How adept are your faculty at integrating technology in the kitchen and classroom? Are you training and teaching them to understand issues relating to farming, processing, packaging and shipping of raw materials used in kitchens? Great teachers, like excellent employees in any field, thrive on self-improvement.

By Paul Sorgule, MS, AAC

Your facilities are in order, all of the collateral pieces are designed with wonderful pictures of incredible food and the smiling faces of your students, the website is up to date and your curriculum has been designed with input from accrediting agencies and industry leaders. You invested the time and energy seeking the best possible faculty.

So, everything is ready to go. Open the doors and let the students in. Is anything missing?

When institutions such as yours build their checklists for successful design and implementation of a culinary program, there is far too often one critical piece missing. Staff training and development, just as is the case in restaurant operations, falls victim to the deadly budget cut. Let’s think about this for a moment.

Administrators would likely agree that their most valuable asset is the cadre of great teachers they hire. These great teachers are dedicated to their chosen profession and excited to share their knowledge with students.

In curriculum development, although enrollment-management departments like to promote courses that concentrate on attractive ancillary skill sets, insufficient dedication to teaching strong foundational abilities will negatively impact student employability and success.

By Paul Sorgule, MS, AAC

Marketers have long understood that promoting what excites people is the best way to sell a product. The classic mantra has been: “The sizzle sells the steak.” This can be problematic when the steak is sacrificed for the sizzle in an effort to increase sales. Eventually, the customer will become dissatisfied with the results.

Colleges have adopted this classic marketing strategy over the past few decades with significant investments in physical plant and amenities that are far removed from the primary mission of delivering a valuable education. This has, in some cases, even crept into curriculum development.

There should be no room for variance from a standard of expectation among all stakeholders—employers, faculty, parents and the students themselves. To ensure that culinary grads meet acceptable skill and aptitude standards, Chef Sorgule suggests employing a “passport.”

By Paul Sorgule, MS, AAC

The first question is, “What are the critical skills that will allow students to progress within your program and reach a level of success on internship and after graduation”?

Although there are numerous core competencies that set the stage for “learning” and the ability to adapt to various situations, there is a specific grouping of more tangible competencies that are essential in building “employability” aptitudes in kitchens. If planned correctly, these aptitudes can provide the setting for the other core competencies within a curriculum.

These critical skills should be drawn from a collaborative process of involvement including faculty, industry chefs and bakers, alumni and the students themselves. Knowing the expectations of these constituencies is the foundation for building a curriculum and system of evaluation that will develop confidence and lead to student success.

As culinary educators we have a unique opportunity to view student assessment differently—in a way that measures the ability to “demonstrate understanding” vs. the ability to memorize.

Paul Sorgule, MS, AAC

From the day we first enter the educational system in the United States we are introduced to a method of measurement that establishes a feeling of success or failure, winning or losing, those with potential and those without. My beacon for leadership and management, Edwards Deming, viewed this as one of the most significant problems that faced American economic strength from the 1950s till current times.

The American system of education has, to a large degree, been based on telling students what they should know, relegating them to memorizing facts and then testing them on their ability to repeat that information. Successful memorization equals better test scores; better test scores equals a person with potential. Or does it?

As educators, we cannot not ignore what consumers of education seek. So why do many in education assume that teaching and training are mutually exclusive?

By Paul Sorgule, MS, AAC

The more I researched for this article the more frustrated—and, at times, angry—I became. It appears that there are still many in the field of education who believe teaching and training are mutually exclusive.

To some, the term “training” was not even part of the larger umbrella of education. It was somehow beneath the concept of educational development. In a letter to the editor of the National Forum: Phi Kappa Phi Journal, Spring 2000, Robert H. Essenhigh of Ohio State University states: “There is another major pressure coming into universities, and particularly state universities. It is the increasing insistence—particularly from state governments (with the associated control of the money)—that students, when they leave, must be able to walk into some job without any further training.” He continues: “… universities are not in the business of training. Their business is educating.”