Brown and White Vol. 132 no. 8

              The Brown and White Vol. 132 No. 8
Tuesday, February 28, 2017 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Costco to sell student-made kelp chips Mountaintop
2017 selection
process
underway
Lehigh examines dining trends for upcoming expansion
Roshan Giyanani/B&W Staff
Students line up to swipe into Lower Cort for lunch Feb. 21 in the University Center. Lehigh may have to increase dining hall capacity as the student body expands under the Path to Prominence plan.
By AUSTIN KATZ
Assistant News Editor
Lehigh’s new expansion plan,
Path to Prominence, will need to
find a way to efficiently feed the
1,000 new undergraduate students
coming to campus over the next
seven years.
There are currently 14 dining
options for students, with 11 retail
dining options for takeout. The
three sit-down options — Rathbone,
Lower Cort and Brodhead — are
often full during peak lunch and
dinner hours. General manager of
Lehigh Dining Bruce Christine said
no solutions for overfilled dining
halls are set in stone since the
expansion is still being planned.
“The whole growth is all about
communication,” Christine said. “In
order to continue building great
future opportunities for all of us, we
need to continue having a dialogue
between the students and staff.”
Christine said it is hard to man-age
the long wait times during
peak hours due to the massive
influx of students converging into
dining halls at the same time. He
compared it to traffic coming out
of a stadium after a professional
sporting match.
Lehigh is looking into the dining
trends of students to help deter-mine
where the optimal food court
expansions would be. University
By CHRISTOPHER GAETANO
B&W Staff
A group of Lehigh students are
transforming a little green plant
into a major marketing initiative.
Kelpÿ, a company created by a
group of six undergraduate stu-dents
through the Mountaintop
summer internship program, has
continued to increase its promotion-al
efforts throughout the academic
year.
The company was created in 2015
to call attention to the ecological
benefits of kelp. Constant pollution
has left the ocean contaminated by
nitrates and phosphates, which can
have long-term consequences for
the environment.
A Kelpÿ chip uses kelp as the
base ingredient working as both a
healthy snack for consumers and
providing a sustainable way of
cleaning the ocean. Kelp naturally
cleans the environment by absorb-ing
carbon and reducing nitrates.
“We’ve produced a chip that
tastes really good, and satisfies
all the nutritional benefits that
we’re trying to promote,” said Marc
LaFlamme, the chief operations
officer of the company. “It’s a chip
that also uses the kelp from farms
that creates the sustainable impact
as well.”
Kelpÿ aims to bring attention to
this issue, and ultimately lead to
the creation of more kelp farms.
More kelp farms would mean more
sustainably grown kelp, which will
lead to less phosphates and nitrates
within the oceans.
Will Kuehne, the chief executive
officer of Kelpÿ, said the compa-ny
began to grow after the group
received its first grant last semes-ter
from the Baker Institute. With
the grant, the team was provided
enough capital to start the project.
With Kelpÿ’s newly updated
website, people can order four fla-vors
online including: Sea Salt,
Moroccan Spiced, By the Bay, and
their most popular flavor Korean
Chilli and Lime.
As of now, Kelpÿ is producing
their product in smaller batches,
but Kuehne said 29,000 pounds of
kelp will be turned into kelp chips
by March. They will then ship out
to Costco and smaller distributors.
Kuehne said that by receiving
Kelpÿ chips, created during the 2015 Mountaintop
program, are eco-friendly and will ship in March
See KELPŸ Page 3
By OWEN PAN-KITA
B&W Staff
With past Mountaintop projects
focusing on topics such as verti-cal
ocean farming in Louisiana,
exploring the Moravians’ lost liter-ature
and producing a film about
the first women hired at Lehigh,
the program has continued to gain
popularity.
Proposals for summer 2017
Mountaintop projects were submit-ted
Feb. 10 and are now under
review for funding.
The Mountaintop project is a way
See MOUNTAINTOP Page 2
See DINING Page 4
Dining dilemma