Stakeholders' Perceptions of Culinary Programs in Ontario Community Colleges

The hospitality industry in Canada is growing. With that growth is a demand for qualified workers to fill available positions within all facets of the hospitality industry, one ofthem being cooks. To meet this labour shortage, community colleges offering culinary arts programs are ramping up to meet the needs of industry to produce workplace-ready graduates. Industry, students, and community colleges are but three of the several stakeholders in culinary arts education. The purpose of this research project was to bring together a cross-section of stakeholders in culinary arts education in Ontario and qualitatively examine the stakeholders' perceptions of how culinary arts programs and the current curriculum are taught at community colleges as mandated by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) in the Culinary Program Standard. A literature review was conducted in support of the research undertaking. Ten stakeholders were interviewed in preliminary and follow-up sessions, after which the data were analyzed using a grounded theory research design. The findings confirmed the existence of a disconnect amongst stakeholders in culinary arts education. Parallel to that was the discovery of the need for balance in several facets of culinary arts education. The discussions, as found in Chapter 5 of this study, addressed the themes of Becoming a Chef, Basics, Entrenchment, Disconnect, and Balance. The 8 recommendations, also found in Chapter 5, which are founded on the research results of this study, will be of interest to stakeholders in culinary education, particularly in the province of Ontario.

M(e)a(t)sculinity: Investigating Veg(etari)an Men's Understandings of Masculinity

Using focus group methods, this project examines six men’s experiences of becoming vegetarian and the unique interaction between two identities commonly assumed to be in conflict: vegetarianism and masculinity. Included in this report is an overview of the contemporary debates in gender theory, with specific attention paid to men and masculinity. Seen through the lens of poststructural gender theory and the notion of multiple masculinities, this report demonstrates how vegetarian men challenge, negotiate and assert themselves as men both within the dominant culture and within their own vegetarian communities. This project bridges two existing bodies of work - poststructural gender theory and critical animal studies - to bring a more nuanced and better-articulated critique of gender to existing studies of the relationship between meat and masculinity and to offer this examination of meat consumption and gender performance as an illustration of the valuable applications of poststructural gender theory within critical animal studies.