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.

At least 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.

There were four students who received the undergraduate degree (BA/BS) in Food Service Management for the 2013-2014 cycle.  A complete data set is available for these students.  Three of them scored a Pass (75%) on the Exit Survey, and one scored a Low Pass (25%), for a total of 100% who passed the content portion of the exam.  Therefore, this criterion is met.

In recent years, we have struggled with how to handle this Exit Survey.  It is difficult to remember to update the survey every time a change in the curriculum occurs (programs and courses in the department must continually be updated because they are pre-professional programs that serve fields that are constantly in flux), so we get to the point of administering it and realize that it is needs updating.  Dr. Laura Burleson is working on a rubric whereby we would access students' logs during the internship process to determine effectiveness of course content as students applied it to the internship activities and problems.  We are going to try it for a cycle with the expectation that it will lead to curricular changes and improved program effectiveness. 

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-yes with reservations-no" indicator 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 courses (FACS 4369). The other programs that use this same form are interior design, general family and consumer sciences (without a teaching certificate), and fashion merchandising.

At least 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.

The four students who graduated during the cycle received excellent evaluations from their employers or supervisors.  Three (75%) received a rating of 5 (out of 5) and one (25%) received a rating of 4 (out of five).  100% of students received a rating of 3.5 or higher.  Therefore, this criterion was met. 

Although students tend to do well, we do believe that this evaluation instrument is an important assessment tool; we also believe it is important to continue to collect and report this evaluation.  We do also ask for comments and perhaps the way to make this instrument more helpful is to look for trends among the comments with the goal of program improvement.