MESSAGE FROM THE ACADEMIC CHAIR
The success of the hospitality, tourism, and sports business in today’s complex global
environment ultimately depends on the professionalism of its workforce. To achieve, and more
importantly, sustain a professional leadership, the learning that results from hospitality,
tourism, and sports management higher and continuing education must be lifelong. It must exceed
previous educational standards in preparing our graduates to be managers who strategize and
champion quality service and satisfaction, personalized fan and customer experiences, ethical
decision making, critical thinking, and increased revenues in whatever their chosen field or
sector.
The traveling and spending population is markedly more knowledgeable and sophisticated than
ever before in its expectations, needs, and desires. In addition to growth in more traditional
hospitality, meetings, special events, and sports travel markets, tourists today increasingly seek
experiences far-ranging from doing well by doing good through something now called voluntourism, to
living and working on farms through agritourism, to health spas, culinary, religious, dark, extreme
sports, and, most recently, space tourism… among many others crowding the horizon.
The academic faculty and administration of the Tisch Center recognize their mandate to
prepare our graduates for management careers in a rapidly changing world – through a commitment to
providing high quality continuing and higher education policies and programs necessary for student
success. In the words of Robert Reich*, “The joy, passion, and importance of learning will spread
throughout our lifetime, and not only in this country, but all over the world.”
As professionals in one of the largest and most influential industries in contemporary global
affairs, we are collectively responsible for no lesser outcome.
Ginger Smith, B.A, M.A., Ph.D.
chair and clinical professor, academic programs,
Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism, and Sports Management
*Reich, R. B. (2006). “The Future of Learning,”
Continuing Higher Education Review, Vol. 70, p. 36.
