DePaul to create hospitality leaders

Exciting news from last week's Lodging Conference in Phoenix: DePaul University has received a $7.5-million gift from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, which it will use to create a School of Hospitality Leadership.

The new school will be based at the university’s downtown Chicago College of Commerce and will offer a four-year bachelor’s degree in hospitality leadership beginning in fall 2009. Students will be prepared to take on management roles at hotels, restaurants, convention and tourism venues and spas.

I spoke with Ray Whittington, dean of the College of Commerce, second from left in the photo below. He explained that the relationship with the Hilton Foundation started several years ago. The School for New Learning, primarily an adult education arm, received a grant to send local faculty to Kenya, where they trained locals to be teachers at a Kenyan school staffed by missionaries. A DePaul alumnus who was on the Hilton Foundation board then suggested the school submit a proposal for forming a hospitality program.

“We did some research to decide if we thought this was a good idea, and when we did the research, we found out that there were a dearth of programs in Illinois. And the fact is that hospitality is obviously one of the biggest industries in Chicago,” Whittington said. “It fit into our mission because we’ve traditionally been a school that has done a lot of educating for the professional fields.”

Whittington said the university actively is recruiting new faculty, and he anticipates an initial enrollment of 50 students from across the state and region.

“Increasingly, we’re getting national recruiting of our undergraduate program … but we’re still predominantly drawing from the region right around Chicago, down to St. Louis and up to Milwaukee. That’s where we draw perhaps 85 percent of our undergraduates,” he said.
Ongoing fundraising will support the university’s plans to add graduate degrees, continuing education programs and a research center. DePaul also will reach out to those already working in the hospitality field.

“DePaul has a long history of trying to serve underserved populations. In addition to the undergraduates, we’re also going to try to recruit people in the industry who maybe have an obstacle moving into management because they don’t have a degree,” said Robin Florzak, media relations manager at DePaul. “It happens that a lot of people in that situation are minorities, so in a way, it’ll be helping the industry diversify. That’s very much in the tradition of DePaul.”

“This program has unlimited potential … because of our location and the fact that I think we’ll get a lot of great industry support. I wouldn’t be surprised to see 600 or 700 people in the program within eight years, and certainly 400 or 500 people within the first four to five years,” Whittington said. “We’re interested in numbers, but we’re also interested in high quality.”