Darleene Barrientos
If you're a culinary student with a goal of graduating from Cal Poly
Pomona's Collins School of Hospitality Management, considered one of
the nation's top-10 programs, your first stop could be Glendale
Community College.
With a nearly $300,000 grant to be spread over three years from
the U.S. Department of Agriculture Cooperative State Research,
Education and Extension Services, GCC and the Collins School of
Hospitality Management will be begin working together to give Latino
students a chance to earn undergraduate credits at the community
college and transfer their credits seamlessly to the four-year
university program.
According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's 2002
report, Latinos make up 42% of California's service workers. That's
in contrast to only 11% of the state's Latinos working as managers.
"Students that end up graduating from Cal Poly Pomona will get
better job offers, prestigious high-level management jobs. They will
have a lot more opportunities graduating from a prestigious four-year
university than from a community college," said Andrew Feldman, a
culinary arts instructor at GCC and one of the organizers of the
grant request. "There's a huge number of Latinos in the hospitality
and food industry, but they are underrepresented in management
ranks."
The program will use the $299,671 to recruit students and food
service industry workers throughout the area, to be organized in
cohort classes -- classes where the students stay together throughout
the program and graduate together.
The relationship is natural for the Collins School, which has
similar ties with 32 other community colleges, Associate Dean Jerald
Chesser said.
"The beauty of the grant is not only is it going to create [a
program] that's good for any student," Chesser said, it will "assist
the [Latino] individual who, very possibly, is the first in his or
her family to pursue any form of higher education."
