Collins School launches multi-million-dollar expansion push

Nation's Restaurant News, May 22, 2000

POMONA, CALIF. -- Responding to the call to become the top training ground for hospitality executives, administrators and board members, the Collins School of Hospitality Management recently broke ground on the multi-million dollar expansion of their facilities here at California State Polytechnic University.

The expansion resulted from $10 million in grants from industry veterans James and Carol Collins, who also led the $4 million fund-raising drive to build the original school in 1990. University president Robert Suzuki promised to use the "extraordinary building and endowment gift to become the premiere hospitality and hotel management school in North America."

While the majority of the grant will be used to construct two new buildings and provide facilities for a near doubling in enrollment to 700 students annually, Collins said $1.2 million of the gift would back the Collins Endowed Chair for Restaurant Management, the first endowed chair at the university. "Our goal is to add one chair per year for the next 10 years," Collins said. "Good faculty draws good students and good students draw good faculty," he reasoned. Coffins said his inspiration came from the $500,000 grant he gave University of California-Los Angeles many years ago that helped expand faculty at its Anderson School of Business.

California State University vice chancellor Douglas X. Patino told the industry dignitaries gathered for the groundbreaking ceremony that "people can now talk about the Collins School of Hospitality Management being among the top three schools [nationwide]."

The multi-million dollar addition to the 10-year-old Collins School also benefits students by assembling all the hospitality management courses in one hilltop area, according to Janet Lowder, an industry consultant based in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., who sits on the Collins School's 42-member advisory board. Lowder said previously students had to split coursework between the school's lower and upper campuses.