Hospitality education growing in high schools

By Ashley Ann Mentley

The French Catholic School Board’s planned investment into an updated hospitality and tourism program at L’Essor High School has both industry professionals and school board officials excited about the changes.

The school board plans to invest more than $275,000 into modern teaching facilities that will be used to encourage interest in hospitality and tourism classes offered at the high school level.  After reviewing the facilities, doing research and polling students, it was determined that the hospitality industry was one that would benefit from investment and expansion.

“What came up was specifically [interest in] hospitality and tourism in a fair amount of students,” said Joseph Picard, director of education for the Conseil Scolaire Catholique Providence in Southwestern Ontario. “When we looked at this, specifically with L’Essor, we had to modernize our areas there, make them better adapted to what currently goes on in order to train students and hopefully prepare them for the work force or for college studies.”

Planned for completion in the fall of 2015, the renovations will consist largely of changes in the food preparation areas.  The cooking rooms, which Picard described as being dated, will have all new stainless steel appliances installed.  The rooms will also be updated to reflect changes in technology and the fact that a large amount of teaching now involves the use of tablets.

The changes happening at the high school level have caught the attention of Lorna McCormack, chair of the School of Media, Art and Design at St. Clair College.  McCormack oversees both the tourism and the hospitality programs at the college. She said she hoped, and is optimistic, the changes will help students consider these courses as serious career options.

“People view [hospitality] sometimes as a fall back career or profession, but it’s not,” she said.  “We’ve had students go on to absolutely brilliant careers around the world.”

Ken Reynolds, coordinator of the Hospitality Management Hotel & Restaurant programs at the college agreed and said this is an excellent opportunity because hospitality and tourism are some of the biggest industries right now in Windsor Essex County.

“It’s a growing field, just the demographics favour it,” Reynolds said.  “The fact that you have an aging population with a little bit more time and money than previous generations might have had and they’re going to spend it on good restaurant meals, travel and resorts and things like that.”

With almost 20 wineries in the area, Workforce WindsorEssex listed hospitality as one of its 10 most promising sectors in the region.  Picard said this is one of the factors they took into consideration when evaluating L’Essor and he is confident it will be beneficial to the students and the community.

“Already, I’ve been contacted by a few people in the tourism and hospitality industry, even at the provincial level, who want to work with us, collaboratively, and see what can be done to prepare students for the future,” Picard said.

Tourism professionals are also looking forward to the changes, especially since they are happening from within the French school board.

“A good majority of our students come from our catchment area, which is Windsor Essex,” said Debbie LaSelva, coordinator of tourism and travel at St. Clair College.  LaSelva graduated from the program in 1979 and has been working in the industry ever since. “This program is ideal for bilingual students because if you want to work in tourism in Canada – having the second language – those are the students that will get the jobs.”

Both McCormack and Reynolds agreed that having students not only with previous education in the industry, but who are also fluent in French, will be a great benefit to the industry.

“That’s what the French culture is known for, its food and its wine,” said McCormack.  “It’s also really going to help tourism and hospitality together becoming huge economic generators in Windsor Essex County.”