Developing Enterprising Hospitality Business Leaders for the Southeastern United States and Beyond TWO YEARS ON
MISSION, VISION, POSITIONING AND BRANDING In our quest to develop enterprising hospitality business leaders, we established the program’s mission, which serves as the beacon for its vision, outcomes, goals, curriculum, and positioning. Our student-centered mission focuses on developing ethical leaders who will create positive change in their organizations, while optimizing organizational resources. We envision our program as the leading source of hospitality leadership talent in the Southeastern United States within five years. Specifically, our program will be known for providing the industry with students who are sound in the fundamental principles of hospitality business leadership and who can add value to organizations by developing and fostering high performance hospitality work environments, improving service quality and operational performance, and leveraging industry data and trends to formulate and recommend ethical business decisions. It was also vital that we establish our program as a distinct brand within the region. As such, we developed and launched several internal and external promotional initiatives and created branded merchandise to generate awareness of our program and build brand equity. A program mapping exercise was conducted to identify gaps between the curriculum, industry needs, and future career opportunities for students. This exercise resulted in the addition of several new courses to the curriculum as program electives that will expose students to other areas of the industry and provide more career opportunities.
Since its launch in the fall of 2020, Kennesaw State University’s hospitality management program has experienced a 529 percent increase in enrollment and today, we have more than 100 students on track to earn their Bachelor of Business Administration in Hospitality Management. Such significant growth is the result of several internal and external promotional and recruiting efforts combined with intentions, focused value-enhancing activities and programs driven by the overarching goal to provide the best prepared hospitality business talent for the industry. The hospitality management program is also keenly focused on providing our students with the skillset and opportunities that will create positive and sustainable impacts on their long- term prosperity. We believe it is imperative that our program provides students with a relevant, market-driven curriculum and that it connects them with great jobs while they pursue their degrees and excellent career opportunities once they graduate. Collectively, these objectives ensure that our program continues to develop students who possess a sound operational skillset and the aptitude, attitude, and mindset to advance into strategic or corporate positions. Read on to discover highlights from the hospitality management program’s first two years.
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KSU HOSPITALITY LEADERSHIP ANNUAL REVIEW
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