MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Pierpont Community and Technical College and West Virginia University have partnered to help make students career-ready in the hospitality and tourism industry.
“Undoubtedly, this partnership has really created a great deal of excitement for our students. They see this as a chance for them to not only take the skills that we’re providing for them through our programs but then to apply them to a baccalaureate degree which opens up more options for them,” explained Brian A. Floyd, dean of Pierpont’s School of Human Services and executive director of the Pierpont Culinary Academy.
Pierpont’s home economics program from the late 1970’s has grown into a food service management program that began offering 4 specializations, culinary arts, pastry and baking arts, dietary management and resort and hotel management.
Likewise, West Virginia University’s full Hospitality & Tourism Management program major, opposed to just an area of emphasis, has become more and more popular since it was developed in 2014.
“We’re focusing on hotel operations, restaurant operations and event planning. We try to give the students a lot of different career paths such as casino management and club management. There’s just a lot that we teach,” said Frank DeMarco, coordinator of the WVU program.
Students can essentially earn two degrees in four years making them prospective recruits for hospitality and tourism jobs in the state.
“It’s the second leading industry in West Virginia. Consequently there is high demand for these jobs and for these students. We’re really happy to be servicing that niche,” Floyd added.
The associate degrees at Pierpont are designed to lead to a Bachelor of Science degree from the College of Business and Economics.
“For a lot of these students coming out of Pierpont, they have the skill set. A lot of them I’ve interviewed and talked to over the years, they all want to be entrepreneurs sometime in their career,” DeMarco said.
The partnership is significant for those students because they WVU’s BrickStreet Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship as a resource in their education.
WVU offered its first hospitality and tourism course in the spring of 2009, which quickly evolved into a full major by the fall of 2014.
The Pierpont Culinary Academy emerged in 2004 as part of its initial accreditation through the American Culinary Federation.