Meet Your Meat

Are you wondering why food trend after food trend after food trend indicates that more Americans are becoming vegetarian?  The reason is simple, more and more people are becoming aware of how meat is produced in this country and losing their appetite for beef, pork, and chicken.  Not to mention a disdain for factory farmed eggs.  People also want to eat healthier diets and meat consumption is being restricted if not eliminated altogether.

Americans are getting hip to the way meat is produced in this country from lots of books such as Eating Animals and Animal Factory not to mention videos such as Meet Your Meat, narrated by Alec Baldwin and produced by PETA.  The video is graphic and does not glamorize meat production and although every single meat producer in the United States do not treat their animals this way the fact is that the vast majority are guilty of inhumane treament on their farms.  You can show your students the video and let them draw their own conclusions at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-513747926833909134#

And as food prices rise and more people go to bed hungry think how Meatless Monday, which should now be standard practice in every culinary program in the US that has a commercial student run operation, would go along way toward solving world hunger with these facts from Veganist: Even if Americans at just one fewer meat dish a week, that would free up 7.5 millon tons of grain, enough to feed the 25 million Americans who go hungry each day.  If 10 percent of the world population gave up meat, it would be enough to feed the estimated billion people who go hungry annually.  Hell, if Mario Batali can institue Meatless Monday in ALL of his restaurants we do our part in our operations big and small.

It is also the reason that I have been a vegetarian now for 6 months and never felt better about the food I eat and the good it is doing for my body and the planet.

Teacher Man

Perhaps you have heard of the international bestseller, Angela's Ashes, written by Frank McCourt.  Does anyone know what Mr. McCourt did before he wrote his bestseller at 66 years-old?  He taught english/grammar in a New York City public high school for 33 years.

What followed that book was Teacher Man.  It is called that because the kids pose their questions in that thick New York accent of, "Hey, teacher man!"   It tells about how he became to be a teacher in New York public schools and how he almost got fired on the first two days of his career; the first day he ate the sandwich a kid threw in class the next day he made a casual comment about having a relationship with a sheep, which was more innocent than it sounds.

He then goes on to talk about what is was like teaching in public school.  The challenges he faced to teach grammar to kids that did not see any need for it.  He talked about eventually linking what the kids did like to do with what he was trying to teach them so that they ended up learning grammar.

I bring up this book as a must read because I am tired of hearing culinary educators say, "well the stuff you do works because you teach at Purdue and I teach at blah, blah, blah."  Horse shit, I say.  If you want to learn some tricks on reaching kids that are unreachable drop McCourt's audio book in your car's CD player and listen and learn.  Really, stop blaming students for their "not wanting to learn" and find out what they like doing and reach them that way.  If McCourt can teach grammar to lower socioeconomic kids in NYC public high school you can teach your kids how to bake a cake.  Go for it!

2011 Hospitality & Tourism Case Study Competition!

This competition may be available only to CHRIE members but wanted to share it with our learning community if interested in case studies.  Here is the information that was sent out today:

Case studies provide innovative ideas, business (best) practices, professional dilemmas, and lessons learned from the tourism and hospitality reality. In this vein, case studies are an invaluable source of knowledge for educators, professionals and researchers alike. Simultaneously, case studies can nurture and strengthen knowledge exchanges between research, education and industry.

The three most highly evaluated and commented case studies will receive prestigious (financial and material) prizes as well as recognition and promotion in the annual ICHRIE conference and publication in the ICHRIE Hospitality & Tourism Case Study e-book.

The deadline for authors who want to enter and participate in the ICHRIE Hospitality & Tourism Case Study competition to submit their case studies is 15th May 2011.

This is your opportunity to contribute to hospitality & tourism education, in addition to being rewarded and recognized for your efforts.  Contact Dr. Marianna Sigala, Chair of the ICHRIE Case Study, University of the Aegean, m.sigala@aegean.gr if interested.

What Does Research Say on PowerPoint as Teaching Tool?

