Vacation Time

The FELC Blog will have new posts beginning on August 3. It is time to take vacation and energize the batteries to meet the challenge that comes with the tsunami of students hitting campus in mid-August. You know the feeling.

In the meantime, check out Extra! Extra! Read All About It! located at the left-hand column of this page. All you need to do is click on the link that is of interest to you, such as as "education news" or "culinary news," and a list of relevant news articles will appear below, which are updated every day by news sources from around the world. This feature of our blog is a great way for culinary arts and hospitality educators and administrators to easily keep up on the current events that shape our lives and careers.

Excellent Human Intelligence Online Resource

I have truly learned a great deal about teaching and learning since reading Willingham's recent book, "Why Don't Students Like School?" I will be sharing my interpretations of what I gleaned from the book in the weeks ahead but wanted to call your attention today to an EXCELLENT online resource that concerns human intelligence from Indiana University. It is well worth the time at least noting what is contained on the site for future reference or better still, carving out some time to read some excellent articles. Doing so may challenge what you think you know about teaching and learning. So check it out and let those in our community know what you think!

The URL is: http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/index.shtml

I especially loved the interactive map that depicts the history of those who shaped our understanding of human intelligence as far back as Plato (www.indiana.edu/~intell/map.shtml)

Building Scholarly Communities

Perhaps many of you are interested in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) or practicing it to improve your teaching, which depending on who you reference is defined as "making one's teaching public."

Either way, the link below will take you to a special issue of the Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning Journal published by Kwantlen Polytechnic University. This special issue "offers essays reporting on activities and experiences of the member institutions of a Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) Institutional Leadership initiative group." I have read a sampling of the essays in this issue and found them to be quite interesting and hope you find the same to be true.

The issue (which also affords the opportunity to go access back issues) is found at:

http://kwantlen.ca/TD/Current_Issue.html

Great Video for Intro to Foodservice

The National Restaurant Association has put together a great video that, as the website indicates, "is a tribute to what restaurants do for our country -- their impact on their employees, on careers, on communities and on the nation's economy." It is a great video to use in an introduction to hospitality or foodservice class for freshman students, or prospective students (and their tuition paying parents) to truly appreciate the size and scope of the foodservice industry. It is well done and only lasts 6 minutes.

Used in class, it could be a great discussion starter to see how their perception of the industry matches up with the facts and figures in the video. Check it out at: http://www.restaurant.org/aboutus/video/index.cfm

Use Cooking to Teach Math

Many scratch their heads as to why students in culinary arts and hospitality programs do not "get math." One of the many reasons students do not get math is that, according to cognitive psychologists, the brain does not like to think and when a student is faced with a "math problem" the brain does not think it can solve it wont' try. A corollary to this cognitive principle lies in the example of crossword puzzles. The crossword puzzle in the Sunday NY Times is a very difficult puzzle to solve compared to perhaps the one in your local paper. If you were to start doing crosswords for a hobby and started with the one in the NY Times you might very well give up because your failure rate would be high and signal "I am not good at crossword puzzles!" On the other hand, if you started with the one in your local newspaper your initial success rate might be very high leading you to think you can do crossword puzzles and once mastered the one at the local level perhaps attempt one that is more difficult but less so than the NY Times. So the way in which a math problem is presented initially to a student signal's whether or not that person "thinks" they have a fighting chance at solving it.

Think for a moment. How many reading this have taken the SAT test? How well did you do on those problems that said, "You are having ten people for dinner. You cannot sit Aunt Anne next to Uncle Bob, and Grandma Smith prefers to sit near Uncle Ed, and on and on..." I don't know about you but when faced with those problems my brain would freeze up and my response would be, "Who cares, let them sit next to whomever they happen to sit and deal with it!"

