Moser transforms fine dining experience for students, diners

"GO Team Morocco!" students cheer during a pre-prep meeting Tuesday night.

 For years the International Dinner Series, hosted by Hotel Restaurant and Institution Management students enrolled in Fine Dining Management class, have been popular events with sell-out crowds and rave reviews.

So how do you improve on success?

You transform it into an experience.  Experiences require significantly more planning and development time, and they cost more to produce.  Is it really worth it?

Absolutely, said this year’s Hilton Co-Chair James Gilmore at the first public lecture last week, because we are in an experience economy.

Freeman Moser III knows all about the experience economy.  Formerly the director of education at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in New York, Moser is in his first year at the College of Family and Consumer Sciences.  When Moser arrived, he saw students producing great food, but knew from his work at The CIA that it would take something more for them to be truly successful in the fine dining industry.

“Excellent food in the fine dining arena is a prerequisite. It’s the price of entrance. It’s where you go above and beyond excellent food, that will help ensure success in the industry,” Moser said.

Economic offerings above and beyond goods and services are the latest shift in America’s economic paradigm, Gilmore told audience members last week as he described the concept of an experience economy.  Gilmore explained how the American economy began as an agrarian system, with people growing and building products for personal consumption.  These farmers then became consumers, traveling to markets and purchasing items from vendors, in a goods economy. Soon businesses began to provide services to accompany the goods they sold, and we entered the service economy. Today, Gilmore proposed, we are in the experience economy; where companies provided not only goods and services, but also create memorable experiences that become viable economic offerings in themselves.

Moser understands this critical shift, and the importance of applying it to the Fine Dining Management class curriculum for the benefit of students and patrons alike.

At right, Shannon Schwab prepares tomatoes for harira, a traditional soup with a mix of lamb, lentils, chick peas, tomatoes, garlic and spices.

Mary Gregoire is excited about Moser’s approach.  “What the dining industry today is doing is designing something that is not only authentic, but that also recreates a physical environment to create an experience for the guests, compared to coming in just to eat a meal,” the department chair of Apparel, Educational Studies and Hospitality Management said.

Students enthusiastically bought into Moser’s reframed “experience” process.

“With 16 students, a teacher and a TA, we could turn out six meals, but the three we are doing aren’t just meals, they’re much deeper, and much more involved,” senior Mike Crabb said. “We’re turning these meals into events.” 

To achieve the new economic ideology that would best prepare students for future careers, Moser devoted the first half of the semester to planning.  He required each student to complete a self-assessment to evaluate their skills in cooking, service, leadership, finances, and computers.  Class members used these “mini-resumes” to divide themselves into three teams, each one responsible for the organization of a dinner.  On the night of the dinner, the organizing team oversees the operation, while the other two teams do the food preparation and customer service, respectively.

At left, Souriya Southammavong and Scott Gilroy team up to peel tomatoes for the pre-prep dinner.

“In our teams, we first had brainstorming sessions, where we came up with as many ideas as we could,” senior John Glenn said. 

After sorting through these ideas and creating a theme for their dinner, each team presented its plan to the class and received feedback. Theme and menu development for an international dinner required much more than just work in the kitchen.

“All of the dinners are based on culture,” senior Souriya Southammavong explained, “so to make the experience as authentic as possible required a lot of research.”

The students’ first test came on October 23, with the American Vintner’s Dinner that featured food and wine pairings from various regions across the country.  According to Moser, the students achieved about “an 80/20 mix of culinary and atmosphere experience.” The meal included a teaser for the palate of Empire Fois Gras from upstate New York, an Oregon duck spring roll appetizer, a coastal salad, Salmon Carneros for the main course, and a dessert of crème brulee.  Students transformed the Joan Bice Underwood Tearoom into an American atmosphere with music by Frank Sinatra and period advertisements and concert posters hung on the walls. 

“With all the work, planning and preparation, we had a vision of what the dinner could be, and by the end of the night, we watched our vision actually happen,” Moser said.

Next week, the students will host a Moroccan dinner.  With the first dinner behind them, Moser anticipates that students in this round will have more success balancing food and atmosphere to achieve a memorable experience for diners.

