Professional Culinary Arts & Hospitality

Learn restaurant operations by working with state-of-the-art commercial equipment in the iTown Café, where breakfast and lunch are served Monday through Friday, and banquet events are contracted and catered by iTECH students in the Conference Center.

Students practice the skills for this program by working and learning in the iTOWN Café, which serves breakfast and lunch Monday through Friday on regular school days. It focuses on broad, transferable skills and stresses demonstration of the following elements of the Professional Culinary Arts & Hospitality industry: cooking and baking techniques; planning; management; finance; technical and product skills; labor issues; community issues; and health, safety, and environmental issues.

This program offers a sequence of courses that provides coherent and rigorous content aligned with challenging academic standards and relevant technical knowledge and skills needed to prepare for further education and careers in the Hospitality and Tourism career cluster. It provides technical skill proficiency and includes competency-based applied learning that contributes to the academic knowledge, higher-order reasoning and problem-solving skills, work attitudes, general employability skills, technical and occupation-specific skills, and knowledge of all aspects of the Hospitality and Tourism career cluster.

AREA OF FOCUS

• Hotline
• Soups
• Mother Sauces and their derivatives
• Salads
• Egg cookery
• Vegetable cookery
• Six basic cooking methods:
  • braising
  • grilling
  • sautéing
  • steaming
  • roasting
  • frying
• Server
• Knife skills
• Sanitation
• Cashier
• Baking & Pastries
• Banquets

PORTFOLIO AND COURSE PROJECTS

Every student must have a cover letter, resume, “favorite food report” and pictures of plated menu items. Students will also complete practical food preparation tests; assist in kitchen breakdown, clean-up and reset and practice public speaking. Students will learn to prepare daily baking and pastry specials, as-well-as participate in the Farmbot agricultural awareness program.

There are a variety of projects within the four Occupational Completion Points. Students will need to complete all of the projects in order to satisfy the curriculum requirements for this course.

PROGRAM EXPERIENCES

Throughout the program students will learn and use fundamental culinary skills including, but not limited to, knife, baking, and sanitation, customer service, cashier and pizza making.

Financial Lessons: Students work on our registers, learning some of the most vital information to keeping a restaurant open, customer satisfaction!

Learn the Gas Grill: Students gain hands-on experience on our gas grill, where they prepare fish, chicken, steaks and a variety of other meats, all to order!

Graduate with Career- Ready Skills!

ENTRY & EXIT REQUIREMENTS

• Specific Admissions Requirements: None

• DOE Basic Skills Exit Requirements: Communications 9, Computation 9 (unless exempt)

• CASAS Exit Requirements: Communications 239+, Computation 225+ (unless exempt)

PREP FOR EMPLOYMENT

After successfully completing this program, the student will be able to perform the following:

• Identify career and job opportunities.
• Use and care for commercial tools and equipment.
• Exhibit and utilize safe, secure, and sanitary work procedures.
• Perform back-of-the-house and inventory duties.
• Follow food identification, selection and purchasing, receiving, storing, and inventory guidelines.
• Compare and analyze menus of food establishments.
• Prepare and present food products to meet creativity aspects as well as quality standards.
   
• Internships
  Various professional organizations are partners with iTech, working to provide internship opportunities for our students.
   
• Workforce Education Internship Program
  Students participate in work-based learning experiences in their field of study outside of the classroom. ITECH has a Workforce Internship Program for those students who need work experience, but do not have an out-of-school job.
   
• Job Placement
  Our competent counseling staff provides job postings on a daily basis, with help in resume writing and the interviewing process.

CERTIFICATE

A certificate is awarded to students who successfully complete the program’s competencies and satisfy basic skill requirements in accordance with state guidelines. Students will also have the opportunity to test and earn additional industry and national credentials through the training program.