A new and innovative application called EagleEats was released on the Apple App Store on Monday. The app allows Boston College students to view campus dining halls’ menus and nutritional information. The app was created and published by Sazan Dauti, MCAS ’18, and Joseph Bauer, CSOM ’18, and is available for anyone to download for free. The students created the application by scraping information readily available via BC Dining Service’s website, and organizing it into a more user-friendly and efficient interface. It has received over 700 downloads from the App Store as of publication.
EagleEats features a sleek design and several useful features. The home page of the app has a button that allows the user to view the current menu of the dining hall closest to them based on their location on campus and the time of day. Users can also create a list of their favorite menu items, and receive notifications when those items are being served. Clicking on an item allows the user to view the schedule for that menu option, and when else in the week it will be served and where. Furthermore, students can easily browse the nutrition facts for each item on the menu, including serving size, calories, allergens, and a full list of ingredients.
Prior to the release of the application, Dauti and Bauer were not in communication with BC Dining Services. This is similar to the founding of the popular application EagleScribe, which allows students to search through course listings and receive notifications when a spot in a full class opens. The creators of this free application worked independently of ITS, taking information contained in the UIS program.
Both EagleEats and EagleScribe show the potential for undergraduates to contribute to student life on campus. The creators of both applications recognized an inefficiency within the technological services of the University and successfully addressed the respective issue through innovation. Based on the acclaim of EagleScribe, which according to its founders has more than 4,500 registered users, and the potential popularity of EagleEats, the administration should seek to work with its students when they show initiative to help develop the University’s technological services. It is evident that there are exceptional and creative minds throughout campus, and the University should take advantage of the intellectual resources at hand as demands for new services arise.
BC Dining Services can take this step by acknowledging and endorsing EagleEats. Although it may have been more productive for EagleEats to confer with BC Dining before advertising its launch with posters that included Dining Service’s logo, BC Dining would benefit from working with Dauti and Bauer. The service provides intelligent, efficient, and, most notably, free marketing for campus dining halls.
Following the examples of EagleScribe and EagleEats, technologically-minded students on campus should feel encouraged to address campus needs through innovation. Just as the popular service LaundryView notifies students when washing machines and dryers are available in residential halls, there is the potential for an application that could display what computers are available for use in campus libraries. Perhaps a helpful creation would be an application that showed students what seats are open in campus libraries and dining halls, which would help to address the fiasco of finding a place to study during finals week. These are just a few of the many potential creations that could largely benefit the student body and are waiting to be developed.
Featured Image by Arthur Bailin / Heights Senior Staff
