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Alaska Colleges and High Schools Gear Up
Hospitality Training, the Fastest Growing
Industry in the State
By Sarana Schell, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News 

Dec. 8--U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens steered $100,000 from the U.S. Department of Labor toward Alaska's high school students earlier this fall, in the form of training for the restaurant and hotel industry. 

Hotels, bars and restaurants in Alaska are growing faster than the rest of the state's economy, said state labor economist Neal Fried, and they make up a sizable industry already. As the hospitality industry in Alaska expands, so is the number of upper-level jobs available and the range of educational programs aimed at them. 

The Department of Labor grant will help the state's restaurant and lodging trade association, the Alaska Hospitality Alliance, take a national certification program for high school students statewide. 

"It gives the industry more credibility as a career field," said Bill Dugdale, who started in hotels with a summer maintenance job at 16 and 30 years later is general manager of the Westmark Anchorage hotel. 

Lodging, eating and drinking establishments added 3,400 employees statewide between 1995 and 2001, according to state Department of Labor statistics, reaching a total of 24,800 jobs. In Anchorage, the industry grew at a 3.3 percent annual rate during that period, compared with a 2.2 percent for the rest of the city's economy. 

That growth is part of a nationwide trend. The National Hospitality Alliance has predicted the hospitality industry will add 2 million jobs between 1998 and 2008, with more than 115,000 management positions. 

Native corporation tourism ventures are part of that trend, as hotels and lodges go up across the state from Kotzebue to Talkeetna to Copper Center. 

To take advantage of new job opportunities, Anchorage-based Cook Inlet Region Inc. and its affiliate nonprofit Cook Inlet Tribal Council started a Hospitality & Tourism Career Institute, said Steve Medina, the institute's career placement specialist. Medina said the program, started with a three-year grant in 2001, is part of a larger movement of Native corporations exploring ways to train Native Alaskans as new employees. 

The University of Alaska Anchorage has had a two-year degree program for decades, but in 2001 added a four-year degree program, said Dugdale of the Westmark Anchorage. 

Dugdale has watched the program's evolution from his seat as chairman of the university's industry advisory board for more than a decade. He said high school programs, such as those at the Anchorage School District's King Career Center, help portray hospitality as a viable career field. 

Tim Doebler, who directs UAA's culinary arts and hospitality management program, said a high school teacher noticed his interest in cooking and told him cooking education existed. It was a novel concept, he said, one that went against gender-career assumptions. Still, he took accounting his freshman year in college, as his parents wished. 

"It was excruciating," Doebler said. He broke the news he wanted to go to culinary school. He said the accounting came in handy, though, as hospitality management degrees are essentially business degrees plus electives such as cooking classes. Some business majors have even switched to the four-year hospitality degree, noted the Westmark's Dugdale. 

Restaurant and hotel jobs often get a bad rap as low-paying and dead end, said Alaska Hospitality Alliance spokeswoman Karen Rogina. 

State Department of Labor figures on wages show why: the hospitality industry's entry-level jobs are some of the lowest-paying. 

But the AHA's Rogina said the industry can offer a quick ride to satisfying, high-paid careers to those who stick with it. 

Doebler seconds that. 

"There's a huge need for professionally trained people," Doebler said. 

To give high school students a big-picture perspective on those opportunities, the AHA brought a curriculum developed by its national counterpart to Alaska in 1999. Students in their last two years choose either lodging or culinary management-track training, and can pursue a nationally-recognized certificate. 

The program kicked off in Houston and Palmer schools in 2000. 

Whitney Conn, 16, is taking the culinary track at Houston Junior-Senior High under teacher Sarah Parks. Conn said the program reminded her she had been interested in the restaurant business, and gave her a better idea of how it works. 

"It pointed out points I had no clue about," Conn said, such as the importance of sanitizing equipment to prevent sick customers, and legal aspects as well as menu selections and employee training. 

The AHA also aims to raise parents' awareness of hospitality professions. 

After the program was well received in the Mat-Su schools, the AHA turned to Sen. Stevens for help expanding it. With the appropriation he secured, the AHA hired Ina Mueller as its school-to-career director in September. 

Mueller, Rogina said, is "the shot of adrenaline we needed to roll this out statewide." 

Educators in Fairbanks, Anchorage, Kotzebue, Soldotna, Homer, Kenai and a private school in Nenana are interested, Mueller said, while Sitka said "not right now, thanks." Nome and Barrow and Dillingham are still on the list for introductions. 

"It's an absolutely wonderful program," said Jolene McJunkin, who teaches tourism and hospitality classes at King Career Center in Anchorage. 

Classroom instruction supplements 400 hours of work experience, so the hands-on program is very different from a typical entry-level job, McJunkin said. 

First-year training covers daily operations, McJunkin said, while second-year topics include supervisory skills, making schedules and understanding hiring requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

McJunkin, who has requested funding to buy the lodging track, said the program is much more structured than existing hospitality classes. Besides developing student skills, the national lodging and restaurant associations' program teaches industry professionals how to mentor student employees. And certification tests are sent to a national center for grading. 

"This meets a higher standard," McJunkin said. 

-----To see more of the Anchorage Daily News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.adn.com 

(c) 2002, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. 


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