Administrators at WVU-P are cooking up a new program that will be available to students in the spring.
"Parkersburg decided that they would like to have a culinary facility. They persued that and we're at a stage where we're going to be beginning construction and hopefully offer some classes in the spring semester," says the schools Culinary Arts Director, Gene Evans.
The course will be held in the new WVU-P building in downtown Parkersburg. Students will learn all the key skills they need to get jobs in the culinary field.
"A lot of the classes for first year are going to be basic classes in cooking, knife skills, cooking techniques, sanitation, equipment and facility layout, nutrition, those kind of things."
A unique feature of the class, people in the valley will also participate giving the students skills a taste test.
"We're planning on, at some point, a student run bistro. The front part of this area is going to be designed with some tables and chairs so people can sit down and hopefully come in off the street and see what we're doing here in the facility."
And keeping all aspects of the program local is a major goal for the college.
"The college is actually going to be starting a diversified agriculture program at the same time the culinary arts is going to be starting, so what we're hoping is that we'll have some strong collaboration with the agriculture program. They'll grow the produce we would like to use in our facility, harvest it and then we bring it here downtown and utilize it, so a lot of our focus is going to be sustainability and utilizing as much local product as we can possibly use."
12 students will be selected for the program each year. Registration for the course will be in October.
