Ben Garbacz/Daily Mining Gazette The new layout for the Social House at Wadsworth Hall allows for multiple spaces within the same room. Each space is specified by color, dividers and differing furniture, giving students a choice of areas to sit and socialize while enjoying their meals. The circular medallions are one type of dividers featured in the room which keep areas separated yet sill accessible.

HOUGHTON — Michigan Technological University’s redesign of the Wadsworth Hall dining hall, now named the Social House at Wadsworth Hall, was showcased Wednesday afternoon during an open house. Visitors and university personnel could tour the space and sample some of the food and beverages students are served. The Social House serves as more than a location for meals, but also as a gathering place for students with several separate meeting areas..

Higher education contract foodservice provider Chartwells Higher Ed worked with Michigan Tech in the redesign as part of the partnership through 2033. While the renovated hall has served students since the beginning of the current school year, Wednesday’s event served as the official reveal. The open house was kicked off with a few words from Chartwells Resident District Manager David Banker.

“Since 1955, this hall has been at the center of Michigan Tech’s social gatherings,” he said. “Generations of Huskies have been here to eat and socialize. Last year alone over 490,000 meals were served out of this dining hall, [and] we’re expecting over a half a million this year. The transformation of this space, its new design, fresh concepts, tastes and meals have transformed it from more than just a dining hall, to a social gathering place.”

Social House at Wadsworth is separated into several different spaces with a variety of dividers with each space signified by different colors of flooring, walls and even chairs. All spaces are accessible, though the defined boundary spaces make it easier for multiple small gatherings or groups of people to happen within the same building without intruding in another student’s area.

Each space has different furniture and layouts to best accommodate student’s needs. Some areas have larger tables for those who’d like to study with one another while eating, and some areas have chairs that can be moved closer to one another for those looking to meet up and have conversations. One of the areas has booths which connect to one another side by side, but have dividers made of crossed hockey sticks.

“I love the flow of it,” Banker said. “When you walk through the hall, it has geometric curves that sweep around and your eye doesn’t stop at any one location. When you look in a normal dining space, it’s geometrically square or a block style. That’s not the case here. Even if you were to go into a cubicle area, it’s very square and that’s not the case with these spaces. They are broken up by the color of the carpeting on the floor to give distinction from one area to the next, and it give students the feeling that they’re in their own spaces.”

When students enter the hall, the stations that serve a variety of foods with options accommodating health and other preferences are all on one side and then the variety of sitting spaces lies on the other between multiple dividers.

Banker explained each college that Chartwells works with has spaces which best serves that university, but the Social House at Michigan Tech stands out with the unique designs of the dividers such as the hockey sticks, glass panels and metal circle medallions. While the appearance is a large component of the redesign, Banker also said the technology is moving forward.

“We’re upgrading the technology in the hall as well. We have new digital displays that are going up, and they have more nutritional information that students will have access to, so they’ll have more knowledge about what’s in the ingredients that’s in the menus. We’re just trying to bring a better opportunity for the students to feel like they’re involved in the environment itself, rather than just walking in, grabbing your food, sitting down, being done and leaving,” he said.

Embedded Counselor in Residence Education and Housing Services James Grider works with Husky Eats, the college’s dining services department, to emphasize the importance of diet and mental health. Grider said the new layout of the Social House at Wadsworth Hall allows people to be closer together and encourages socialization instead of leaving right after a meal is finished. He said the space also assists one of the most important aspects of mental health with healthy options.

“There are three things that we talk about that people can do to help their own mental health,” Grider explained. “Number one is get good sleep — six to eight hours a night. Number two is exercising, getting out there, out of the dorm and experience going for a walk on the tech trails, or whatever it is. Then the last one is eating. So if they eat right, then their neurons are going to fire the trillions in your head so much better when you go to class, because no one wants to go to class hungry.”