More students seeking careers in hospitality. Schools 'kicking it up a notch' when it comes to majors offered in fast-growing industry.

September 25, 2006
Publication: Indianapolis Business Journal
By Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp

Along with the continued development of Indianapolis as an arts, entertainment, sports and convention center comes the growing need for event planners, hotel managers and restaurateurs.

"Indianapolis has been a progressive city in the convention (and) meetings industry," said Donna Jacobsen, president and owner of Danesport Group, an Indianapolis firm specializing in event and convention marketing and management. "And have you noticed that, in the listings of weekend activities, there are more things to do than there are hours in the weekend?" Hospitality programs grow to
meet industry needs.

Keeping all those visitors and locals well cared for are the students and graduates of hospitality programs in Indiana and elsewhere. Indiana has a handful of programs scattered throughout the state. Programs at Ball State University, IUPUI and Ivy Tech Community College have seen substantial enrollment increases in recent years. Other schools offering programs in the hospitality area include Purdue University, Indiana University, and Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne. There also are proprietary schools in Indiana that offer culinary arts and related hospitality programs.

Ivy Tech's hospitality administration associate degree program has been growing about 20 percent a year, making it the fastest-growing degree program in the college, said Tom Darling, the school's executive director of workforce and economic development. Ivy Tech has hospitality programs on six campuses, including the largest here in Indianapolis. Ivy Tech's program entails event management, hotel man agement, restaurant management, party arts and culinary arts. The age of students, most of whom already work in the hospitality industry, varies widely.

The event management segment of the program has taken off, in part because of a relationship with IUPUI, which has a four-year degree that complements the Associate of Applied Science degree, said Jeff Bricker, chairman of hospitality administration at Ivy Tech. Event planning can lead to jobs in various work settings: large corporations, hotels, residential and institutional operations; caterers; and wedding-planning firms. Indiana tourism is big business.

The numbers are impressive. Tourism in Indiana is about a $9 billion industry, according to state figures. At least 59 million people visit the state each year for conferences, attractions or events. There were at least 17.2 million visits to downtown Indianapolis in 2005, according to Indianapolis Downtown Inc. The National Restaurant Association forecasts Indiana's food-industry sales alone at $7.95 billion for 2006 and pegged job growth at 3.8 percent, or 42,000 jobs.

The Indianapolis market offers many national events where students can hone their skills—from the GenCon convention and Do-It Best's Fall Market to the Circle City Classic and the FFA conference.

"Other cities in our state have experienced growth, as well," Danesport Group's Jacobsen said. She cites new or recently expanded convention centers and staff in Fort Wayne, South Bend, Muncie, Bloomington and Evansville, all vying for meetings of corporations, not-for-profits, trade associations and other organizations.

Some riverboats are expanding, too, and with the restoration at French Lick Springs Resort Casino, career opportunities are growing even in more remote areas.
Enrollments continue to grow.

Most area hospitality students rely heavily on local events for jobs, internships and other experiences, said Sotiris Hji-Avgoustis, chairman and associate professor in the department of tourism, conventions and event management at IUPUI. The department has nearly doubled its enrollment in two years, Hji-Avgoustis said.

His students' average age is in the mid-30s, and many hold degrees in other areas. This level of maturity creates a high-quality work force, he said. As at Ivy Tech, most students in IUPUI's program already are working in the industry.

Jacobsen, a 29-year veteran of the hospitality industry, teaches online special-event management and exhibit marketing courses at IUPUI. "These classes are taught on the Web so that students can access them at times convenient to their schedules," she said. "One hundred percent of the students taking these two classes have full-time jobs or more than one part-time job."

Hji-Avgoustis plans to build on the reputation of IUPUI's hard-working students to boost the tourism and hospitality program into the top 10 rankings by various industry organizations with in the next few years. Toward that end, he's already stepped up faculty and student attendance and presentations of research at international industry events. IUPUI's faculty and students also serve as consultants to several international cities to help them boost their tourism dollars, he said.

The champion of hospitality is up the road at Purdue University in West Lafayette, where for years, the department of hospitality and tourism management has been ranked No. 1 nationally in major industry rankings, including The Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Education.

"We've been at it for a long time, since 1928," said Raphael Kavanaugh, head of the department. Purdue's strength is in hospitality and tourism management, especially in food service and lodging.

Kavanaugh said it's better to educate students for lodging and food service because there are many more management jobs in those sectors than convention. However, he said, tourism management specialists have seen an uptick in demand as attracting visitors becomes an integrated part of economicdevelopment efforts of cities, towns, states, regions and specific venues.

Most of Purdue's hospitality majors are of traditional college age, with a few non-traditional students in the mix. Most transfer from other areas of study, Kavanaugh said.

Another practice that sets Purdue apart from IUPUI and Ivy Tech is less reliance on part-time faculty. Experts
are called in for special lectures but rarely teach classes, Kavanaugh said. At IUPUI and Ivy Tech, industry experts like Jacobsen frequently are instructors.

At Ball State University, most of the teaching is done by full-time faculty, too, in a program that changed its name from food management to hospitality and food management six years ago to better reflect the revised curriculum.

Enrollment has grown from 38 students in the four-year program in 2001 to about 80 full-time majors, said director Lois Altman. Forty students are earning a minor in hospitality and food management this year, she added.

"[Jobs] in this industry are expected to grow, and before, we were limiting them with the name, even though many [of the students] were going into areas broader than food," Altman said.

All the institutions interviewed say the development of proprietary culinary arts schools show the city is catching up with other metropolitan areas, such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, Chicago and Miami, where hospitality is key to their image.

"There is projected growth [in food service], and culinary arts is a way into those kinds of positions," Kavanaugh said. "The proprietary schools are in response to that."

Chef schools also appeal to individuals who like to cook, but have no intention of working in the industry. Ivy Tech, which has a well-known culinary arts program, also views the chef's schools as a sign of the health of the industry. Most of the people interviewed for this article predict the growth will continue.

"There are 78 million baby boomers who are thinking about retirement and what we will enjoy when we have more free time," Jacobsen said. As the generation who "had it all," she said, boomers will be traveling more, visiting restaurants and spas and participating in educational opportunities. She expects even greater growth in the next five to 10 years.

"Our Indiana schools know that the boomers are coming and that we have money to spend," Jacobsen said. "As a result, I think our schools have taken an aggressive approach in preparing students to provide the products and services this generation will want."

Debra Scott, executive vice president of the Restaurant & Hospitality Association of Indiana, a trade group, says the attention given by the schools to producing "quality programs in the state means graduates will be more likely to stay here than move away."