CHME 2019 – Transforming Hospitality
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Category: education
ITSA London Office
We have just launched the new London Office for the International Tourism Studies Association (ITSA) at the University of Greenwich.
I chaired the event in my new role as Executive Director of the London Office and attendees were welcomed to the University by Professor David Maguire, our Vice Chancellor.
There were also two excellent presentations by Professor Xinran Lehto from Purdue University, the incoming President of ITSA, and Professor Wolfgang Georg Arlt, ITSA’s Vice President for Western Europe and the Director of the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute.
Attendees included visiting academics and researchers, journalists and industry representatives, as well as members of the Tourism Research Centre, which is hosting the new office.
ITSA is a leading international network of tourism researchers, with offices in China, the USA and now the UK. If you’d like any more information about ITSA, have a look at the ITSA website or get in touch!
Tourism Minister visits Greenwich
The Minister for Tourism, the Rt Hon David Evennett MP, visited our campus at the University of Greenwich, to find out about our Tourism degrees.
The Minister spent time with students from the university’s Tourism Management degree courses as they discussed their studies, business ideas and career plans.
He said: “The future of the tourist industry is something very close to my heart, and without question its success depends upon recruiting talented people who are looking to make their mark in their careers. Greenwich’s students have shown me just how creative and enthusiastic they are.
“It is wonderful to meet young people with such a passion for their subject, and a privilege to listen to the ideas of such a highly enterprising group. It strikes me they could not have been studying for careers in this industry at a more ideal place than the University of Greenwich, and I look forward to them taking their ideas and skills out into the wider world.”
Educating the 21st Century Events Management Graduate
My colleague Charles Bladen and I have just had this paper published in the journal ‘Events Management’. In the paper, we are argue that Events Management degrees need re-examining, to ensure that they are helping students to develop the kinds of skills and attitudes that employers, and society need. You can read the abstract below and, if you’d like to read our paper but you don’t have access, please get in touch.
“This article discusses whether event management can yet be classified as a bona fide profession, how staff working in the industry can be effectively professionalized, and how professional university education programs can be better designed to achieve this end. The article discusses the findings and limitations of some of the existing literature concerning professionalism within event management, and whether event management can yet be wholly described as “a profession” according to conventional definitions. The event management profession and event management education are discussed in terms of improving pedagogy in relation to the requirements of event industry practice. Finally the work concludes that the challenges of educating future event professionals require a rethink of events education so as to develop more reflective practice.”
2 Events Management academic posts at the University of Greenwich
We’ve just advertised two posts in Events Management in our department in the Business Faculty at the University of Greenwich.
We’re looking for two lecturers or senior lecturers to join us to help deliver our successful Events Management BA and MA programmes and also to be part of the team launching our new BA Hospitality Management degree.
We have an exciting department, with a large student body studying Marketing, Events, Tourism and PR and a research group with staff carrying out research and publishing in all of these areas. Our campus is on the gorgeous World Heritage Site in London, just down the road from the O2 and across the river from Canary Wharf.
You can read the full job description and apply here. The closing date for applications is 28th February 2014.
Further Education and Local Economic Development
This is a presentation that I gave last week at the annual Teaching and Learning Conference at Thanet College in Kent, UK.
In my talk, I explored some of the language currently being used by the Government and by OFSTED when they make links between further education and local economic development. As with much current policy rhetoric in the UK, there are a number of ambiguities in the Government’s views about the future role of FE in local economies and I picked out a couple of these as a way of encouraging the College to think about how it could start to set its own agenda for achieving an ‘excellent’ OFSTED assessment. In particular, I noted how the culture-led regeneration of Margate and the new Enterprise Zone for East Kent show that the future of local skills development will be in the knowledge economy, meaning that across all areas of the curriculum, teaching and learning should be developing students’ creativity, collaborative skills and flexibility.
I spent half the day at Thanet College and it was a great insight into the current state of Further Education – I learnt a lot from some brief conversations with colleagues there and heard about some fantastic work that is being done. In particular, it was exciting to hear about how a shift to a student-led, creative curriculum in one subject area had dramatically improved student retention and achievement.
