Australian prof urges students to “embrace diversity”
Thursday, January 17th, 2008
Surfers ride the Pacific waves in front of cathedral-like building where Robert Miles teaches. Miles is a chef turned senior lecturer in hospitalities studies from International College of Management – Sydney (ICMS), Australia.
For a few weeks in January, he traded the ocean view for the rolling Flint Hills where he taught an intersession class to landlocked students at K-State.
Robert Miles focuses on student presentations on international business practices.
He offered “Introduction to Intercultural/Diversity Management” in the Department of Hotel, Restaurant and Institution Management and Dietetics.
Miles is passionate about the need to equip students for a global hospitality industry.
“Most hospitality students, at some time, will end up on a foreign shore,” he said.
“So they need to get out there and experience diversity.”
His philosophy echoes that of HRIMD chair Deborah Canter and Dean Virginia Moxley: internationalize student experience.
Said Canter, “It is vital that all of our students understand that there is a huge world beyond the borders of Kansas. Nothing can take the place of actually visiting, or better yet living and working, in another country.
“If our students are to be successful in their chosen professions, they must embrace and celebrate diversity. Robert has helped them grasp that truth,” she added.
Faculty members Pat Pesci and Betsy Barrett drew Miles to Kansas State. They met him on the Sydney campus while on sabbatical in Australia and New Zealand. This summer the three reconnected at the International Council on Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Education in Dallas.
Miles, a man with both British and Australian passports, travels often to the states. His wife, Kristin, is from Boston. However he admits that the trip to Dallas – 8 airplanes in 9 days – was grueling. Miles’s parents emigrated from England when he was 4. After culinary training in Brisbane, he spent 5 years plying his trade and traveling in England and Europe.
Back in Australia, he “cooked up and down the East Coast” then became sous chef (second in command in the production kitchen) at the International College. He worked his way to the training kitchen, then into culinary studies and on to hospitality studies and broader university responsibilities.
Miles currently is also quality support manager and is responsible for the development of the Food Studies department.
The college is associated with Macquarie University which the London Times ranks 67th in the world’s top 100 universities. ICMS offers management training in hospitality, events, international tourism, retail, property and sports. More than 600 students are in the hospitality program.
Miles agreed with Canter: students must embrace diversity.
Most won’t have a choice, he said. “They need to know how to function when they get out there in an organization. I want to fill up their corporate tool box so they can do that.”
Other winter intersession courses in the college were: Intermediate Apparel Production taught by Joycelyn Falsken, Women and Motherhood by Brandy James, Premarital Education and Counseling by Walter Schumm, Long-Term Care Administration by Gayle Doll, Lodging Management Theory by Chihyung Ok, Understanding Death, Dying, Grief and Loss by Stephanie Wick, Family Law by Linda Graham, and Understanding Trauma: History of the Concept and Current Treatment Approaches by Kevin Garrett.
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 and is filed under Dean's Blog.