“I believe the Moroccan dinner will be a perfect blend. There has been an incredible amount of energy spent on designing the atmosphere and activities,” Moser said.

At right, Kendra Miller and Nathan Dahlen put together appetizer kabobs of marinated beef, peppers and onions.

Striving for a Mediterranean feel, the Moroccan team has gathered rugs and other artifacts to flavor the dining atmosphere.  They found Moroccan music to play and hired belly dancers to perform throughout the evening. Hosts and Servers have even gone so far as to learn Arabic phrases to use in greeting and serving patrons.

Story by Jason Jenny.  

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Real time open house scheduled to recruit experts for interactive food safety web site

Ellis (left) and Henroid review questions on the web site.

An open house to recruit food safety experts and promote the Ask a Food Safety Expert web site will be held on Thursday, November 14 in 1 MacKay Hall.  The program starts at noon and will be followed by an interactive demonstration, said Dan Henroid, an HRIM Extension Specialist who conceptualized and, with research assistant Jason Ellis, helped design the site. 

The goal of this 3-year USDA funded project is to link consumers and foodservice operators with food safety advice via the World Wide Web.  The site contains over 300 food safety frequently asked questions (FAQs) in a searchable database.  The next phase of the project is to provide site visitors the ability to ask questions.  Food safety experts are needed to answer these questions.

Although the demonstration is targeted to recruit experts, anyone is welcome to attend.  If you are unable to attend but want to register as an expert, click here.  Drinks and dessert will be provided; bring your own lunch.

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Satellite series a success

Healthy Teen Development, a national Satellite Series produced by ISU Extension to Families and the University of Minnesota Extension was held on October 17th and 24th 2002. Four other states (i.e., California, Nebraska, New York, Wisconsin) were critical partners to the success of the series.

The purpose of the series was to increase understanding among professionals and volunteers who work with teens and their families of normal teen development, the critical role of parents and other adults, the role of decision-making and communication in healthy sexuality and how to work with youth as partners to promote healthy sexuality development.

Three nationally recognized speakers presented information related to the topic.

Presenters included Dr. Laurence Steinberg of Temple University, Dr. Robert Blum with the University of MN and Jennifer Oliphant, MPH, also with University of MN,

In addition to the presenters above, parents and teens joined the presenters in sharing their views related to parenting teens and working with youth as partners to make healthy choices related to sexuality.

The satellite program series was down-linked in 218 sites across the nation. Estimates indicate that over 2,000 individuals viewed program. In addition, many local site facilitators videotaped the series and will use portions of the tapes in future trainings for professionals, as well as workshops for parents.

Two states, Tennessee and Ohio plan to use portions of the taped satellite series in statewide training for Cooperative Extension and community family/youth serving agency training.

Financial and/or promotional support to produce Healthy Teen Development was contributed by the following entities:

§           CFCS Helen Le Baron Hilton Fund

§           Iowa Department of Public Health

§           ISUE to Families

§           ISUE to 4H Youth Development

§           American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences

§           Iowa Association of Family and Consumer Sciences

§           National Extension Association of Family and Consumer Sciences

For more information, please contact Kimberly Greder kgreder@iastate.edu    Look for the next national parenting satellite conference coming fall 2003!  

Report by Kim Greder.

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Miller Faculty Fellowship supports service learning component

Lisa Enloe, Pat Walsh and Nancy Merideth.

Students majoring in child and family services can get hands-on experience in a class that was restructured with the help of a grant from Miller Faculty Fellowship.

Lisa Enloe, Nancy Meredith, and Pat Walsh collaborated on the project proposal to add a service learning component to HDFS 218 Study Tour.  The course was originally designed to give students professional skill development and career exploration, but there wasn’t outside experience involved, said Enloe.  The idea to reformat the class came after students gave feedback wishing they had prior experience before they had to jump into an internship.

Enloe said HDFS students are required to do a 320-hour practicum as a capstone experience.  “This is a way early on to have experience in an agency before making a [internship] commitment,” Enloe said.

The class also gives students an early glimpse of what it is like to work in a human services agency.

“It is an opportunity for students to give back to the community and for agencies to benefit from students knowledge and energy,” Enloe said.

