Colleges Will Share Hospitality

Sun., Aug. 25, 1996

Associated Press

The career path for future hotel managers, resort operators and restaurateurs may become smoother this fall under a joint venture between Washington State University and Seattle Central Community College.

Both schools will share faculty, facilities and philosophy when classes begin Monday in what is billed as the new Hospitality and Tourism Institute, housed at Seattle Central.

The plan is intended to make it easier for Seattle Central students to go on to earn a bachelor’s degree in hotel and restaurant administration from WSU, which has run a satellite program in Seattle since 1975.

Participants in the cooperative effort say the venture will provide a more comprehensive education to students wanting to work in hospitality and tourism, industries that employ about 100,000 people in Washington and contribute more than $7 billion to the state’s economy.

“For the first time, I believe, a university and a community college are working together and sharing all the resources to meet the needs of the student,” said Melissa Dallas, assistant dean of Seattle Central’s hospitality and culinary arts division.

Although WSU and Seattle Central administrators describe their efforts as a “merger,” each school will continue to run separate programs. Seattle Central offers a two-year associate degree program in hospitality management. WSU provides the last two years of the baccalaureate program in hotel and restaurant administration.

What’s new is the sharing of faculty and the acceptance of Seattle Central students into certain WSU courses, part of a plan to entice more Seattle Central students into enrolling. This arrangement is called the “institute.”

In the past, nearly all the students entering the WSU program as juniors transferred from schools other than Seattle Central, even though the WSU program has been based on the Seattle Central campus since 1994. The WSU program previously was housed at Seattle University.

The WSU and Seattle Central programs hadn’t been “packaged appropriately,” Dallas said. “A lot of students didn’t know they could do it all in Seattle before.”

While WSU will continue to accept transfer students from other schools, the new emphasis is on persuading students to start at Seattle Central.

“We’ll share faculty back and forth,” said Carl Riegel, director of WSU’s hotel and restaurant administration program in Seattle. “We’ll teach lower-division courses to Seattle Central students. And one of their professors will teach our food production courses.”

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