Hospitality program welcomes growth

Much like the worldwide hospitality industry, CHEP's Department of Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management (HRIM) is continually growing and changing.

In the past year, ground has been broken for a hotel that will be a living laboratory for students, the department has moved its offices to a more efficient location on campus, and the second class of students has enrolled in a new master's degree program in hospitality information management.

The department also has earned national recognition for its programs. In August, the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Education ranked HRIM seventh among the nation's 200-plus four-year hospitality programs.

"It's great and it really puts us on the map," was the reaction of HRIM senior David Lasus. "This makes us a much more attractive program--both for current high school students, who are looking for a top-flight place to learn about the hospitality industry, and for corporate recruiters, who want to hire the best available people."

UD tied in the rankings with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which has one of the oldest and most respected programs in the country. The UD program, which began in 1988, is a newcomer by comparison.

"It's a nice tribute to our students, faculty and the administration," Fred DeMicco, Aramark Chair of HRIM, says of the rankings, which the journal based on quality of the faculty, structure of the curriculum and attitude of students in the department. UD ranked third in student attitude.

When DeMicco became chairperson of the department in January 2001, he says, his goal was for the program to be ranked in the top 10. He's now aiming for the top five because, he says, "Success is never final. We have to keep getting better."

DeMicco says one reason UD is becoming more attractive to top HRIM students is its new facilities. And, he says, the Marriott Courtyard Hotel, under construction near Clayton Hall, represents one of the biggest enhancements to the program. A $600,000 gift from the Marriott Foundation will provide a state-of-the-art training area for students at the hotel, including the Marriott Center for Research & Training classroom.

Once construction of the hotel is completed, the HRIM curriculum will implement what DeMicco calls a "lodging module." The module will consist of five classes, all meeting at the hotel, including courses in marketing, hotel management and hotel engineering. Students also will spend 10 hours each week working in the hotel's various divisions, such as the front desk and housekeeping.

"This will be a great experience for students," DeMicco says. "They can get hands-on experience supplemented by theory in their classes."

He says he also hopes to implement a "manager on duty" program, in which students will live in the hotel for a weekend and be on duty during that time. The experience will expose them to the types of emergencies or situations they might not encounter during daytime hours, he says.

The hotel will be just a short walk from HRIM's new headquarters in Raub Hall, directly across Main Street from the Trabant University Center. Faculty offices relocated there in September. With Raub Hall's proximity to the hotel and to Vita Nova, the department's student-run restaurant in the Trabant University Center, the location works well, DeMicco says.

The new location also offers more space, which he says has been important in allowing HRIM's two-year-old master's degree program in hospitality information management to grow. The department has added three new faculty members to teach in the graduate program, and additional space also has been used by students conducting research. The graduate program is the only one of its kind in the nation, DeMicco says, making it valuable to the University and the marketplace.

"The industry has its own unique needs," says Francis Kwansa, associate professor and director of graduate studies for HRIM. "Hotels and restaurants are very labor-intensive, with high labor costs and low profit margins. Using technology to save labor costs can mean a big improvement in productivity and profits."

The first class of three graduate students enrolled in the program in the fall of 2001, with eight more admitted last fall. The program has a cap of 15 new students per year, keeping the total enrollment to a maximum of 30 students.

Applications for the class of 2006 are currently being reviewed, and Kwansa says there is a strong international response, with students applying from China, India, the Philippines and Switzerland.

Approximately 30 percent of the program's current students are international.

Kwansa says the department's web site helped internationalize the program because it can be viewed in four different languages. "It's very easy for us to attract students that way," he says.

Upon completion of their degrees, students will be qualified to become consultants or information officers for hotels, Kwansa says. Graduates will collect data from hotel guests and implement new forms of technology within the hotel.

Alecia Douglas, a first-year graduate student, learned about the program when Kwansa spoke at her undergraduate university in Jamaica. "I think the program chose me," she says. "My undergraduate degree was in hospitality management, and before that, I had done some computing work, so this seemed like a perfect combination for graduate school."

Another first-year student, Ismail Yagci, came to UD from his native Turkey to enroll in the program. "I want to improve my knowledge of information technology," says Yagci, whose undergraduate degree is in industrial engineering. "Because the hospitality industry is so large, there are lots of career opportunities there."

-Jane Taylor, AS 2003