If back-to-school shopping took a chunk out of your wallet, check out the grocery bill Chartwells Executive Chef Joe Dostilio will turn in for our first back-to-school food order — a whopping $80,000.

Here's a brief look at some of the other essentials it takes to gear up for students and faculty returning en masse in the fall.

According to Chef Joe, during Welcome Week alone, several thousand students will consume 1,500 pounds of pulled pork, 50 gallons of barbeque sauce, 750 pounds of baked beans, 1,000 vegetable burgers and 5,000 cans of soda and water. And, oh yeah, there's dessert. The bake shop will make more than 10,000 cookies, brownies and rice crispy treats.

"That's a lot before we even open the doors for the semester," says Dostilio. "When the doors do open for the year, we will feed around 11,000 students and staff in the dining hall in just the first week, and if you take that times 35 weeks, that's 385,000 meals throughout the year."

Chef Joe isn't the only one experienced in buying in bulk. Cindy Tate, who is in charge of ordering supplies for all the residence halls on the east side of campus, doesn't ever want to run out of one necessity.

"I order about 45 cases of toilet paper, about 20 miles' worth, to start the semester," she says. "We're lucky if that lasts two months."

Tate orders disinfectant and wax in 55-gallon drums to keep the halls shining and says more than 200 shower curtains and 900 light bulbs are on the way for the start of school.

In their rush to classes or to eat, students often don't choose the parking spot that corresponds with their parking sticker, so the number of tickets rises in September, according to University Police Chief Gay Shepherd. An average of 3,000 parking tickets will be written in September; that's 150 tickets a day, five days a week, about 50 more than during the average day on campus during the year. Parking fines net the university about $200,000 annually.

Many students might also be hurrying to work. According to Polly Burns in Financial Aid, more than 2,400 students are employed on campus either through work study or a University Academic Scholarship.

And finally, some numbers prove students really are here to study. Even with Internet access, Tech students make good use of the Angelo and Jennette Volpe Library. In September alone, they check out almost 1,000 paperbacks and reserve materials and more than 4,460 books from the stacks.