This post comes to you courtesy of a blog I follow authored by Ron Berk (http://ronberk.blogspot.com/):

Here are the top 10 conclusions on research on PowerPoint for you to use next time you are putting together one for your teaching:


1. Most students prefer PowerPoint® to traditional lecture (Amare, 2006; Hastings & Attila, 2000; Savoy, Proctor, & Salvendy, 2009), despite how boring it might be (Mann & Robinson, 2009)

2. Traditional PowerPoint® doesn’t produce significant differences in learning (review by Levasseur & Sawyer, 2006) compared to several alternatives

3. Reading text verbatim on a slide off of the screen decreases learning and retention (“redundancy principle”) (Mayer & Johnson, 2008)

4. Gill Sans, Souvenir, and similar fonts are more comfortable to read, interesting, attractive, and professional compared to other fonts (Mackiewicz, 2007a)

5. High-contrast colors and easy-to-read text, graphs, and graphics increase learning (Bradshaw, 2003)

6. High-contrast slides are not more effective than medium-contrast slides in learning and satisfaction (Earnest, 2003)

7. Full-sentence headline (written as an assertion) compared to a word or phrase increases retention of slide content, especially with a clear supportive graphic (Alley & Neeley, 2005; Alley, Schreiber, Ramsdell, & Muffo, 2006)

8. Irrelevant pictures accompanying text and sound effects decrease learning (Bartsch & Cobern, 2003)

9. 2D graphs are preferable to 3D graphs for clarity and comprehension (Mackiewicz, 2007b; Stewart, Cipolla, & Best, 2009)

10. Cool color (blue, green, etc.) high-contrast graphs are preferred over warm colors (Mackiewicz, 2007b)

Using Facebook to Teach Sales

My apologies for not posting anything lately.  Life at Purdue has kept me busy indeed and I am counting the days to spring break to get a breather and recharge my batteries.  On a personal note, I just want to scream when some politician wants to villify the service we provide to this society but that is a rant for another day.

On a positive note.  Many of you may have a foodservice operation that is run by students under watchful eye of a professional staff.  We have two operations that we run out of our department at Purdue.  Because we are not recognized as an official "lab" like those in physics or biology on this campus we have to be self-supporting so customers literally keep us in the teaching business with their patronage.

So to generate much needed revenues we recently decided to formally tie my sales class to promoting our Cafe operation which has been the tried and true institutional cafe line when first installed years ago.  Believe it or not we could depend on people lining up out the door for comfort food off the line and revenues were plentiful for a very long time.  Not anymore!  People are eathing healthier these days and while we offer meatloaf we also have vegetarian sandwiches and sides on the line. 

So the ten teams in the sales class each get a week to blitz the building of their choice and manage the Facebook page to promote sales in the Cafe applying what we learn in the sales class.  The blog is not intended for a long winded explanation but let me tell you that this project has exceeded my wildest expectations.  The creativity and work that the students have put into their week has been unbelievable. 

Best of all for students -- we can track sales in the Cafe and compare each team's week to same time last year to see if their sales efforts are paying off.  And it appears that they are as business is really starting to pick up now that more know what we have refreshed our menu offerings and increase consumer awareness on campus for Cafe (which we are also not allowed to promote with any signage).  During their week, each team gets the chance to stand before their peers and explain what they did to promote sales and what they are learning about sales.  As each week goes by the team in charge sets the bar higher for the team that will follow so the salesmanship gets better, too.  For example, the team taking over after we get from break is going to do a documentary on how the students make pizza and post taht to Facebook -- which is awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is just one of those assignments that does not have a key course objective and slew of learning objectives to teach and assess it; the students are simply free to experiment with sales blitz techniques (which they were taught and practiced at the Indianapolis Hilton) and Facebook -- which they know quite well and learning whether or not it is a viable sales tool as claimed by many businesses.  So if you have a chance check out the Facebook page for HTM Cafe Promotions at:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/HTM-Cafe-Promotions/119760051428827