The Department of Family and Consumer Sciences will graduate students who have performed satisfactorily in the area of computer literacy through computer-based assignments in courses that are required of all FCS majors.

Students will demonstrate computer literacy through assignments in two courses that are required of all undergraduate majors in the department: FCS 268 (a written assignment requiring use of a word-processing program and a budget assignment requiring the use of a spreadsheet) and FCS 462 (a presentation using PowerPoint).

Indicators are three assignments in courses: a word-processed assignment and a budget prepared using a spreadsheet in FCS 268 Consumer Education and a presentation involving use of PowerPoint in FCS 462 Presentation Techniques.

90% of program majors who take the courses FCS 268 and FCS 462 during the 2009-2010 academic year will score 3 or better on a 5-point scale with 5 being the highest score and 1 being the lowest score on the three assignments that are required to meet this computer literacy competency. Examples of assignment sheets for these three assignments and rubrics for grading them are attached.

These students did well with the computer literacy assignments.  The data collection process was changed so that a single score on each student was calculated, using Excel Spreadsheet-based assignments, word-processed assignments, and PowerPoint assignments.  100% of students met the rating of 3 or better -- of the three students in this program, one scored 4, one scored 4.5, and the third scored 5, all on a 5-point scale.

100% of students in this program met the university's requirements for computer literacy as part of the undergraduate curriculum.  However, the instructors who teach the course believe that additional work in the area of database management is needed.

Students will be able to demonstrate knowledge of food service management.

Students graduating from the food service management program will demonstrate the knowledge and skills necessary for entry-level management in food service/restaurant positions.

The Exit Survey for food service management majors includes multiple-choice and short-answer sections that test retention of course material and a case study that applies directly to food service management; it is graded on a pass/fail basis. (Each program area has multiple-choice, short answer, and other questions that are specific to that program content.) To develop this instrument, faculty in the content area reviewed course and program objectives and chose questions from exams that reflected important concepts that students should retain. The test is used repetitively and the scoring is consistent. For security reasons, the "test" portion (multiple-choice questions, short essay questions, and case study) is not attached. However, this document is available in the chair's office.

80% of students who complete the food service management program's Exit Survey will score a grade of Low Pass, Pass or High Pass on the content portions of the exam.

100% of students (3 out of 3) who earned the BA in food service management during the period December 2010 - May 2011 attained a score of Pass or High Pass on the content portion of the Exit Survey.  In fact, two of the three attained a score of High Pass.  However, the students as a whole did not do as well on the nutrition questions as they did on the other subject matter covered by the exam.

This finding shows that this goal was met.  Because we very much need a full-time faculty member in the area of food preparation and hospitality who would be closely connected with this program, it is difficult to say at this time whether the rubric itself needs to be adjusted so that a higher score would be required to achieve a "Pass."  The program continues to request such a faculty position.  The faculty who teach the upper-level food science course will be encouraged to reinforce and reiterate nutrition principles and information so that the nutrition information will be better retained by students in the program.  In the meantime, business supervisors indicate they are very pleased with the performance of program graduates.

Food Service Management majors will develop knowledge and skills to perform well in positions of employment within the food service and restaurant industries.

Food service management interns will demonstrate applied skills worthy of recruitment for entry-level management positions by their internship supervisors.

The supervisor evaluation form for food service management interns evaluates three skill areas (personal skills, interpersonal skills, and professional characteristics including appropriate use of knowledge from the program content).  Both questions from this form used as indicators are essentially overall supervisor ratings of the intern.  One of them rates the interns on a Likert-type scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the lowest rating and 5 being the highest rating.  The other is a "yes-no" indicator as to whether the employer would hire the intern in the company for an entry-level management position.  Internship is a requirement for degree completion in this program, so all food service management students are evaluated in this way.  The instrument, which includes the supervisor rating of the intern that will be extracted and reported, was developed by the department faculty as a whole.  Instruments used by other family and consumer sciences/food service management colleges and departments were reviewed in the development of the instrument.  The attached instrument was designed to be generic for all programs in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences that require this type of internship and is published in the Internship Handbook, which serves as the textbook for the internship course (FCS 469).  The other programs that use this same form are interior design, general family and consumer sciences (without teacher certification), and fashion merchandising. 

80% of business supervisors of food service management interns will give the intern a rating of 3.5 or higher on a 5.0 scale and 80% of business supervisors will indicate that they would hire the intern given the availability of a suitable entry-level management position in the company.

Of the three program graduates for the time period August 2010 through May 2011, the students received overall performance ratings of 4, 4.5 and 5 on a 5-point scale (met at 100%).  Each supervisor indicated that he/she would hire the intern for a suitable entry-level management position in the company (met at 100%).  Therefore, this criterion was met.  However, two of the three interns worked for non-profit corporations.  One was with the Friendship Center which provides Congregate Meals and Meals-on-Wheels programs.  The other was at the A&M Alumni Center.  Therefore, the profit factor was not part of the internship, and these positions should be discouraged on that basis.  (The third was in the Disney Corporation Executive Training Program for restaurant management and her experience was excellent in every way.) 

Based on feedback of the internship supervisor from the university side, the not-for-profit internships in the area of food service management should be discouraged.  At the A&M Alumni Center, no expense was spared in order to encourage donations to the university, which no doubt occurs.  The other center relies heavily on the services of volunteers, not a realistic model in most real world settings.