Florida International University’s Chaplin School of Hospitality and Tourism Management is developing interdisciplinary degrees to merge hospitality education with technology and sustainability to graduate future professionals who are conscious of the new challenges of the industry.
The Chaplin School is exploring the development of a new hospitality technology degree, a stand-alone interdisciplinary program that blends two areas of education, “as opposed to teaching hospitality and tourism management and then having the college engineering students and the computer science people trying to walk in our space,” said Chaplin School Dean Michael Cheng.
In the same way, the school launched this spring a Global Sustainable Tourism degree program to address the movement towards sustainability.
“We worked with the Department of Earth and Environment College of Arts and Sciences and created an interdisciplinary degree [merging] the two businesses together,” said Mr. Cheng. The first class this spring had 50 students.
The program “recognizes the importance of sustainable operations in the tourism industry today, its impacts on the planet, and the increasing demand for a more sustainable approach to managing hospitality and tourism businesses,” according to the Bachelor of Arts description online.
Among other curriculum additions in the past few years in hospitality degrees is the integration of soft skills and emotional intelligence classes.
“Soft skills are important, so we did do some modifications to our curriculum,” said Mr. Cheng. “We added in a Strategic Management class, then we had it in options students can choose from: leadership in the hospitality industry, emotional intelligence and soft skills for the hospitality industry, social responsibility, and managing high functioning teams.”
Students would choose one of those classes as part of their required curriculum.
Another way to incorporate soft skills into the students’ hospitality and management education was the creation of Programming on Demand (PODs) in 2018 – 15 hours of three one-credit classes that include training for cultural institutions and events, barrel and bar education, CBD, wedding planning, catering, a certification in hotel industry analytics, and the opportunity to attend a class in Washington, DC; Hershey, PA, or Orlando.
“We recognize that our students wanted certifications,” said Mr. Cheng. “Through these programs and On Demand classes, we started offering ways our students could get certified.”
In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, he added, the school added another stand-alone class about inclusion in the hospitality industry that was mandatory for all students.
Technology training in hospitality would prepare students for the ongoing environment in the hospitality industry, said Mr. Cheng; digitalization, automation, robotics and analytics. “What we’ve seen is that consumers have learned new behaviors, like using apps. Those kinds of things are sticking around and we’re adapting our practices to be able to accommodate those new behaviors: the whole kiosk check-in, selecting rooms, operating your curtains and calling for room service, all from the comfort of an app, is what we’re teaching our students.”
The Chaplin School of Hospitality also leans on an executive advisory board comprised of professional leaders in hospitality, such as Norma Becker, president of Titan Group of New York; Bruce Blum, founder and president of Liberty Hotel Advisors; Pete Carr, North America’s regional president of Bacardi; and David Grutman, president of Groot Hospitality, among others, to strengthen relationships in the industry.
“Some of the areas we’ve talked about included recruitment and retention,” Mr. Cheng said. “How do you get more employees, and how do you keep the existing ones? The other area we talked about was technology integration experience management. [We’re] enhancing the relationship we have with those investing time in the industry as well as the students.”
In January, Chaplin School partnered with Factory 360, a virtual events creator and marketing agency, to produce “unique experiences and engagement activities for students in large-scale event management” in a program called Events Incubator in FIU’s Biscayne Bay Campus, which is offering mentorship through workshops and speaker events and internship opportunities to students this semester.
“They’re working directly with students in classes to plan and execute events in real time, not just on site, but also hosting hybrid events,” said Mr. Cheng. “We recognize hospitality is a high-tech career, so what we’re doing is really teaching the students how to do things remotely as well as in a hybrid form.”
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