In the grand finale of the TMG Hospitality Campus Crawl, we visit one of the top-ranked hospitality programs in the country at UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management. The Dean of the college, Dr. Cynthia Mejia, joins the Suite Spot to discuss the hospitality school and why it is one of the most successful in the world! 

Check out the conversation with topics, including:

🎓How UCF Rosen Is Shaping Hospitality Leaders

🤝The Importance of Employer Partnerships 

📉Navigating Current Industry Challenges

And much more. Tune in now! 

Episode Transcript
Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio.

Ryan Embree:
Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree and we are here with our TMG Hospitality Campus Crawl, and I am so excited for this episode. We are here at my alma mater, UCF, and who’s joining me today is the Dean, Dr. Cynthia Mejia, UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management, the award-winning UCF Rosen College. Thank you so much Dr. Mejia, for being with me today.

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
Wonderful. Thank you for having me here. It’s a pleasure to join you.

Ryan Embree:
It’s so exciting because like I said, this is my alma mater. This is where hospitality was ingrained. We always talk about DNA, but since this is your first time on the Suite Spot, we would love to hear about your hospitality journey and the path that led you to UCF Rosen.

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
Wonderful. So, I was recently appointed as the new dean recently in June. And prior to that, I served as the interim dean since October of 2023. But I’ve been a faculty member here since 2013. When I first joined the college, and this is actually my second career, my first career for over 20 years, I ran food and beverage, and I was an executive chef out in the industry, mainly in the lodging side. And I ran banquets, large hotel restaurants, catering and events and operations. And then slowly moved up into operations within the hotel sector, small hotels and such. And so there, there came a point as people tend to know about our industry, that it’s a lot of work. It can take a good number of hours. And after doing that for about 20 years, I took a little break. And I just, I decided to get married and start a family. And then that’s when I began my journey into, to higher ed, getting my master’s and then my PhD, and then thinking about the ways that I love this industry. I have a lot of passion for this industry, and, you know, how can I give back? How can I be part of the industry and help the future leaders of our industry thrive with what I’ve learned, good and bad things that I’ve learned along the way. And then the best practices, of course, that we teach in higher ed. So that’s how it sort of all came together and came in as a faculty teaching food and beverage operations, facilities management, supply chain management. And then I moved into administration as an interim chair of my department, and then finally as the interim dean and now the dean.

Ryan Embree:
And it’s quite a journey. And, it’s the same mission that we have in this series is we’re trying to get more and more people involved in this industry that you can tell by your journey you’re extremely passionate about. I’m extremely passionate about, we’re going through a staffing shortage. We’ll talk about that a little bit in our industry, but 20 years celebrating 20 years at UCF Rosen and this college of Hospitality Management. For those who aren’t aware, give us a little bit of history about this college and where it started to where it is literally one of the preeminent hospitality programs in the world right now.

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
So in 2024, this whole year, we’re celebrating our 20th anniversary. And of course, I didn’t join until 2013, but I hear all the stories and know all the lore and there’s so many faculty who are here who came from way back then. We even have somebody here who’s worked 38 years in our college. So the school or the program came out of the College of Business a long, long time ago. And at the time Mr. Harris Rosen, who is our namesake and our largest donor and philanthropist, he donated 20, approximately at the time, $20 million and 20 acres in front of Rosen Shingle Creek, which is his large resort to start this college. And Dr. Abe Pza, who was our founding dean, worked on that project, you know, converted everything over from College of business to start our program. So that occurred in 2004 when this campus opened. And by the end of 2004, we had around a thousand students already. So it went from a, a couple hundred to a thousand at that time, very, very fast, because in this area, of course, our proximity to I Drive and the center of hospitality, Disney, universal, SeaWorld, you know, all of this area and hotels there was a need, of course to train the future leaders who would serve in these businesses. And then in 2008, we established a couple more degrees. So we started out with hospitality management. Another very, very popular approach degree program was event management, which at one time had around 1200 students in it at its peak. In 2012, we established our PhD in hospitality management in 2016. This was, as I was coming in, and this sort of happened as I was a faculty member, we received a very large donation to start our entertainment management degree, which is in collaboration with the College of Arts and Humanities, a very popular degree. And at around, uh, 2016, we had 3000 students here at the college. Yeah. So there’s just really fast growth and hiring fa yeah. Hiring faculty, hiring staff. Of course, in 2017 or so, our founding dean stepped down, remained on our faculty, and we had a new dean, Dr. Wong, and then Covid. It was at 2020. And it was, it was a really interesting time. I was a chair at that time and just devastating for our industry, devastating for higher education. And I will say, kind of looking back, UCF will say, and I want to brag a little bit, I think leads the nation in online learning with our center for Distributed Learning. And so, because all faculty at UCF are really trained on teaching online, incentivized to do so and supported to do so, our conversion to moving online, our programs online was seamless. And so, you know, that, that occurred and what happened, of course, the industry had layoffs and furloughs at the time. And what happens when the economy goes down a little bit or of course, in this time of covid, people want to do something during those times. They want to show that they’re progressing forward and they’ll take the time. So we actually had a bump in enrollments in both the undergraduates and the graduate degree programs. And at the peak we’re at 3,300 students. That’s the most we’ve ever had. And then of course, as Covid waned, everybody rushed to go back to work. So we right sized it down to around 2,900 or so. And, and as with industry, and we’ll talk about that talent shortage and labor and the labor pool, as with that we saw a little bit of that decline, which is consistent with programs across the world, actually, hospitality and tourism management programs across the world. So currently we have 72 faculty across three departments. We have six undergraduate degree programs, seven undergraduate certificate programs, four master’s degree programs. I believe we have more than three master’s certificate programs. I believe we have four or five, actually. And then of course, we have a PhD program. And so that brings us to today.