Perhaps another reason so many struggle to teach culinary math to students is that they try to teach them math first and then apply it to cooking. What if it were the other way around? What if cooking was used to teach math instead? This simple reversal in the way we think about teaching culinary math may be the very thing that helps students convince themselves they can do math. Indeed many of the students who are in your program right now believe they can cook while at the same time they fear math (my classes will be filled with them in the fall). What if we took their belief in themselves to cook and leveraged it to help them believe they can do culinary math?

To that end, Jennifer Wagaman thinks that, "many math lessons can be taught in the kitchen by having children cook and manipulate various kitchen tools." To read some of the tips she gives for teaching math using cooking -- instead of the other way around -- visit the following website and click around when there as there is lots of really good information on teaching basics.

http://teaching-strategies-mentorship.suite101.com/article.cfm/teaching_math_in_the_kitchen

Father of the Gyro

In the event that many of you do not get SmartBriefs, I just had to share a story that was on the one I was sent today for personal interest or to pass along to students. No doubt, you have seen the "cone of meat" rotating in many Greek restaurants from which a portion is shaved on demand to make a gyro. As it turns out, the American gyro can be traced to Milwaukee's John Garlic -- who, with his wife, came up with the idea for a gyro plant. Although Garlic never made any money on his brainchild it is worth knowing that he made this American Greek diner staple a reality. To read a rather interesting story on Garlic and his invention visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/dining/15gyro.html?_r=1&ref=dining

So, now the next time you watch the spinning cone of meat you can turn to the person next to you and give them the history of this great Americanized interpretation of an Old World classic.

Amateur Cookie Contest hosted by Whole Foods

Do you have a student or two who shows promise as a pastry chef and living in the Midwest? Perhaps they should enter the second annual cookie contest and put their skills to the test. The second annual Amateur Cookie Contest will be hosted by Whole Foods, on July 25, 2009. If your student has a a great cookie recipe, encourage them to compete. This year's contest flavor is "Citrus".

Second Annual Amateur Cookie Competition Rules:
* Entries must be submitted by July 17th. Only the first 25 entries will be accepted for the competition.
* Contestants must submit 10 cookies for tasting by the judges.
* Contestants must submit 5 identical cookies for display (these cookies will judged on appearance only - not a full presentation of cookies).
* Display space is limited to a 12" X 12" area on a white plate that will be provided.
* All cookies are submitted at the time of registration, cookies will be displayed for you and presented to the judges for tasting.
* Cookie recipes must be submitted with the cookies for tasting (if no recipe is submitted your cookies will not be judged).
* No baking is done on premises.
* All contestants must use the following ingredients, but are not limited to only these ingredients: Nielsen Massey Vanilla, Plugrá European-Style Butter, King Arthur Flour and a citrus flavor of your choosing (all of these items can be found at your local Whole Foods store).
* Each entry must be solely the work of the entrant.
Cookies must be at least 1.5" in diameter and no larger than 4" in diameter (cookie must fit within a 4" X 4" square).
* All cookies and decorations must be edible.
* Pastry Chicago and Whole Foods are not responsible for any items left behind at the end of this event.
* Please note that this competition is for amateurs only. This excludes professionals working in the pastry industry as well as graduates of pastry or culinary programs.

Registration form is available at:
www.pastrychicago.org/calendar/documents/09PC_090725_CookieComp_regrulesforms.pdf

For information on becoming a participant of the competition or should you have any questions please contact Lindsay Koriath at mailto:info@pastrychicago.org?subject=RSVP, 312.726.2419 ext.208.

Cup for Education...Learning for the Future

The Cup for Education is a nonprofit that has the following mission statement, "...help poor, rural coffee communities around the world build schools within their communities, and assist in providing them with teachers and the basic tools needed to educate the future generations of coffee farmers." All proceeds raised go to help purchase educational supplies, such as the ones we load our K-12 kids up with every fall in preparation for school.

This appears to be a credible organization with a cause near and dear to our hearts -- education!

