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One of the things we've done for the hospitality students
is we've developed a restaurant.
So our students run this restaurant--
they manage the restaurant, they serve in the restaurant,
they plan the meals for the restaurant,
they interact with the customers that are in the restaurant--
so they get the experience that they are going to have
when they get out of school while they're in school and
they get to integrate all of the things that they have learned,
the theories, into a practical application serving people.
In commercial quality food production, with the restaurant
component built in, which is called Pantera,
I teach the theory to model practice.
That is teaching them in class and then allowing the students
to apply what they've learned.
Pantera is a required class for hospitality majors and it's a
restaurant class and it's also student-run and we don't make
any profits from it, and the general public comes
and we serve them a four course meal and then
they rate us on how the food was and how our performance was.
Well in the back of the kitchen, like I said, there's one
back-of-the-house manager and he has probably five to six
students who are helping him on the back, and that's anything
from getting the meals ready to doing the dishes to getting all
the different stuff from the ovens upstairs because we use
the ovens upstairs to then, you know, taking out the plates and
making sure they go in the hot box so that those are fine when
it comes to serving, so everything is warm
how you would like it for a restaurant.
We cook the appetizers the entree, the soup, the salad,
put that together, and then the desserts,
so you learn a lot about the basic skills of cooking.
And then in the front of the house is all the serving
aspects, so making sure that everyone has what they need,
having, you know, specific tables set up, perfectly ready.
>> Ms: Zuccarelli: There is usually a theme
so they decorate for the theme and then when they serve they
have to refill the glasses just like in a regular restaurant,
all of the regular stuff that they do.
>> Ms: Chomczyk: They have someone in the
galley kitchen who's putting together
all the different, just salt, pepper and like sugar
and stuff that needs to be out on the table.
>> Ms: Zuccarelli: And then the front of the
house managers interact with the customers, take their money,
make sure everything adds up right,
make sure everyone's happy,
they hand out surveys which helps evaluate us
and let us know how we're doing, so overall it kind of
helps build our confidence and still it's hands-on learning.
>> Ms. Rhodes: But it also allows them
the interaction with customers and gives them the confidence
in knowing that they can do this--that they can go out
there and they can serve these people this food and they can
take complaints if there's any complaints and they know
how to solve the problems if there's any problems.
At the end of the evening, when everyone's finished eating and
they're having their dessert, each one of the managers goes
around to the tables--"how was your food tonight,"
"how was the quality," "how was the temperature,"
"is there anything maybe we could do better,
what do you think" and they interact with the customers,
which is what any good manager does, anyone at all does that.
>> Ms: O'Donovan: Mainly people love it,
they love everything about it.
They always enjoy the food, they like the timing in between the
food, they like how it's set up, you know, but then there's also
the people that, you know, maybe they like their steak and
potatoes and if we do different themes and different cultures it
kind of throws them off, but people, they know very
specifically the right ways of serving, so they'll watch you so
you learn from that and their remarks and stuff like that.
>> Ms: Zuccarelli: I like when they tell us like,
we had our last class and there was a lot of regulars
and they told us 'we can really see like the confidence
and how much you've improved since the first Pantera class'.
>> Ms: Chomczyk: One of the tables that
I was serving I've never served before so when
I went up to them and they're like 'oh, is everything alright'
and I'm like 'I've never served'
and they're like 'you're doing fine,' you know, like relax.
They gave me the feedback of like don't worry, you're doing a
fine job, like this is what you're going to learn from it.
This class is there to help you learn these things, and if you
don't know them it's not bad because you learn from it.
Tuesday was our last class and one of the customers came by
and said that she likes to see difference of how we start the
first day--and how, you know, we might not be as confident--to
let's say the last day, when we progressed and learned so much,
and she said 'I like seeing how you guys developed
throughout the semester'.
>> Ms. Rhodes: A lot of the faculty come
and different people like that.
The EIU campus community come, students come, and it's just a
great program, it's a wonderful program for FCS and for Eastern.
>>Dr. Painter: Benefits of integrative learning
are many.
I would say that the most important benefit is simply
that it better trains then to be effective people
in their fields while they're in school.
Instead of just getting all the data and information and then
sending them out, trying to apply it when they get out, they
get to try to apply it while they're here and be able to
reflect on it, critique it and then learn from their mistakes
before they get into the world.
>> Ms. Rhodes: It takes the principles
and the theories that I teach them and gives them
a chance to apply this, where a lot of classes that are taught
at Eastern don't give them the opportunity
to apply what they've learned.
Okay, they've learned all this knowledge but they don't,
now what do they do with it?
They have no idea what to do with it so it gives them
a chance to apply what they've learned.
When they go out into the real world and they have this
portfolio and they have this knowledge that they have now,
it also gives them a competitive edge over the next applicant
for the job, you know.
