Директор по питанию школы Мэнкато удостоена награды «Директор года» в регионе Средний Запад

MANKATO — A Mankato Area Public Schools staff member is being recognized for her dedication to her field. Earlier this spring, Darcy Stueber, the district’s nutrition director, was named the Midwest Region Director of the Year by the nonprofit School Nutrition Association. The work recognizes many years of work for Stueber in the field. “I’ve worked in food service for over 25 years, but in K-12 schools, I’m around that 17 (or) 18-year mark,” Stueber said. The award came as somewhat of a surprise, as Stueber said she wasn’t even aware that she had been nominated for the award until she was notified by email that she’d won. “It’s quite an honor, because I was nominated by a fellow director in the state of Minnesota,” she said. “It really is an honor to be recognized for the work that we’ve done here in Mankato, because it’s not an individual work, it’s a whole team effort that we have here in Mankato.” Stueber has been in her current position for nine years. It’s a career field she fell in love with and, by her own admission, she kind of fell into by accident. “I called it a lucky accident,” she said. “I was looking for something different in food service. I had worked in higher education, and I had worked in restaurants and was looking for something, as I had a young family at home, that provided some flexibility for me to be more of a mom, and the opportunity came up to work as a child nutrition director and I absolutely fell in love with it.” She says she’s driven every day to provide meals that are not only nutritious, but also ones that are appealing to the students. That can be a challenge sometimes because of different legislative decisions, either state-wide or nationally, that are made. However, she says now they’re meeting those challenges with a little more creativity, and that the future of K-12 meals may be a little more local than people think. “We’ve seen more creativity, so more farm to school items being brought in increasing our ethnic flavors. Right now, in MAPS, we’re working on increasing our scratch cooking, so making things more from a scratch item (and) listening to our students to hear what they want on the menus,” she said.