What excites me most about the hospitality industry
is the passion that people have for it, it's a constantly evolving industry,
I think it is a wonderful, wonderful profession, I think there are so many opportunities...
The industry is highly international. I'm just completely enthralled by it.
I love every minute of every day.
The mission of the school is to educate
future hospitality leaders. We want our graduates to occupy
important leadership positions in the best hospitality firms of the world.
We are a small school within a large university,
which makes us unique.
The SHA community is, obviously, built upon hospitality and all of
the values that come along with it. People are very, very kind,
very welcoming. SHA is definitely a family.
Our professors are brilliant. They have
years of experience in the industry. They bring what they know to life.
It's not just reading a textbook. Being in a city like Boston
when you're studying hospitality administration really lends itself well
to enhancing your experience. We can go
work in a real world-class city and a world-class proving ground.
The most valuable experience, I think, that the students at Boston University
get is the combination of
very contemporary, real-time education
blended with with field experience. To me, that's the best of both worlds.
The School of Hospitality is fun, it's exciting, and it's a school that really cares about what
you want to do with your life.
I feel like this is where I belong.
Boston University is definitely a
great school for hospitality and it is well respected in the industry simply because
of how prepared the students are.
What's unique about our curriculum is that it's a really wonderful
combination of the practical
with the theoretical. All of our students are required to have
800 hours of industry internships, plus
we have a required international experience. And it is all led on
the foundation of the great Boston University
liberal arts education and the One BU experience.
They literally have the right attitude
and have the right depth of experience so
there are only a few schools across the United States and around the world that
we draw from
and Marriott considers this one of their stronger schools.
I believe that we have a rigorous program. Each class is relatively small,
you work in teams. We work a lot with case studies during class.
The school is highly participatory - lots of discussion,
lots of group work, lots of interaction with faculty projects.
We have an advisory board that consists of the leaders of the
hospitality industry,
and that is very enriching for our students because they not only advise
the Dean on which direction the industry is going,
but the students also have an opportunity to meet with the leaders of
the industry
and get motivated and excited with the industry that they're joining.
It's rare to have a school which reflects
the industry you're in. So when you walk into the school, most students and parents say
"Wow! It looks like a boutique hotel!" and it really feels that way.
The way it feels to walk into this building...I feel
professional, I feel ready to learn, I feel supported.
One of the things that the students really like in the way we teach is that we bring
our own experiences
into the classroom. They tell their own stories about hotels and
restaurants: they've obviously lived through it,
and they're here to teach us about it.
The professors care about you, they take interest in you,
and if they notice you're passionate about something or good at something,
they're going to challenge you in that area. The great thing though, is they want you to do well.
Any student, virtually at anytime, can walk upstairs,
and if they want to talk about something personal, they want to talk about something academic,
if they want to talk about something professional or what
they should do with their life, the faculty members are there.
Students are required to fulfill two work experiences.
At the end of their work experience, they write a three-to-five page paper making
connections between what they've learned
in the workplace and what they're learning in the classroom.
I worked at a resort in Texas
and I had a fantastic experience.
I worked at an off-premise catering company in Philadelphia for 400 hours.
It was great! I worked around the clock, in the office,
selling parties, planning parties, and then actually as wait staff, helping at night.
It was a great experience and I think that being
required to work is such an important part of SHA.
I knew it was what drew me in to the school.
We recruit for interns, we recruit for externs, for management trainees,
for direct placements and we've had tremendous success.
We are one of the top employers of BU students
the caliber, the expertise, the level of professionalism is top-notch. It truly is.
That's what always impresses me.
They come in in the internships
and within a week they're comfortable,
they're engaged, and they're starting to contribute. That's a credit to the school.
That's a credit to the teachers and a credit to the leadership of
the entire university.
The city of Boston is an integral part of any undergraduate's experience when you're at BU.
It offers students the opportunity to work not just at
a hotel or a restaurant but at a Mobil Five-Star hotel
or a four-star restaurant and really get significant experience on their resume
before they graduate.
Boston is just a plethora of opportunities with over 100 hotels and
1,000 restaurants,
it's hard not to just go out and explore. We get to take what we learned
and apply it in the city, and that is an opportunity,
that, I think, you can't get anywhere else.
An international experience is very important for students in the hospitality industry.
This world is becoming increasingly very global and all industries
are impacted by it,
none more so than the hospitality sector.
So, we require an international experience for all our students.
We prefer them to have a semester abroad, living in the country
and interacting with the local people, and understanding
the customs and the way people live in those countries.
Taking advantage of BU's study abroad program is probably one the most important things
every student should do. Next semester I'm studying abroad in London.
The first six weeks, I'm taking two classes
and then the last eight weeks, I take one class and I'm also placed in an internship
in a hotel in London. The fact that I'm in college and I get to go
anywhere in the world and not only study what
I'm passionate about, but work in the field... it's amazing.
We're trying to instill in our students decision-making
abilities under uncertainty and imperfect information.
We're also trying to make sure that our students have strong financial skills
because ultimately, they're running a business. And finally,
our industry is very human-interactive, intensive industry,
so we want to make sure that our graduates have the ability to deal with a wide
diversity of people.
In terms of resources and extra support for students,
SHA and Boston University offer a lot of great things.
You can really find people who are interested in
almost anything at BU. You can find courses in almost anything at BU,
which I think is a really nice combination.
I can't say enough about our Career Services Department.
They do a phenomenal job of bringing companies each semester...
Marriott, Starwood, Four Seasons...
come in and recruiting students for internships, for jobs.
The resources that Boston offers SHA and Boston University really bring the school to life
and make it what it is, which in my opinion, is the best hospitality school.
By the time our students graduate from the Boston University School of Hospitality,
they have all the knowledge, skills, and most importantly,
attitude about how to be successful as they embark upon their careers.
The idea that
we are educating students who are going to be the future leaders of the society...
it's a huge responsibility and I take it very seriously.
And that's what excites me to come to work every day:
that we can make an impact for the future.
I feel very strongly that SHA has prepared me
for my career in the hotel industry.
I'm very confident when I graduate from SHA that
I'll have a good resume. SHA does such a good job
of encouraging us to get work experience that I feel prepared
and I feel like I'm competitive in the industry.
Students here are focused and they get great training in the classroom and they apply that training
in Boston and abroad.
I can't imagine being anywhere else!