Cornell, CIA team up to offer dual-degree program

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan 23, 2006 by Dina Berta

ITHACA, N.Y. -- The School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University here has partnered with The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., to create a dualdegree program this spring for students interested in a career in hospitality management and culinary arts.

The move by the two institutions reflects a trend in hospitality education for colleges and schools to exchange credits and make it easier for students to better prepare for careers in the industry, educators said.

Cornell and the CIA revised their transfer policies and, beginning this semester, are accepting more credits from each other. The move allows students to reduce the amount of time it would take to obtain a four-year bachelor's degree in hotel administration or a two-year associate's degree in culinary or pastry arts.

"For students who graduate from CIA, they can continue their studies at Cornell and, over six semesters, get their bachelor's degree," said Kathy Merget, dean of liberal arts and management at the CIA. "And for Cornell students to come down here, it gives them an opportunity to get a good solid foundation in culinary arts."

Two Cornell students have already enrolled in the program and will begin classes at the CIA in May, Merget said.

Collegiate hospitality programs around the country are making more such arrangements with local and regional culinary schools, noted Ray Kavanaugh, chairman of the Hospitality and Tourism Management Department at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.

"Those kinds of programs make a lot of sense and are very good, not only for the industry but for the institutions involved," Kavanaugh said.

Purdue has developed articulation agreements with different culinary programs, primarily in the Midwest, he said.

"We're finding a lot of students who are really interested in getting an academic degree and picking up a culinary degree," Kavanaugh said.

Leo Renaghan, associate dean for academic affairs at Cornell, said he anticipated that initially more hotel school students would take advantage of the dual-degree program than CIA students. Founded in 1946, the CIA already offers a bachelor's degree in culinary or pastry arts administration.

Although Cornell's hotel school has a strong food and beverage program, it does not offer the depth of culinary practice and theory as the CIA, Renaghan said.

"We have more and more students interested in food-service careers," he said."What became clear to us is, if you are going into the foodservice industry, you have to know food, and we do not have resources to be able to help them with that as we have in the past. This is a recognition of the complexity and sophistication of culinary knowledge."

The hotel school, started in 1922, is the oldest in the country. At Cornell, CIA students will be able to take advantage of the hotel school's courses on restaurant design and management development as well as study foodservice operations in hotels, resorts, spas, stadiums, institutions and other hospitality settings. The dual-degree plan between Cornell and the CIA is part of a broader alliance the two colleges formed in 2003. The organizations began accepting some credits and allowed students to take classes at the other campus when not in session at their home school.

Renaghan and Merget anticipate the alliance eventually also will include visiting professor programs and dual research projects.

"The opportunities for growth are grand," Merget said. "We haven't sat down and said limit [enrollment] to X amount or cap it out at X amount. We want to develop and grow the program for students on both campuses."

By Dina Berta

dberta@nrn.com