By: Rex Harvilla
The Culinary Arts and Hotel Restaurant Management department is looking forward to the construction of a new, dedicated building for the teaching and learning of culinary arts at Bergen Community College. The announcement of the new building displays the BCC administration’s belief in the importance of culinary arts in the workforce.
While details of the new building and its construction aren’t public, the initiative comes near an announcement from this past June of the college securing a $4.5 Million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) “From Learning to Leading: Cultivating the Next Generation of Diverse Food and Agriculture Professionals Program” (NEXGEN), which aims to fund the growth of the next generation of food, agriculture, natural resources and human sciences (FANH) professionals.
The construction of the new Culinary Arts building in conjunction with Bergen securing the USDA’s NEXGEN grant highlights the faith the Bergen administration has in the growth of the Culinary Arts field and also its own role in the development of the field. These two major announcements could synergize strategically to place Bergen at the forefront of the growing field of food service workers, and further define itself as a pioneer of accessible education.
