MOUTHPIECE The unofficial voice of SHTC

“If you want something done, ask a busy person…” But in SHTC, “If you want something done, ASK SUE!”

Sc

ho

ol o

f H

os

pit

ality

, To

uri

sm

& C

ult

ure

ISSUE 3

WINTER

2011

For those of you who don’t know Sue Galand, the Office Administrator for the SHTC, she is a person who takes her job seriously and will always offer an extra hand (or leg) if you need one. And, she's been doing it for a long time. Sue has survived one dean and four chairs, not to mention the coordinators, faculty and support staff. She is also the person who will do almost anything and every-thing for students, faculty or staff. Sue doesn’t take any credit for sin-gle handily keeping our school running smoothly. Not only does she deserve recognition for her outstanding performance when dealing with all of us, she should also be given a medal of honour for handling the enormous amount of work she deals with on a daily basis; which she does with finesse, care and the utmost compassion! It is time we let her know how much we appreciate all of the hard work she ‘puts into this place’! Without Sue, our department would obviously still function because it has to, but we would be lost, confused, disorganized, and completely out of control. It’s hard to say everything in a paragraph, so we’ll let the graffiti (SHTC survey, ti-

tled “describe Sue in one word or more”) speak for itself…

P

ag

e 2

BULLETIN BOARD Students win Tourism Authority of Thailand contest! Krystal Fernandes, Megan Oates and Greg Stagolis created a Presentation for an Ontario wide competition hosted by the Tourism Authority of Thailand. In thirty slides, they had to come up with creative ways to regain customer confidence in travel to Thailand, despite recent political problems. With the help of faculty Karyn Moore, they were able to create a winning presentation!

SHTC Alumni Event: April 15! Our post-grad FECM students are busy organizing the first ever alumni gathering for SHTC. This networking event promises to connect, share and celebrate grad achievements and is aptly titled ‘Rooted in, Branching out’ . From 7-11pm, you will enjoy a range of entertainment and food as well as have an opportunity to give back to Centennial through scholarship support, memorabilia donations and more. Visit:

www.rootedincentennial.ca

CHI Workshop ‘Culture &

Cuisine Cavalcade’: June 8

The Culture & Heritage Institute (CHI) will host a one day workshop this summer at the historic site of Montgomery’s Inn – one of the ten sites owned and operated by the City of Toronto. The action packed agenda includes live cooking and baking demonstrations featuring the use of the Inn’s historic kitchens, keynote and panel discussions featuring industry experts, celebration of ‘slow food’, tea tasting, and will conclude with the farmer’s market event later that evening.

Biback inducted to Meetings &

Incentive Travel Hall of Fame

Faculty in the Post Grad Event Mgmt. Program Sandy Biback, CMP, CMM is flattered and humbled by her induction to the Meetings Incentive Travel Hall of Fame 2011. Recognised with the INDUSTRY BUILDER Award

Sandy has developed best practices, created professional guidelines and built a product or service that has improved the way the

industry does business. Sandy’s greatest thrill is to watch careers flourish, especially those students she’s had a chance to help along the way.

Winner of numerous industry awards, Sandy continues to help young people gain a foothold in the industry. If her role is to blaze a trail that others can follow, mission accomplished. It is clear that students will be benefiting from Sandy’s efforts for years to come. Congratulations Sandy!

We’re proud to have you at SHTC! For full coverage visit: www.meetingscanada.com/hall

offame/industry-builder.html

From BB (Blackboard) to D2L (Desire to Learn) this summer!

Concluding our feature on e-learning tools in classrooms, some very interesting responses were received from our Fall 2010 survey of BB users amongst faculty and students.

Comments included ‘BB is cool!’, ‘Helps me stay on top of my work load’, ‘All teachers must use BB adequately’, ‘Test outline and grading system should be posted’, ‘Overall, a very effective system, which I use daily in classes, but it is extremely cumbersome and not flexible for grades’, ‘Could be an easier tool to use’… and in response to some of these, is our move to

a more dynamic and interactive e-tool this summer– Desire to Learn or simply, D2L!

It is true.. we will start logging into D2L shortly. As with BB, students can access course outlines, Power Point presentations, download course materials -- plus avail online help with links to video tutorials. D2L includes more advance features at a better cost; as well, its flexibility allows us to reflect our emerging e-learning strategy in practice by providing an extremely adaptable environment for faculty and students. D2L is currently used worldwide by over 500 post secondary institutions. In Ontario, users include Fanshawe College, Mohawk College, University of Guelph, and McMaster University.

The college is currently holding preview and training sessions across campuses to help you kick start your planning and preparation for this exciting transition. You can in the meanwhile, check the online

demo here: www.desire2learn.com/demos/learningenvironment/

P

ag

e 3

SHTC Chef Roy wins Gourmand World Cookbook Award!

