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4th April 2011
University of Nebraska wins award
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln hosted the 2010 Special Olympics National Games, only the second one in the history of the organization. This was the largest event of this kind ever to take place in Lincoln, NE requiring collaboration from over 20 entities internal and external to the University. Planning began in 2007 for the event.
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln served as the base of operations during the Games. The Athletic department and Campus Recreation worked with the organisers for two years in planning each event. Consideration had to be given not only to the competition itself, but also to accommodating spectators, families, volunteers, and media. It’s estimated that over 15,000 fans were in Lincoln for the Games.
The Conference Services department was responsible for providing sleeping accommodation and dining services for over 3,700 athletes, coaches, and officials. The operation had never served a single group of this size, over 28,000 bednights in total.
We worked with our event management software company, Kinetic Software, to develop additional functionality that enabled us to track a number of pieces of information about each guest. The new developments were crucial in managing such a large event and allowed us to respond to needs more quickly and ultimately offer better guest service.
Dining Services had a number of especially large challenges. To prevent the spread of a communicable disease that could bring the Games to a halt, Dining Services staff served food in our buffet lines instead of the guests all handling the same utensils. Dining Services also had to accommodate thousands of guests with special dietary needs. The staff received additional training and months of time were put into planning menus that were not only healthy for athletes, but also fit their numerous dietary needs. Finally, Dining Services was challenged with providing boxed lunches for everyone at the off-campus competitions. Because of the varied nature of competition, boxed lunch numbers could only be provided at midnight, ten hours before they were to be picked up for distribution. A crew of fifteen staff members assembled thousands of boxed lunches overnight, totalling over 10,000 by the time the event was over.
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