DE Campus Life Editor

On Friday Jean Crisman will be making numerous trips between the Old Main Restaurant’s kitchen and its main seating area as she stocks the restaurant’s salad bar with fresh vegetables and condiments.

A week ago Crisman was one of five managers overseeing everyone in the restaurant including the salad bar runner.

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This is not a bad thing both positions are for academic credit. Crisman, a senior in Hotel, Restaurant and Travel Administration from Metropolis, did not get demoted from her managerial post, but was merely assigned another position by her instructor.

Crisman is one of about 20 students enrolled in Food and Nutrition 460, a food service management course that allows students to handle everything from restaurant management skills to taking garbage out of the kitchen.

There are a number of jobs that we do and they’re pretty well-rotated so that we experience a number of positions, she said. I find it to be an extremely good preparation.

Crisman wants to return to her alma mater, Shawnee Community College, and teach in the school’s food service technology program. She is pleased that the Fabulous Friday Valentine’s Day lunch she and her Food and Nutrition 460 classmates have planned for Friday will be helping her to reach her goal.

Fridays, Food and Nutrition 460 students are responsible for planning Old Main Restaurant themes and coordinating menus and decorations. Last week’s first Fabulous Friday of the semester had a Tex-Mex theme.

Students also are responsible for the restaurant’s financial operations, preparing and serving food, as well as cleaning up and performing closing procedures.

The class is broken into teams which take turns managing the restaurant while other teams make up the workforce. The workforce includes hosts, dishwater operators and waitstaff, bus staff and cooks.

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The student cooks often prepare quirky dishes to match each Fabulous Friday theme. Friday’s lunch for lovers will feature items such as French Kiss soup, Heart Warming Veggie Stew, and a mystery concoction called Cupid’s Love Potion. Sweetheart’s Delight will be offered for dessert, and the entire meal is $5.75 a deal for financially struggling college student especially for University Housing residents. They need only to swipe their SIUC IDs to have the meal deducted from their accounts.

The Food and Nutrition 460 class provides a good deal for students in general, but it especially provides for the students enrolled in the course.

Trish Welch, professor and coordinator of the Hotel, Restaurant, Travel Administration program, said Food and Nutrition 460 was developed to give her department’s senior-level students a class that would put their skills to work.

Welch, who has taught the food production management class for 15 years, likes how the class allows students to teach themselves and learn from their mistakes.

What makes this class so different is that I would say I’m a facilitator of the learning process in the class, she said. It’s a student democracy unless I really need to step in and guide them.

Food and Nutrition 460 students originally received this unique, hands-on experience by organizing lunches in Quigley Hall for about 50 people. About 10 years ago, a partnership with Student Center food service management allowed classes to organize Fabulous Fridays at the Old Main Restaurant.

Sharon Spence, Old Main Restaurant supervisor, has worked with Food and Nutrition 460 students on Fridays for the last five years. Although she is available to them for advice and help during their shifts, she does not hold students’ hands each step of the way. This way, Welch’s original goal for the course gets accomplished.

It [the class] definitely gets them ready for what they’ll see upon entering the workforce, she said.

Christine Ross, a senior in Hotel, Restaurant and Travel Administration from Peotone, will be helping to prepare food today before she takes the floor on Friday as a server. She works as a bartender at a local establishment, so she is used to the pressures of serving the public on a regular basis.

One thing this class will teach you is that you can’t plan for chaotic situations, she said.

But Ross, who plans to someday manage a travel resort, will gain more from her Fabulous Fridays than knowledge of how to deal with the public.

Working at the Old Main every week may help her career.

Experience is everything in the field, she said. You could have a stellar GPA, but if you don’t have enough experience you may not get a job.

It would suck for me to walk into my restaurant as a fresh-faced, snot-nosed manager with nothing else but classroom experience. You have to know every aspect of your operation, otherwise you’re not going to get any respect from your employees.

And although Food and Nutrition students are just shy of getting their own degrees to show expertise in their respective areas of study, Ross said customers are not apt to shy away from seeing what students have to offer Fridays at Old Main Restaurant.

Actually we get just the opposite, she said. People want to come out of curiosity.