CHIC pastry instructor earns CMB designation

Nancy Carey, a baking and pastry instructor at The Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago (CHIC), was granted the Certified Master Baker designation by the Retail Bakers of America (RBA). This is the highest level of baking certification.

Carey has been an instructor at CHIC since 2002. Before that, she founded and developed Red Hen Bread, a wholesale and retail artisan bakery in Chicago. In order to earn the designation, Carey worked a minimum of eight years in the industry and passed several written and practical tests and participated in seminars.

Q&A with the Culinary Institute of Michigan's John Cappellucci

By Maggie Shea, Chef Educator Today

The final hours are ticking down on the Sept. 24 grand opening of The Culinary Institute of Michigan (CIM) at Baker College in Muskegon, Mich. The three-story, 40,000-square-foot culinary facility took 18 months to build and houses a specialty pastry lab, three hot food labs and state-of-the-art demonstration classrooms, as well as a new restaurant and pastry and coffee shop. CIM currently offers four degree programs: Culinary Arts Associate of Business, Baking and Pastry Certificate, Food and Beverage Management Associate of Business and Food and Beverage Management Bachelor of Business. Before classes officially start on Sept. 28, John Cappellucci, dean of the culinary program, took a few minutes out of his busy schedule to talk to CET about the new culinary facility and how it will bring the CIM to prominence among regional and national culinary institutes.

Final renderings of the Culinary Institute of Michigan facility

CET: How many students are currently enrolled in the four degree programs?
Cappellucci: Right now we're over 400 students. We're what's called a "right to try college," so we try to accommodate as many people as we can within the physical confines of the building. We're running classes from 7 in the morning until 11 at night, 6 days a week.

CET: How will the new facility improve on the culinary arts program offered by Baker College?
Cappellucci: We have a chocolate lab for chocolate and sugar work that's temperature- and humidity-controlled. We also have a demonstration kitchen with theater-type seating. We're going to have three high-definition cameras [in the demo kitchen] with the ability to do our own video editing and develop our own video content for our classes. In the future we'll be able to do live broadcasts right from here. The teaching kitchens also will all have flat-panel televisions that will have the capability to bring up any of the demonstrations or anything we have stored so students can view them right in the classroom for a refresher or to give students an idea of how the demos work.

CET: With the new facility, name and logo, how does it feel to make this change and sort of brand yourselves as a culinary school?
Cappellucci: Of all the campuses within the Baker College system, we're the only one that has a culinary program. In the interest of utilizing our resources to the best of our ability, we wanted to do something that wasn't just going to serve the people of Michigan, but we wanted to have a more regional presence and hopefully, within a few years, develop a national presence as well. It is definitely a branding opportunity for us. We have gorgeous facilities, and we're really going to be able to do some stupendous things here.

CET: Will Courses restaurant and The Sweet Spot pastry shop be run by students?
Cappellucci: The restaurant is exclusively run by students. There is a front- and back-of-the-house instructor, but for the most part, [the students] run the show. That's part of the curriculum. The Sweet Spot, which is our coffee and bakery outlet, will be just that--an outlet for baking and pastry products. Right now we're in the midst of hiring people. It will be student- and staff-run.

CET: How do you plan to use the Web to help you market yourselves?
Cappellucci: Well, this project has spurned a lot of other things to happen. One is that we've tried to take some of our marketing to social networking opportunities. We're trying to have a lot more visible Web presence. We have some individuals that help us with maintaining Facebook pages and Twitter sites--things that are a little beyond my years I guess! That's a really important part. I recently read somewhere that libraries are becoming more underutilized as people go to the Web more and more to do their research. And I think when you look at the opportunity for us to have a presence as far as our own original content and the ability to do webcasts and podcasts, we'll be able to have a nice niche as far as culinary schools go. Everyone talks about opening the classroom to the world, but I think we're trying to open the world to the classroom so we can have instructors from anywhere with the ability to stream on the Web and add content to our own video library, so to speak. We're also trying to go as paperless as possible. We're going from giving multipaged, photocopied handouts to actually burning CDs for students so they have the ability to go back and reference them; it's a more durable way of saving that information.

CET:Are there ways you are being more green in your teaching kitchens?
Cappellucci:We're trying to develop a partnership with the community garden here locally. They need an opportunity to recoup some of the input costs of their efforts, and in trade, we're going to give them whatever kind of organic materials we can for their compost efforts. In return, they will also give us some of the product they're putting together. They have big plans for putting up some hoop houses [to extend the growing season] this winter, so we'll have access to fresh herbs and lettuce greens and things like that. ... We're super-excited. It's getting down to the 11th hour, and everyone's a little edgy. But it's really going to be the best culinary program that we could have put together.

CIA student wins SkillsUSA cooking competition

Craig Growney, a student at the Culinary Institute of America in New York, won the Medallion of Excellence Award in the WorldSkills four-day cooking competition. Growney competed as a member of the United States WorldTeam at the Sept. 1 to 7 event in Calgary, Canada. Growney, a member of SkillsUSA, a partnership of students, instructors and professionals, won local, district and national contests to qualify for the WorldTeam. He scored at least 500 out of 600 in his field to win.

Medallion of Excellence Award winner Craig Growney**

WorldSkills offers similar competitions every two years across 45 occupational areas including autobody repair, hairdressing, cabinetmaking, plumbing, refrigeration and welding. Competitors must be under the age of 23. For more information, visit www.worldskills.org.

