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Students at Hospitality are hard at work.
SCHOOL: Hospitality is a campus-run organization that helps students aspiring to the hotel/restaurant business.
By Stephen Park, Staff Writer
The Hospitality program, which is directed by Jeffrey Jambretz, is a campus-run organization that deals with getting students to work in both the hotel and restaurant industries. Part of this is thanks to a grant from the state of California that allows the campus to work hands-on with the students in order to provide them with the skills they need to excel in jobs related to these industries.
The Hospitality Academy is structured as a three-year program. Students are enrolled in the academy their sophomore year, when they begin to learn the basics skills required in each industry, such as knowledge on how to handle food properly, basic kitchen safety, the healthcare codes and laws and how to prep restaurants for opening day. By their junior year the students engage in tandem internships in various locations with Hospitality’s various partnerships. Five go into hotel-related internships and five go into restaurant-related ones, where they develop skills such as kitchen prep and baking. Finally, the senior students have the opportunity to run Koala Corner.
Koala Corner is a functioning restaurant on campus that is run by the students working in the Hospitality program. They manage various aspects of the restaurant such as the menu of the day, billing and pricing and cooking the meals all with minimal help from the new head chef Martin Corso. He owns three restaurants, has been in research and design for food and owns a studio where he teaches adults part-time.
When asked about any major changes to hospitality, Jambretz said, “We brought someone in with a lot more passion, a lot of experience; that to me is the biggest change. The kids already seem a lot more excited than they have been in the past couple of years.”
Photo by John Burke/ Poly Spotlight