Posted 9/21/2009 - 10:33:12 AM
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What are these?
ITHACA, NY—It’s quite obviously not the greatest of times for graduating collegians’ employment opportunities considering even experienced individuals are having a difficult time finding jobs. Michael Johnson, dean of Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, admitted that graduates of even this esteemed school are fighting an uphill battle finding employment despite the historical hotel industry credentials they graduate with.
Even so, these graduates, in comparison to the rest of the world, are still succeeding, as among the 60% of spring 2009 graduates reporting on their whereabouts, 70% have found employment, with many of the rest moving on to graduate school, Johnson said. Those figures are in comparison to the 40% of general Cornell graduates finding employment and the 19.7% of U.S. college graduates landing jobs.
But in seeing first-hand what the Cornell hotel school’s students must go through in their program, their relative employment success amid one of the worst recessions in record history becomes less surprising.
Among the core reasons is the school’s Statler Hotel and the Statler Leadership Development Program, which utilizes the connected Statler Hotel as a living, learning laboratory for the student staff. There you can find students parking guests’ car, checking them in at the front desk, cleaning rooms, hauling luggage and toting room service trays. There they work hand-in-hand with the hotel’s professional staff, which is the minority compared with the student staff majority.
Presiding over the hotel is Rick Adie, the hotel’s general manager and a 1975 Cornell hotel school graduate. “Students are in the hotel in three ways,” he said. “First, we have about four or five courses where the homework assignment, or the laboratory, is actually conducted in the hotel. For the most part it’s an exposure for the students to spend a shift in the hotel. They’ll spend a day working the housekeeping department not so much so they know how to clean a room, but to understand the financials of the department.
“The second level is jobs,” he added. “We have between 150 and 200 students that work in the hotel for money for the most part and experience. Our students have to get 800 hours of practice credit in order to graduate, so working in the hotel is convenient for them.
“And the third level is the Leadership Development Program, which is a management training program the students get while they’re going to school,” Adie continued. “They’re required to take a course in supervisory management sophomore year and the rest of it is really given in the hotel. And the biggest joy for me is working with people like [the students], with what I know are going to be the future leaders of the industry. There’s no doubt.”
Among those future leaders in no doubt senior Michael Scheinman, the hotel’s student director of rooms, a position he has worked his way up to. “It’s really been a great opportunity to evolve from a good employee to a good manager and there are different skill sets you don’t necessarily learn in the classroom,” he said. “I know whatever career or field I end up in, the skills I’m learning now will help tremendously.”
Similarly, senior Ben Okon, the hotel’s student restaurant manager of Taverna Banfi, is among the many being transformed into what the hotel companies see is actually a finished executive product. “As you work through the ranks you start to gain knowledge and leadership experience that frankly I can’t think of anywhere else you can get it,” he said. “I’ve mostly spent my time in the restaurant, but I’ve also worked the front desk, the bell stand, the banquet department and the housekeeping department. I’ve just been slowly accumulating these experiences. I don’t know where I’m going from here. But like Michael said, it’s not necessarily about the fact that we’re going to eventually do it, it’s that we know we can do it.” —Christopher Ostrowski