**Photo courtesy of Lloyd Wolf, SkillsUSA

Robert Morris University announces dates for Fine Dining Series

The Institute of Culinary Arts at Robert Morris University (RMU) Illinois is proud to present its fourth annual Fine Dining Series, open to the public. The dinners featuring the culinary expertise of our renowned chefs and students. Each event has a prix fixe menu with five courses, with a $40 donation per person. Reservations are required and space is limited. Non-alcoholic beverages are served but corkage service is available. Dinners start promptly at 6:30 p.m.; guests should arrive no later that 6:15 p.m. The dinners are held at the main RMU campus in downtown Chicago, 401 S. State Street, and at the Orland Park campus, 82 Orland Square.

In the fall, the featured dinner is called "A Bountiful Harvest" and will be held on Saturday, Sept. 26BOOKED!, at the Chicago campus and on Saturday, Oct. 17, at the Orland Park campus. This dinner will include the colors and textures of fall's harvest with garden-fresh herbs and vegetables planted, cultivated and harvested by RMU culinary students. Everything on this menu is organically grown.

Future dinners include:

• "A Taste of America"--Orland Park campus, Saturday, Nov. 7
• "Kuchnia Polska (Polish Cuisine)"--Chicago campus, Saturday, Jan. 9, 2010; and Orland Park campus, Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010
• "Vive La France! (French Cuisine)"--Chicago campus, Saturday, Feb. 13, 2010; and Orland campus, Feb. 27, 2010
  
• "Mangia Bene! (Italian Cuisine)"--Chicago campus, Saturday, April 10, 2010; and Orland Park campus, Saturday, April 24, 2010
• "Taste of the Islands"--Chicago campus, Saturday, May 15, 2010; and Orland Park campus, Saturday, May 22, 2010

Visit www.robertmorris.edu for more information or to register to attend a dinner.

NRAEF board adds three officers

The National Restaurant Association Education Foundation (NRAEF) named three officers to the Board of Trustees for the September 2009 to December 2010 term. William ("Bill") L. Hyde Jr., principal of Abacus and Jasper's Restaurant Group, was named the new chair of the board.

Bill Hyde, a 37-year restaurant industry veteran, takes over as NRAEF board chair.

Carlton Curtis, vice president of industry affairs for the foodservice and hospitality division of Coca-Cola North America, was named vice chair.

Carlton Curtis, the NRAEF's new vice chair, has been an employee of The Coca-Cola Co. since 1972.

And Xavier Teixido, owner of Harry's Savoy Grill, was named board treasurer.

Xavier Teixido, NRAEF board treasurer, was chairman of the National Restaurant Association from 2002 to 2003.

"As outgoing chair, I am very proud of the accomplishments of the NRAEF this past year and am pleased to announce the new officers of the NRAEF Board of Trustees that will continue to grow and build the NRAEF going forward," said past NRAEF chair Linda Bacin in a statement. "Under their experienced leadership, the NRAEF will continue to enhance the prominence of the restaurant industry through public service, education and community engagement."

Hudson County Community College adds new opportunities for Hospitality Management studies

Beginning this fall, Hudson County Community College (HCCC) in Jersey City, N.J., is expanding its Hospitality Management associate's degree offerings to include three new, specialized courses of study: Hotel and Restaurant Management, Entrepreneurship, and Travel and Tourism. Classes will be offered in day and evening sessions, on weekdays and on Saturdays and Sundays, to accommodate students’ work and personal schedules.

All three program degree options build upon the college's acclaimed Hospitality Management studies, and include 21 credits of general education courses plus 300 hours of practicum (on-site training in some of the area's finest hotels, restaurants and conference centers) and 300 hours in an externship (supervised working and learning in an industry environment). Classes such as Introduction to the Hospitality Industry, Principles of Accounting, Principles of Management, and Hospitality and Travel Law are at the core of all three program degree options.

"The structure of our Hospitality and Culinary Arts courses provides our students with a real advantage for finding work after they complete their studies, in that they have received instruction from industry professionals coupled with hands-on, in-the-field experience," HCCC president Dr. Glen Gabert said in a press release.

The Hotel and Restaurant Management Course provides instruction in: Culinary for Hospitality; Front-Office Operations; Fundamentals of Food and Wine; Restaurant Operations Management; and Food, Beverage and Labor Cost Control.

The Entrepreneurship Program also includes classes in: Culinary for Hospitality; Principles of Macroeconomics; Innovation, Creativity and Market Research; Franchising; Introduction to Entrepreneurship; and The Urban Entrepreneur.

The Travel and Tourism Program includes classes in: Principles of Macroeconomics; Event Planning in Travel and Tourism; Information Systems in Hospitality and Tourism; Culture and Geography; and Tour Marketing, Sales and Promotion.

For more information, visit www.hccc.edu.

ACF and Clemson's free nutrition resource focuses on healthful cooking

Most Americans consume 10 times more salt than needed each day, and less than 10 percent of the U.S. population meets the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) suggested nine to 12 servings of daily fruits and vegetables. Learn more about healthful cooking techniques and easy ways to cut back on the amount of fat and salt used in your dishes in this month's issue of "Culinary Nutrition News," provided by the American Culinary Federation (ACF) Chef & Child Foundation and Clemson University at www.acfchefs.org/CNN.

Also included in this month's article is a list of suggested fat substitutions, such as replacing sour cream with plain low-fat yogurt or vegetable oil with applesauce. In addition, authors describe how to "cook by color" and how to make nutritious meals appeal to children.

The American Culinary Federation's Chef & Child Foundation and Clemson University have partnered to offer a series of monthly "Culinary Nutrition News" articles. Written by experts, articles will bridge the nutrition gap for chefs by providing up-to-date research information. Articles are free, and are posted on ACF's Web site, www.acfchefs.org/CNN, the first Monday of each month.