Professional Development for High School Instructors:

Connecting Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management with Sustainable Agriculture Systems

The primary goal of this project is to increase the number of secondary educational instructors trained in food and agricultural sciences. This project will train culinary and hospitality instructors how to integrate agricultural literacy, agricultural concepts, and sustainability into their classes. The Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management at New Mexico State University has developed a series of five online course with in-person immersive summer workshops for high school culinary arts and hospitality instructors. The five courses are 1) Introduction to Agriculture and Culinary Connections, 2) Purchasing and Supply Chain Management with Emphasis on Local and Sustainable foods, 3) Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle in Foodservice and Hotels, 4) Agricultural Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and 5) Agricultural, Culinary, and Rural Tourism. These courses will focus on providing the proper training to the next generation of culinarians and hospitality managers with the skills needed to ensure the effective and socially responsible use of resources producer to the end-user and consumers.

This program is open to any culinary or hospitality high school instructor in the United States.  The classes and workshop will take place over approximately a one and half year time period.  During the online courses you will spend approximately two hours per week on each course.  We are have created three full cohorts and each participant will go through the fove courses and attend an in-person workshop.   

This work is supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, AFRI Agricultural Workforce Training Priority Area, award #2023-67037-39940.

For any questions please contact Dr. Jean Hertzman at jhertzma@nmsu.edu