MELBOURNE — When the Ozarka Cafe opens in the new Student Services Center at Ozarka College in Melbourne, the event will mark another milestone in the history of Ozarka’s Culinary Arts Program.
In 1976, Ozarka College introduced the first culinary arts degree program in the state, after the vocational-technical school had just opened the year before. On Feb. 2, the Culinary Arts Program will open the Ozarka Cafe.
The cafe will welcome students, faculty and the public. Breakfast will be served from 7:30-10 a.m. and include quiche, burritos, fruit, baked oatmeal with apples, and more. Lunch, which will be served from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., will include hot and cold sandwiches, chicken fingers, salads and daily specials. Cheesecake, cookies, sides and beverages will be available all day. All culinary arts degree students and interns will receive one semester course credit for working in the cafe.
Chef Lou Rice is director of Ozarka’s Culinary Arts Program.
“I got interested in cooking as a child watching Julia Child on television,” he said. “When I was 10, I started catering parties for my parents’ business. Back then, being a chef wasn’t considered a profession.”
After running his own restaurant and catering business for several years, Rice graduated in 1996 with an Associate in Applied Science degree in hospitality from Ivy Tech in Indianapolis. In 1998, he began teaching culinary arts at community colleges and taught in Indiana, Missouri and Arkansas.
“I came to Ozarka looking for something more educationally centered,” he said.
Rice said that in his teaching, he emphasizes the variety of career possibilities.
“Name any profession, and I can tie it to what you learn in a culinary arts program,” Rice said. “Childhood obesity is a huge problem. Food writing is a big market. Are you interested in photography? Food stylists make food look beautiful for photographs.”
He listed maintenance of ovens and other equipment, scientific work in research and development, lawyers representing the food industry, health inspectors and more. Chefs are employed in catering, institutional food for business and health care, resorts and cruise ships.
The program at Ozarka has about 30 degree students.
“We’ve had students as young as 17 and as old as 60,” Rice said. “When I first came here, we had more older, midlife-career-change students. Now we have more [who are] right out of high school.
“Anyone can learn to cook,” he said. “To work in food service, you have to know how to plan a menu, run a business and make a profit.”
Ozarka’s Culinary Arts Program is about 30 percent classroom instruction and 70 percent hands-on experience. Courses include nutrition, food safety and sanitation, supervisory management in catering, banquet and dining room service, and more. Hands-on training includes purchasing and storage, as well as food preparation and advanced cooking.
Samantha Clements, a recent Ozarka Culinary Arts Program graduate, will be the food-preparation technician at the cafe.
“I came to Ozarka for the Culinary Arts Program,” she said. “I owned a restaurant before I got my degree. I love cooking, and I can’t imagine doing anything else. Everything I learned in class I will use in my new job.”
Ozarka helps place graduates in jobs.
“We get calls regularly from businesses wanting to hire our graduates,” Rice said. “We carefully match the student to the employer. What an employer wants is not just someone who can cook, but someone who will take orders without question and, when given the opportunity to lead, step forward.”
“When students graduate with an AAS [Associate in Applied Science] in culinary arts, they are ready for employment,” Ozarka College Provost Dennis C. Rittle said. “Those degrees and our short-term technical certificates in areas such as hospitality management are great for someone already working in the food industry.”
Ozarka College has approximately 1,500 students at its four campuses: Melbourne, Ash Flat, Mountain View and Mammoth Spring.
“Culinary Arts students pay some program fees, in addition to tuition,” Rittle said. “However, this program generates revenue that offsets some of the costs for equipment and culinary operations. Our students do some catering and outreach. Our current cafeteria and the new Ozarka Cafe will bring in revenue. Some of the money goes back to the college to support the Culinary Arts Program and the cafe. Depending on how it was generated, some revenue returns to culinary arts student programs, like a senior trip and Skills USA competitions.”
Chef Miriam “Mimi” Newsome will be the Ozarka Cafe manager.
“I am from Guatemala,” she said. “I emigrated to Los Angeles, California, in 1971. I met my husband there. He was from Arkansas. We moved to Melbourne in 1985. I loved to cook, so I came to Ozarka for classes. I got my GED here; then I took the one-year Food Service Certificate Program.”
In 1991, she was hired as the Ozarka cafeteria supervisor.
“I got my AAS from Ozarka. As a full-time faculty member, I will be teaching the students who work in the cafe,” Newsome said.
These culinary arts students will receive hands-on experience in areas that include planning, purchasing and storage, food preparation, cooking, presentation and dealing with the public. The new cafe can seat up to 400 people. The staff expects to serve about 150 meals at lunch each day.
“They’ll experience the pressure of getting all the food out at the same time,” Clements said. “You have to fix all the plates at once.”
“Students will learn forecasting,” Rice said, “how much food they need to prepare so there won’t be leftovers, and they’ll learn how to deal with mistakes. If you cook something wrong, you can turn it into something else and put it on tomorrow’s menu.”
When asked why he teaches, Rice said, “Sometimes I get an email from a former student saying, ‘You were hard on us, but thank you, because if it hadn’t been for what you taught me, I wouldn’t have the job I have today.’ We give students the opportunity to have a career where they can support themselves and their families.”
“What means the most to me,” Clements said, “is the satisfaction people get from eating. When people get a good meal, even if it’s a 15-minute lunch, it makes them happy. Giving people a good experience — that’s why I do this.”
Ozarka College is at 218 College Drive. For more information, call (870) 368-7371, or go to www.ozarka.edu.