Dates To Remember - WINTER 2011

March 25 Deadline to withdraw (Winter 2011) & Graduation application/ June convocation participation

April 1 Fees due for Summer 2011

April 15 Alumni Event: Rooted In, Branching Out

April 22 Good Friday: College closed

May 11 Summer 2011 semester begins

June 2 “SHTC Engages” Faculty & Staff Professional Development Event

June 8 CHI Workshop: Culture & Cuisine Cavalcade at Montgomery’s Inn

Chef Suman, a Chef for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, has won the Gourmand World Cook-book Award for his first book: From Pemmican To Poutine: A Journey Through Canada’s Culinary History, the Category - Best Culinary History Book. Chef Suman has been invited as a Celebrity Chef to present Canadian Cuisine and Canadian Foods in Paris in March 2011 at the Paris CookBook Fair in front of representatives from over 100 countries. Canadian cuisine and history are celebrated like never before with the release of this new book. Chef Suman Roy takes readers on a beautiful journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific exploring Canadian exceptional food culture with ingredients that are indigenous to Canada. Canadian cuisine and culture are mosaic of creatively designed dishes that are delightful to the taste buds and celebration to the eyes. Through bountiful pictures, recipes, history anecdotes, and wellness notes, Chef Suman provides the gift of knowledge and brings Canadians as well as the world together to appreciate unique Canadian cuisine and culture.

At SHTC we are so proud and excited about this in-house talent and achievement! Congratulations Chef Roy!!

P

ag

e 4

CULTURAL & HERITAGE TOURISM: Connecting the dots, filling-in the blanks, telling the story - by Walter Cholewa

Canada’s transcontinental railway heritage parallels, literally and figuratively, its antecedent in the United States. Railway construction from the east reached that point and the last spike was hammered into the (rail) sleeper or tie on November 7th, 1885. On May 10th, 1869, at an elevation of 1494 metres above sea level, the U.S. transcontinental railroad was completed by the conjuncture (railheads) of the Chicago/westward section (Union Pacific Railroad) and the Pacific/eastward section (Central Pacific Railroad) at Promontory Summit in what is now Utah. “The Big Four” was the name popularly given to the chief entrepreneurs – “The Associates” as they preferred to be known – in the building of the Central Pacific Railroad (CPR). Though the latter would subsequently be merged with the Union Pacific, it would be

the principals behind the CPR, the railroad magnates as it were, that would leave their imprint on the western American landscape. Leland Stanford, President, would endow the eponymous University near San Jose, CA; Mark Hopkins, Treasurer, built a mansion atop Nob Hill, San Francisco; though it survived the 1906 earthquake, the mansion succumbed to the concomitant inferno that swept the city.

A wealthy engineer acquired the grounds and built the Mark Hopkins Hotel, an upscale landmark in “the city” to this day. Henry E. Huntington, nephew of Collis P. Huntington – Vice President, purchased the failed Hotel Wentworth (Pasadena, CA) in 1911, renaming it the Huntington Hotel. Huntington hired prominent Los Angeles architect Myron Hunt to redesign the main building and grounds. It reopened in 1914, transformed into a splendid winter resort. Though he lived in Los Angeles, Henry E. Huntington had purchased the San Marino Ranch in the vicinity of the Huntington Hotel. An exceptional business man who built a financial empire – railroads, utilities and real estate holdings – in Southern California, Henry E. Huntington amassed the core of one of the finest research libraries in the world. He had acquired a significant art collection and had created an array of habitat exemplar and culture endemic botanical gardens with a globe-spanning geographic range of plant species. In 1911, also on the grounds of the ranch, the large Myron Hunt designed Beaux Arts mansion (which today houses the Huntington Art Gallery) was completed. In 1919, Henry E. Huntington founded “The Huntington”, a private non-profit collections-based research and educational institution comprising The Library, The Huntington Art Gallery and the 50 hectare (120 acre) Botanical Gardens with 16 formal gardens.

Such was the backdrop for the 2011 installment of the Cultural and Heritage Tourism Alliance Conference. The Conference proper was sited at the Langham Huntington Hotel –the erstwhile Huntington Hotel. Among the “wide array of cultural and heritage experiences” on offer was the sojourn to “The Huntington”, a truly impressive facility and an engag-ing experience, as well as a visit to the Norton Simon (art) Museum in Pasadena. Helen Marano - Director, Office of Travel & Tourism, U.S. Dept. of Commerce provided “Commerce & Culture - Travel Economics”. Her presentation included a chart depicting U.S. major inbound tourism markets. Prominent was Canada, the #1 provider of overnight visitors in 2010. Among the Top 10 were Brazil, India, China, (Rep. of) Korea – what was referred to as the “BRICK” countries. Another au current conference topic was “Social Media Trends”; the proposition being that it facilitates inbound marketing as communities converge with creative apps in order to market their cultural and heritage assets. Location-based Services (LBS) – foursquare, gowalla, SCVNGR, provide a playing field to crack the science of loyalty through juxtaposition with the science of discovery. “The Power of Partnerships with Leading Tour Operators” session provided DMOs and sites with tactics to increase visitor arrivals; the premise here being attainment of promotion synergy incorporating travel influencers represented by the aforementioned existing sales intermediaries in the distribution channel.