To learn more about the organization or make a donation the mailing address is:
Cup for Education
P.O. Box 140706
Staten Island, NY 10314

You can also visit: http://www.cupforeducation.org/

July 2009 Issue of Int'l Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

The July 2009 issue of International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning is now available online at http://academics.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/v3n2.html.

There are a wide range of interesting articles aimed at enhancing the quality of education that are based on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning so that there is some evidence to back the claims being made by the author as to the effectiveness of a particular pedgagoy, etc. Hope you find some of them useful along the lines of mentoring, using clickers in the classroom, Service-Learning and other topics.

Stealing Buddha's Dinner

The title for today's blog post is that of a book all incoming freshman students at Purdue are being asked to read before start of classes this coming fall. In anticipation of this requirement, faculty across Purdue are being asked to integrate the book into their course in one way, shape, form or manner. The book is based on a memoir by Bich Minh Nguyen, who travelled here to the states with her family as a young girl when the Vietnam war came to a crashing halt when the remaining American soldiers left Saigon. I am sure you boomers out there can remember those images as South Vietnamese citizens clamored to get out of their country as the North Vietnamese invaded the country.

I dutifully picked up the book to read it and found that I quite enjoyed it so recommending it today. The book provided great insights as to how someone copes with the clash of cultures that occur when someone makes their home in the USA. The aspect of the book that I found most interesting was the impact that large food conglomerates had on the author when she first came to the United States which made her question the foods and recipes native to her culture that were served at home compared to those being sold constantly via television ads or eaten by neighbor and friends. If you are up to date on the climbing obesity rates in the US, based on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the author's experience also makes the case for the role that food marketing is having (negatively) on those born in the USA, too.

To obtain the book, here is full information:
Bich Minh Nguyen (2007). Stealing Buddha's Dinner. Viking Penguin, USA. ISBN 978-0-14-311303-4 (ppbk).

To learn more about the obesity trends in the US, visit: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

Cocktails for Two

The prognosis for revenues at the bar this year due to recession shows a 2% projected drop in sales compared to an annual average growth of 6.6% between 2003 and 2007, according to a recent issue of Business Week (July 6, 2009). Be that as it may, there is still the need for culinary and hospitality students to know the difference between mixed drinks and cocktails and how to make them to please those who are still bellying up to the bar.

If you teach a mixology class, or another class, where students are required to come up with a drink menu, or simply learn different drinks there is a good online resources they can use to satisfy their assignments.

The website http://www.thebar.com/ has 750 drink recipes along with some 100 how-to videos, which may come in handy for those who are not allowed to use alcoholic beverages due to campus restrictions yet need to teach this information to students. The site is hosted by the British company Diageo, who owns such popular brands as Smirnoff and Jose Cuervo. Another feature of the website is "Barnomics," which suggests economical recipes that are good to have on hand during a recession to make the most of the beverage dollar. To access the site, one is supposed to be 21 so you might need to access the site to share with students who are learning mixology.

Check it out, you might even find a new adult beverage to sample on a hot summer night, if so inclined.

RECIPE BOOK ASSIGNMENT

The assignment iwas developed by Chef Thom England, at Ivy Tech Community College, to have students develop their own recipe book. The assignment is worth 100 points. Three recipes are to be turned in each week by students to help them build the book during the course from week 3 and going through week 12.

The recipes are used to publish a recipe book that is printed in early January. Each recipe is to be written for a home cook, not a restaurant cook. The recipes must be twists on American Regional Classics. In essence, students are to take a classic recipe of the region they will be studying and make it a Midwestern recipe.

As an incentive to do their best, five recipes are selected each week to go into the book. The students who have recipes selected are pictured in the book. The assignment itself goes as follows:

The regions studied in Weeks 3 through 12 are:
New England, Mid Atlantic, South, Floribean, Cajun/Creole, Tex Mex, Southwest and Rockies, California, Pacific NW, and Hawaii,

Basic Requirements:

* 30 total standardized recipes are required.
* All recipes must be written in a professional manner. Plagiarism is taken very seriously; do not steal someone else’s recipe.
* Recipes must be turned in electronically.
* Projects Due the day your class meets.