If they're applying and you have one who has no experience or who
has no college background or who has never been a manager or who
has never had to deal with any of these real life scenarios
versus someone who has it and has a portfolio in front of them
saying this is what we have done, this is what I can do,
I can scale a recipe, I can manage a budget,
I can manage a restaurant, I can work with people
that maybe I don't care for.
Well you learn what it's like to work as a team and just kind of
realizing that you can't just do everything on your own,
as much as you want to.
I'm the kind of person that, I would much rather do something
on my own but I realize that half the time I can't.
There's no way I can do everything, so you learn to see
who is there and how you rely on so many other people to help you
out in order to get a task done because there is, I mean,
in any work environment I believe that yeah,
you might want to get things done on your own
but you always have to work with other people no matter what.
Well, overall it gave me confidence.
Like I never thought I would want to work in a restaurant,
but after this class I really love the atmosphere, the people,
the fast pace of it and I want to go into like a country club
or a hotel and work in food and beverage,
so it's really going to give me a lot of help in that aspect.
I think it's a great way to meet people.
There are a lot of people that come in through the FCS
department, faculty that works at the library and people of the
community, so we get all different types of people coming
in and different types of, you know, what they like so you have
to be able to take criticism, but the good and the bad
so I think it's a great class.
>> Ms. Rhodes: That's what Pantera is about--
it teaches them all these different things and how to
bring it all together and to make a successful evening of it
and they've done very good.
I put my students in real life situations, in real world
situations that come up in the restaurants all over the United
States, all over the world, and it's problems that they have to
solve and by doing so they have to think critically
'how can I solve this problem, what can happen here'.
>> Dr. Painter: Because the students
get in there, they run the restaurant
and problems happen they have to fix.
They learn how to fix them and then we get to reflect on them,
how they fixed them and then they get to go into another
problem with the knowledge of what happened the first time
and the critique that happened of that.
You know, they learn organizational skills,
they learn managerial skills, they learn financial skills,
they learn interaction between customer and staff
and problem solving and it also teaches them teamwork.
Teamwork is a huge component of my teaching skills.
>> Ms. Chomczyk: I was nervous about it
at first because I don't know what it's like to necessarily
work with such a big team, but I enjoy working with everyone.
It's definitely been more than I expected it to be.
I didn't feel that, I didn't know that everyone was going to
get so close and just being like 'alright, well let me help you
out when you need this or if you need any
ideas from the previous week for what we did'.
Everyone works as a team and we try to help each other out.
It's definitely something I could get out of this class is
knowing that, you know, there's no "I" in "team" everyone says,
you have to work together, otherwise you're not going to
get what you need to get accomplished.
Well, what I've learned about myself is that
I can manage people.
I thought that that was going to be something
I would be worried about in the future.
You know, how do I manage properly.
I think that anybody going into any sort of management job
should take Pantera because it just, it has a lot of basic
skills that you need to learn, being a manager and that's
definitely going to implement my life and I think that's going to
look awesome on a resume to be able to say I managed my fellow
students, my peers, and was able to work successfully with them.
>> Ms. Rhodes: So that's kind of what they
learn in Pantera.
They learn quite a bit, they learn,
it's just like a real restaurant out in the real world.
I mean, it's just like somebody
has given them experience and that's what we're doing
is giving them experience that maybe somebody
out in the real world won't give them.
>> Dr. Painter: And they get to practice
the things that they've learned in a situation
that they're going to be in when they
graduate, so they get to take interaction with customers,
interaction with other students,
they see the real business aspect of how it runs
and so it really is an integration of all the things
that we've taught them into a practical experience.
>> Ms. Chomczyk: But at the same time it's like,
you just kind of, I've gotten to know these people that
it's just like when I walk into the class
it's not just walking into class.
Like I didn't mind going to it because I enjoyed everyone
that I worked with.
No matter if it was this person was in the back and that person
was in the front, it was just nice to see everyone together on
Tuesday night and I mean we might've been done at like what,
7:30 or 8:00 serving, but we stayed there until 9 or 9:30
just because when it came to discussion,
we just all liked being around each other and being like
'oh, that happened tonight, that's funny'.
And you sit there and you're just like
'wow, this is something that I'm going to remember'.
>> Ms: Zuccarelli: But still we've all,
we spend so much time together and we got really close so
I really like just the closeness and working with everyone.
>> Ms: O'Donovan: When I reflect back on
all of the courses that I've taken at EIU, Pantera is the
one that sticks out the most, that I know I'm going to
remember for the rest of my life because of
the fact that it's given me real life experiences that I'm
able to take all of the values that I've learned from it
and all the past classes I've taken, all the textbooks I've
read from it, I'm able to live it, right then and there.
♪ [music playing-- no dialogue] ♪♪.