Hospitality
an all-inclusive major
By
Joseph Serna
Online Forty-Niner
Contributing Writer
With its ear to the ground, the California State University system is finding
ways to meet the needs of the growing hospitality and restaurant management
industry.
Leaders of the hotel and restaurant industries last month made a “wish
list” of criteria they want the CSU system and its graduates to meet
when they enter the customer-oriented field.
“The most common comment to us was to produce more students in the industry,” said
Clara Potes-Fellow, CSU manager of media relations. “This is something
that the industry and academia need to do together.”
Industry leaders expect CSU graduates to be multilingual and sensitive to other
cultures, creative thinkers, well rounded in all aspects of business and customer
relations, union savvy and have strong oral and written communication skills.
“The curriculum we offer is very well rounded,” said Lee Blecher,
director of the Hospitality, Foodservice and Hotel Management program at Cal
State Long Beach.
The major, only 8 years old, is already on track in almost all facets to meet
the industry wish list.
“The program definitely helped me get some of the skills I needed for the
job,” said Michael Stewart, a graduate of the program and manager of the
University Dining Plaza on campus.
With the reality that many students spend years and thousands of dollars learning
careers they are unprepared for when entering the professional world, the hospitality
program at CSULB requires at least 800 hours of approved work experience and
a completed internship to graduate.
Within that work experience, students gain the knowledge to meet the other
requisites on the wish list.
In some of the professions, such as foodservice, being bilingual is almost
natural, according to Stewart. Although no program can cover every detail of
every career path, he said the program helps to prepare for all aspects of
the hospitality and foodservice management industry.
“Pretty much all of our upper division courses have components of [critical
thinking],” Blecher said.
Students should become knowledgeable of the business and customer relation
components of the industry with marketing, financial accounting and customer
service management classes required in the curriculum.
Blecher noted that being up to par in oral and written communication skills
is a requirement of all students because of general education requirements.
Though there is exposure to all the skills needed on the wish list within the
CSULB curriculum, some are discussed more than others.
“They could probably go a little further into [unions],” Stewart
said.
As for covering all the variables a real-world situation can conjure up, he
said, “It’s a pretty thorough program, but it’s difficult
to cover everything.”
The CSULB program attempts to prepare students for what they will deal with
on the outside. With hands-on work while meeting the experience and internship
requirements of the major, students learn the practical side of their respective
business.
“The schooling helps prepare you for the situations,” Stewart said. “But
you don’t know how to do the job until you experience it.”
Whether running a hotel or managing a restaurant, the hospitality major at
CSULB aims to teach through academics and applied experience the skills needed
to succeed and meet the needs of industry leaders.
As those needs change, so does the
teaching at CSULB.
The curriculum is always evolving,
and, according to Blecher, it’s a
live thing.
“[The program] is broad enough you could apply it in a lot of directions,” he
said. “We want our students to be able to figure with change too.”
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