Off to the AMAZON: on a Biodiversity Research Mission! P

ag

e 5

DID YOU KNOW?! Two noteworthy scholarships in the offing (Application Deadline April 29, 2011), if you have complet-ed your first year at SHTC: *The Canadian Hospitality Foundations Scholarships 2011: www.thechf.ca/scholarships *The Ontario Hostelry Institute: www.theohi.ca/scholarships If you are a 2nd or 3rd year student, you may be eligible for The Colonel Don Dailley Attractions Ontario Scholarship (Deadline: April 22, 2011). For more info. pls. contact Verona Barclay at Ext. 2173 or vbarclay@centennialcollege.ca

Building on the success of the inaugural expedition to the Dominican Republic (DR), more Global Citizenship and Equity Learning Expeditions (GCELE) are set to travel this year. CHTM student Dania Weinstein and HTA student Mark Flaming will represent SHTC as part of the Biodiversity Research Team in Peru's Amazon basin from March 5 - 19. Dania and Mark went through a comprehensive pre-departure orientation program, which included survival language skills, cultural, social and historical backgrounds of the area and people involved, development of individual and group learning plans, and expedition ground rules and processes. While in the Amazon, they will be working with Operation Wallacea (Opwall) and their scientists to do conservation research entailing animals such as macaws, caimans, pink dolphins, and large river otters.

Both Dania and Mark are enthusiastic about the prospects of exploring places they’ve never been before. Mark’s excited pre-departure statement captures it all ‘The GCELEs are not only a chance to travel to places you’ve never been before, but they are a chance to interact with other cultures, and people, and that is the reason I love to travel!’ Track Dania and Mark’s experiences live on Centennial's

Humanracebook.com blogsite: www.centennialcollegeblog.com/

Antique Victorian Blossoms Win FECM Tabletop Competition

Winning team from the FECM class (L-R) Gemma Barker, Amy Mangan, Natalie Buckley, Courtney Kernohan, Josh Gottlieb, Reva Carmichael, proceed to the Canadian Sp. Events & Meetings Expo. Competition at the MTCC next week. Good luck!!

P

ag

e 6

Watch out for our next edition in Fall! Visit us: centennialcollege.ca/hospitality. We are looking for budding writers, travel essays, snapshots and news that can be featured in the

‘Mouthpiece’.

Send us your ideas, stories, questions, comments: hospitality@centennialcollege.ca

INVESTIGATING INDUSTRY INTERNSHIP- by Shirley Merith The SHTC provides students with the opportunity to gain practical work experience in their chosen field. Students can take the theoretical knowledge gained in the classroom and put it to good use in a workplace environment. Students will also learn about the ups and downs of the industry they have chosen, have the opportunity to network, and the ability to sharpen their skills for potential job positions that might be available at the end of their placement period. Students should always put their best foot forward when given an opportunity to obtain a placement.

Here are some tips you can use to make the best of your work experience and to keep you one step ahead of your competition, which by the way could be someone you sit beside in the classroom everyday:

* Always arrive on time * Dress appropriately for the job * Take notes when given instructions * Take the initiative and ask questions instead of pretending you know it all * Think of the job you want in the next few years and work towards achieving it

The tips are ‘tried and true’. Graduates of our programs have found permanent employment at some of the most outstanding organizations in the business over the years. Just ask one of them when they come back to visit!

COREY’s CORNER - tips, tricks and treats from our baking expert!

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

Cream the butter, sugars, salt and vanilla until light and fluffy. And the eggs one at a time and mix well after each addition.

Sift flour and baking soda together and add to the mix.

Add the chocolate chips and mix until blended.

DO NOT OVER MIX.

Use a tablespoon and scoop even amounts onto a silicon lined baking tray.

Allow space between each cookie for spreading.

Bake at 375F for approx. 10-15 minutes.

Let cookies cool before moving... Yumm!!!

(Yields 4 doz.)

YOU WILL NEED

Unsalted Butter - 270 gr. Granulated Sugar - 150 gr. Brown Sugar - 225 gr. Salt - 3/4 tsp. Vanilla - 10ml. Whole Eggs - 3 Pastry Flour - 450 gr. Baking Soda - 2 tsp. Chocolate Chips - 450 gr.