I'm Dawn Larreiu and I'm the Culinary Arts
Director at Spartanburg Community College.
My name is Lindsay Posey and I am in the Spartanburg
Community College Culinary Arts degree program.
We say that attitude is everything.
You don't have to already know how to cook
to come into the program.
We fix that.
I chose the Culinary Arts program here at
SCC because the tuition rates were low, it
was close to home, and I'm 28 years old and
I've decided to do what I love, which is cooking
and baking.
The Culinary Arts program offers state of
the art facility for our students.
We have a commercial kitchen and basically
all the equipment that anybody would walk
into and see in any restaurant setting.
The atmosphere here is very laid back, it's
nothing like you see on the TV cooking shows
at home, and all the instructors here are
very supportive and they're very encouraging.
Each instructor is highly qualified and brings
in a different set of skills.
We have pastry chef, we have executive chefs,
we have restaurant owners and personal caterers.
There are two programs here for culinary arts.
There is a certificate program which is for
one year and you get certified with the ACF.
There's also an associates program which lasts
for two years.
Our students are on a fast track.
There are jobs waiting on them as soon as
they graduate.
We have students currently in some of the
more popular restaurants downtown, and several
of them are operating their own businesses.
I chose the associates program because not
only are we in the kitchen half the time,
we also take accounting and business classes,
which I think will help with the business
side of when I open my own bakery with the
focus on healthy baking.
Although nutrition is often viewed as a medical
field, what we currently see is a bridge that's
growing between the nutritionist and the doctors
and the culinarians.
Therefore, there's a wide variety of new jobs
that are available.
