we have to very carefully vet each product to make sure that it matches up with the nutritional information, from approved ingredients to allergens.”

Across the campuses Petrosky’s office covers, approximately 2,000 students listed food restrictions on their NSO forms for the 2023-24 academic year. Everyone was contacted by her office, she said, but fewer than 200 needed additional support — and fewer than 10 needed a fully developed and individualized dining plan, Petrosky said.

Second-year student Om Dobariya is one of the students who’s utilized the services Petrosky offers. He transitioned to the Swaminarayan denomination of Hinduism during his first year on campus, he said, which requires followers to avoid eating meat, certain animal byproducts, onions and garlic. At first, finding options for meals was incredibly challenging.

“It was hard because onions and garlic are so prevalent in American dishes. But I was firm,” Dobariya said. “For about two weeks, I just ate fruits and stuff like that.”

Dobariya struggled so much in finding meal options, he said, that it was hurting his focus in class and making him question his decision to attend Penn State.

“I was worrying about what my next meal would be," Dobariya said. “And I was thinking of leaving Penn State because of this reason. I would have transferred to somewhere in a bigger city.”

When a professor heard what he was going through, though, she helped him to connect with Petrosky’s team. Dobariya and Petrosky worked with the dining halls to develop a dining plan that works for him, without any of the animal byproducts or other foods he needed to avoid.

Now, he gets a variety of meals to choose from, ranging from cucumber sandwiches to burritos and traditional Indian dishes — among other things — that allow him to stay healthy and well-fed.

“It was definitely a factor that completely changed my life,” Dobariya said. “I can get any sort of meals I want. I get like different kinds of salads, and I can get a lot of supplementary stuff with protein I need.”

One of Dobariya’s favorite snacks is fries, he said. But the standard fries offered in dining halls have been in fryers that are used for other foods that have egg-based batter. Through the dining plan he now has, the dining halls he visits will use a separate air fryer for his fries to prevent contamination, and he can comfortably eat them.

He sends his weekly schedule to dining halls in advance and together, the team figures out what food he’ll be picking up and from where each day. Then his food is prepared about an hour before he gets there, so he doesn’t have to wait for it.

“They have always been so friendly. They've always heard all my concerns, and they've always worked with any issue that I have,” Dobariya said. “When I tell them, ‘Oh, I'm bored, just give me anything special,’ they're open to anything different like that.”

The dining plan and assistance from Petrosky and the staff at dining halls are how he’s been able to stay at Penn State, he said. Not only is the food in line with his needs, but it’s also fun to eat — something he said makes a difference for his experiences on campus.

"It’s helped me thrive, not only in my physical health. I can do better in my studies, and on other things, too,” Dobariya said. “With all these options, I'm so proud of Penn State. I'm like an ambassador now.”

Not every student with food restrictions will require that level of assistance, Petrosky said, because the dining halls currently offer enough choice and variety to meet their needs without too much customization. But for those who do have more limited diets, the chefs and dietitians are happy to work with them.

Dining halls have grown to offer more diverse food selections than they did even when she was a student a few years ago, Petrosky said, with options like chickpea stews and acai bowls.

“This is not your mother’s dining hall. Before, it was more, ‘Here's what we're having, eat it or don't,’” Petrosky said. “But the culinary program has really grown and evolved. We’re bringing in new items, bringing items from other countries.”

But the number of students who need to monitor what they’re eating for allergens or religious exclusions increases every year, Petrosky said. The work that she and the dining commons staff do is focused on making Penn State as welcoming as possible for that growing population as they study and live at the University.

“If there's people who will say, ‘Penn State did a really good job for me and kept me safe. I liked eating on campus,’ hearing that, yeah, it's worth it all,” Petrosky said.