Students in the Food, Nutrition and Dietetics sequence in the College of Applied Science and Technology are given the opportunity to design restaurant concepts and menus.

For the past three years, students in Family and Consumer Sciences Food Management 318 and Interior and Environmental Design courses 370, design a “conceptual” restaurant concept in a campus location. In 2010 the class worked on a concept for the food venue that will be located in the new apartments that will be located in the former Cardinal Court housing area.

The students in Quantity Foods 319 this spring also planned and served theme menus that they designed as part of their course work. Each April the students decorate the dining centers and help prepare menu items along with the culinary staff in the units. These projects started in the fall of 2008, when Arlene Hosea ’82, M.S. ’84, began teaching the classes.

As assistant to the vice president for Student Affairs and director of Campus Dining Services, Hosea was able to suggest that students in the classes go back to using the dining centers for quanitity foods as they did in the program when she was studying food, nutrition, and dietetics.

Although Hosea is not teaching the courses this year, Campus Dining Services sees this as a great learning opportunity to the students. The students are exposed to the latest commerical style equipment and get to see how complex food systems are managed. Several students graduating from the program have gone onto careers in food service management in K-12 school systems and other locations.