MSU Sociology alumna at the helm of the MSU Food Bank
February 11, 2025 - Karessa Weir
In this season of celebrations and festivities often centered on food, the MSU Student Food Bank sees the most need.
Kara Swain, MSU Sociology alumna and coordinator of the MSU Student Food Bank, started in August. She says she has already seen how the need of the food bank ebbs and flows. She says she is witnessing participants weather changes in the economy and balance classes with multiple jobs as they try to find enough food for their families.
“By having access to food, it helps them to live with dignity,” Swain said as she toured the storage rooms.
The MSU Student Food Bank, housed in Olin Health Center, serves 500-600 people per year with a staff of 25 student workers and volunteers. Swain is the only full-time employee.
In 1993, the Student Food Bank started as a student-led club – the first in the nation to be run by students for students – to address the problem of food insecurity among MSU students and their families.
Today the MSU Student Food Bank is under the umbrella of University Health and Wellness. It partners with the Greater Lansing Food Bank to purchase food at a lower cost.
In the course of one year, the MSU Student Food Bank serves more than 6,000 students, many with families, and distributes more than 110,000 pounds of food. They have the typical items of canned vegetables and boxed macaroni and cheese but also have coolers full of soup, milk, fresh vegetables and fruit.
They also collect and distribute a wide variety of household and hygiene products including diapers, menstruation products, dish and laundry soap and toilet paper.
Swain proudly opens a huge freezer full of meat, fish and chicken, and thanks to a surprise donation, boxes of Starbuck’s breakfast sandwiches.
Meanwhile, student workers and volunteers are busy clearing boxes and filling bags.
Swain has had a long history of working directly with people in need, finding Sociology as a field where her values and interests intersected. She came to MSU as a transfer student from Lansing Community College in 2014.
“In the first day of my sociology class, I didn’t know what to expect but the minute we really got into the lecture, I realized I had an “aha” moment that this is the field for me,” she said. “It felt that my values and interests finally aligned especially when we started talking about race, ethnicity, gender and class. It just reminded me that I had all of these questions about social forces in the world and questions that were unanswered.”
At MSU she learned the systemic roots of problems such as hunger and the ways society has to create partnerships to combat it. She counts among her most important experiences working with Sociology Professor Emeritus Carl Taylor.
From those foundational classes, Swain continues to use the principals of sociology every day.
“My sociology degree has really informed my personal life as well as my professional. It really has reframed my worldview and has given me an understanding of systemic forces that are causing problems, such as hunger. So, I'm able to apply that lens in my job now, because I understand that hunger is really a symptom of much larger problems,” she said.
Open 12 months a year, the participants of the food bank rely on the non-profit for the basic staples of their diet, and sometimes a special treat. They are asked to go online and fill out a request form for which foods and supplies they prefer and pick a time to pick up their items. Swain and the volunteers start working at 8 a.m. collecting the orders put in for that day and filling bags inside boxes with any dry and shelf-stable items.
It looks like a treasure hunt as the workers with sheets of paper in their hand weave between metal racks where Ghirardelli chocolates sit next to dried beans and bags of rice.
When the participants arrive, they check in and workers collect the perishable goods from the coolers and the freezer at the last moment to keep them safe.
Participants can also walk in and either select a premade “emergency to-go bags” or fill out the form on paper and wait for their order to be completed.
Currently the food bank needs specialty and international foods, spices, oils and halal meat. To donate please send a check to MSU Student Food Bank, 463 East Circle Drive Room 151, East Lansing MI 48824. Other donation opportunities can be found at https://foodbank.msu.edu/donations/index.html
To learn more about volunteering and apply to be a volunteer, please visit https://foodbank.msu.edu/volunteers/index.html
Photos by Jackie Hawthorne, College of Social Science.