MEMORY MAKERS

NEW HOSPITALITY PROGRAM NOT ONLY BRINGS BENEFITS TO THE ECONOMY, BUT WILL ALSO BRING THE MEMORIES OF A LIFETIME FOR A NEW GENERATION

By Janel Shoun-Smith

WE ALL HAVE OUR LONGTIME FAVORITE RESTAURANT.

That place that has been around forever, and when we step inside we remember all the family gatherings, after-event celebrations and big personal moments that have occurred while gathered around those tables.

Nashville has long been a place of hospitality, both personal and professional. The city’s tourism and hospitality industry generates close to $6 billion annually in the Middle Tennessee region with more than seven years of record-breaking growth.

But hospitality is also about making sure that friends, families and maybe even new couples can enjoy those big moments of life at every meal.

It’s about making sure hotel patrons sleep soundly on the vacation they will remember for a lifetime without ever knowing about a heightened security threat or disruption behind the scenes.

Hospitality is about cultivating a heart for service, and Lipscomb’s hospitality program, which began its first classes this past fall, is about developing resilient leaders who can nurture that heart for service among their employees in the midst of a complex environment.

“We know hospitality management includes making unforgettable moments for guests but it also involves impacting the lives of those employed in the field at every level … in these places humanity happens,” said Beth Morrow, director of industry relations in Lipscomb’s new School of Hospitality and Entertainment Management.

Morrow has been working for the past year to develop the new program designed to meet workforce needs in the growing tourism and hospitality industries in Nashville and nationwide. “We see hospitality and entertainment management education and training as more than just equipping our students with the skills and knowledge to be successful,” said Morrow.

“We also view developing leadership skills as crucial. That is something much deeper than understanding the daily tasks necessary to make an event happen or a client have a comfortable stay. Learners committed to strategic financial management, decisionmaking, culture-shaping and serving others from a place of integrity will lead in the next 25 years.”

And in Music City USA, there are certainly few industries more crucial and in need of leaders of integrity than hospitality and entertainment management. The industry employs 103,400 in the Nashville area and attracts 14.8 million visitors a year.

Lipscomb’s school is one of the few in the country to offer a multidisciplinary approach to hospitality education. Through a collaboration of its arts and entertainment, business, and health science colleges, Lipscomb’s program is strategically designed as an integrated curriculum to provide a foundation in business practices such as management, marketing and leadership; an in-depth study of entertainment disciplines, industries and production; food and beverage; and event planning to give students a holistic approach to hospitality studies.

The program will offer undergraduate and graduate degrees as well as professional certificates and will have four areas of emphasis: lodging, food and beverage, tourism and entertainment.

“The rich Nashville-based background of Morrow and other faculty in the George Shinn College of Entertainment & the Arts provide a tremendous body of knowledge and network of industry leaders,” said Mike Fernandez, dean of the CEA, which houses the hospitality school.

The CEA boasts a faculty stacked with music industry insiders such as Brown Bannister, director of the School of Music, and Steve Taylor, assistant professor of film, with professional networks and deep knowledge of event production.

“The entertainment industry has played a big role in shaping how we think of hospitality. For example, look at the impact Disney and cruise lines have had on the standard of quality and service that many of us expect for lodging or a vacation experience,” he said.

Lipscomb has also developed an innovative on-campus hospitality rotation program for student internships. The program will use a variety of real-world, oncampus learning labs: the downtown Spark campus; a main-campus hotel that offers up to 82 rooms; Lipscomb’s entertainment and technical services department; Lipscomb’s event management department; and the university’s food service and catering organization.

These departments manage more than 177,000 guests who visit the Lipscomb campus each year. Students will have to spend a semester in a paid internship in each area under the supervision of a faculty member.

“We want to instill in our students what it means to be a leader versus having management responsibilities,” said Morrow. “Beyond cultivating a heart for service, an attribute embedded for a century in our university culture, we are also committed to preparing learners to listen and work within a globally diverse industry—a world waiting to be served.”