Students enrolled in the class are required to work 15 hours at a local human services agency.  Throughout the semester, students work in groups to complete a final project presentation summarizing their project experience.

Students have a variety of agencies to work with including:  Youth and Shelter Services, Mid-Iowa Action Committee, Boys and Girls Club, Beyond Welfare, ACCESS, Heartland Senior Services, and Center for Childcare Resource and Referral.

While volunteering at Beyond Welfare, students may help with supper programs either making food or serving meals.  At Heartland Senior Services, students help prepare and present activities and theme parties.  MICA gets students involved in the acquisition and distribution of food for their food bank.  Many students build one-on-one relationships with children at Youth and Shelter Services and the Boys and Girls Club by helping with homework, tutoring, and supervising dances.

The grant money was used to develop a manual and a procedure, not only for HDFS 218, but also for other instructors who want to implement service learning into their class format.  Money was also used to develop relationships with human services agencies in the community.  A graduate assistant, Shelby Kaura, was also hired to help implement the project.

The Miller grant was awarded in July of 2001 and ran through June 2002.  The restructured class began Fall 2001.

Margaret Torrie, HDFS associate professor who currently instructs HDFS 218, is very glad with the outcome the class.  “It’s been very successful,” she said.  “Students have an opportunity to explore a variety of professional areas of specialization and focus more carefully in pre-professional development skills.”

“[The students] are very pleased and happy to participate in service learning projects as well as learn about those projects their peers are involved in,” she said.  “They enjoy working with people in specific settings and seeing direct applications of their work rather than classroom theory.”  

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Faculty Review Committee (Promotion and Tenure) for the College of Family and Consumer Sciences for 2002-2003 are listed in the table below.

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Photo gallery: Pine & Gilmore, alumni awards

	Hilton Co-chairs Jim Gilmore and Joe Pine consult with textiles and clothing assistant professor Gina Pisut.  The pair was available for individual and group sessions on Monday and Tuesday.
	Dean Carol B. Meeks gives Ruth Geest Postma the Helen LeBaron Hilton Recognition award last month during Homecoming festivities last month.
	Alumni Director Jeffery Johnson congratulates Joan Herwig on being awarded a faculty citation at an awards ceremony Homecoming weekend.

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WebCT Tip: Reducing online cheating  full version of tip 

As any instructor will tell you, there is no fool proof way to completely prevent cheating either in a traditional classroom or in an online course. However, there are things an instructor can do to reduce the likelihood of cheating.

Typically, an instructor who is more involved with his or her students will find that there is less cheating occurring. In an online course this means that the instructor is paying attention to how often students are accessing the online materials, which portions of the course students are or are not visiting, and monitoring student contributions to discussions and chat sessions.

It is also critical to reduce the pressure on the student to cheat. This can be done by forgoing the traditional one chance, time limited quiz and replacing it with an assessment method that encourages mastery learning.

Some general and specific approaches to minimize cheating include:

• look for alternative ways of assessing student success, such as frequent participation in online discussions, chats and group projects
   
• require drafts and outlines of work to be submitted
   
• require frequent postings and activities so that it would be more difficult for a student to get someone else to do their work
   
• do not rely on unproctored online quizzes for the total grade in a course
   
• require students to post introductions at the start of the course so that you can get a feel for their individual writing styles and command of the language
   
• talk to a student by phone or in person regarding the content of the course or work submitted (it is reasonable to expect that they should be able to explain their own work)
   
• provide many graded and ungraded assessment opportunities for students (consider using the Self Test tool or weekly "practice" quizzes)
   
• have students work in groups to answer specific discussion questions and provide a means whereby students rate their group members contributions
   
• assume that all online quizzes are open book format
   
• add a password to proctored exams, and an IP restriction if feasible
   
• when using online quizzes randomize the question order,  the order of answer choices in questions (where practical), and draw questions randomly from question pools
   
• allow students multiple attempts at quizzes (can record their first. last, highest or average score) 

Tip prepared by Karla Embleton.  Several of the points listed above were taken from The Ultimate WebCT Handbook, 1^st Edition, Division of Distributed and Distance Learning, Georgia State University, 2001.

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