Students are to Use the Following Recipe Template

Name of Recipe
Yield
Ingredients in order of use
Directions
Preparation time
Cooking Time
Directions for Portioning, plating and garnishing
Directions for cleaning up and storing leftovers

Final Grade is Worth 100 Points Using This Rubric:

Recipes professionally written (16 points)
Transforms recipe to Midwestern (12 points)
Appropriate for the region (12 points)
Name of Recipe (6 points)
Yield (6 points)
Ingredients list in order of use (9 points)
Equipment needed (6 points)
Directions (15 points)
Preparation and cooking times (6 points)
Directions for portioning, plating and garnishing (6 points)
Directions for breaking down, cleaning up and storing leftovers (6 points)

Here is Thom's opinion of the education merits of this project:

I incorporated it in an American Regional Cuisines class. Each week students had to take a traditional recipes from the region we were studying and give it a mid-west twist. My motive in the project was to get them to think more in depth about the traditions of the regions. And, at the same time to start to have a deeper understanding of what Indiana had to offer. (I was getting tired of hearing Indiana didn’t have any food traditions). As we got into the semester it was dramatic the impact it was making on students. I started hearing students in the hallway talking about finding sources of local food ingredients. They became excited because all of the sudden they could use a new ingredient in their recipes. Then, they started bringing in items like Paw Paws and Persimmons because they wanted to know more about what to do with them and what they tasted like. I can say without a doubt that the project helped the students to start thinking on their own how to develop recipes on their own using what is growing seasonally around them. I saw too often with different recipe assignments in the past they just copied something from the internet with a couple of changes. After the books were printed they were distributed to the students involved and at key fundraisers. They have been a hit, know in our second printing.

The book is then sold to the public as a program fundraiser. A copy can be had or viewed at:
https://ivytech.ejoinme.org/MyEvents/AprilInParis2009/IndianaHarvestCookbook/tabid/147439/Default.aspx

If interesting in learning more about this assignment, please contact:

Chef Thom England
Culinary Arts Instructor
Hospitality AdministrationIvy Tech Community College-Central Indiana
Office NMC 409
50 W. Fall Creek Pkwy. North Dr.
Indianapolis, IN 46208-5752
Cell: 317-523-2952
tengland@ivytech.edu
www.ivytech.edu/indianapolis

Making Sense of Student Evaluations

If doing student evaluations and want to get the most out of their results, Greg Riehman has written a short piece called "Making Sense of Student Evaluations" that can be used as a starting point for conversations or reflections on end-of-semester student evaluations.

It's online here: http://www.lehigh.edu/~infdli/FD-evaluations.htm

Credit for Source: Greg Reihman, Ph.D., Director of Faculty Development, Co-Director, Lehigh Lab, Adj. Professor of Philosophy

The 3/50 Project

In case you have not heard, more and more attention is being given to Cinda Baxter, who founded Project 3/50. The crux of the project is to start spending $50 in 3 locally owned businesses per month. By doing so, it is estimated that it would generate more than $42 billion in revenue for locally owned businesses, based on US Department of Labor data. The best part is that by buying local there is a greater multiplier effect in that every dollar spent on locally owned businesses generates another $68 in the community, compared to $43 from chains.

Imagine what this project could do for the hospitality and tourism industry we know and love, not to mention the overall opportunity to revitalize the America we all used to know and love before the dawn of chain businesses. While I am not wholeheartedy against chains, per se, as they employ lots of our students, I am in favor of this project for the good it can do to make each town in the United States look different from another rather than the same old collection of flags and brands one sees town after town after town making every new place look just like one's hometown. Yuk!

The Project 3/50 website is located at the following URL:
http://www.the350project.net/home.html

The Project 3/50 Project Blog is available at the following URL:
http://alwaysupward.com/blog/save-the-economy-three-stores-at-a-time/