Ryan Embree:
With a beautiful campus right here in the center of everything. And that’s why I want to talk about next, because location, you know, Orlando, obviously known as the theme park of the world. Passed a couple on my commute when I was a student up here. But it’s gotta be great for students to kind of be immersed in hospitality at this school. So can you talk a little bit about the role of location, where this college is situated and how it sets students up for success as they progress in their careers?

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
So, Central Florida is the most visited destination in the United States and Orlando, and I would dare say all of Florida is unparalleled in our, in our, um, infrastructure to welcome guests and the things that there are to do and to see and experience here. So we have a quite an amazing draw of students, you know, both locally and nationally and internationally to come here, because we are so embedded with industry, we are so supported by industry. You know, guests speak in our classes. They speak right here in our stage. They table, we have the highest job placement rate nearing around 98%. When students are in their senior year, they come and they table here, and there’s not enough students to fulfill the roles, the leadership roles that they need. So it’s an amazing draw. We have them on our advisory boards. They tell us new things that are happening 5-10 years from now, how we should ready our students. We ask them to help shape our curriculum. Our theme park and attractions management degree program was assisted by Universal Orlando and Disney and SeaWorld and many others. We have the iDrive Chamber of Commerce, which is part of this region, and who we and who we belong to and serve right here. And the hotels up and down, I-drive that they’re just, we call them up, we text them, they text us, Hey, we have a role. Who do you know? It’s really, really embedded. And that’s, I think is our success, is to be able to bring that to students.

Ryan Embree:
Well, that’s what I was gonna say, is that it’s not just about location, it’s about forging those partnerships. And on the way into this auditorium, first of all, I got my first job in hospitality right out there in that courtyard at a Rosen career fair. So, you know, I am a testament to those relationships that you have with those partners, but it is about more than location. You have to be able to have networking events, you have to have alumni be involved in coming back. And helping the university. So, talk to us a little bit about, I saw UCF Marriott Day, the second annual is taking place. Talk to us about how some of those relationships have formed with employers and how that really gives a fast track to starting a career in hospitality.

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
So our students are some of the most sought after in the nationwhen we have career fairs. We have over 100 companies now coming. Maybe when you were here, it wasn’t that many, but now we don’t have enough room to put all of the companies. And we have around 800 students coming to those career fairs seeking internships. All of our students have to complete two well, actually three internships. One is a sort of a leadership formation, but the other two are actually work experience, that are all paid in different types of roles. I wanna give a shout out to a particular one, which kind of talks about how we are meshed with industry. We have a progressive internship with the Lowes Hotel Corporation. And so similar to how an accounting major will go and work with an Ernstand Young or whoever. And then they get a job after that. We’ve established that with Lowe’s Hotel Corporation. And so what happens is, students in their last two semesters in our program, the first semester, they’ll go and work and they’ll work two weeks at every single Lowe’s hotel. There’s five right now in the chain, and there’s more coming with Universal. They’ll work facilities, they’ll work front of the house, they’ll work food and beverage, they’ll work security reservations, and they’ll do these two weeks just to understand. And then once they select kind of an area that they wanna work on in the second semester, they will become supervisors and work towards more managerial positions. And upon successful completion of that, and the agreement between the student and the organization, they have direct job placement. So this kind of starting your career in college is something we are embarking upon. And our new students, our Gen Z students, this is a very different generation from when I went to school, probably from when you went to school. They want to see a career path. They wanna see ways for continual learning. They don’t wanna be told about it. They wanna feel it. They wanna see it. And so these are the kinds of things that we co-create with partners like Marriott, like Lowe’s, and like many others. Special things that we do that tailor to the organization’s needs. And also understanding how our students want to see themselves, and they’re gonna be the future leaders. So all of us have to work together. We can’t be in silos. We all have to work together, forging these relationships, creating new ways to be in industry, thinking about now inclusion of technology and how that’s gonna look. That’s our next frontier. But all of these things are very dynamic conversations that we have with super open, lovely people in our industry.

Ryan Embree:
Well one of the best things about our industry is the skills are so transferrable, right? So you can be an assistant general manager here in sunny Florida, but wanna move out to the mountains and you can become an GM or AGM out there for food and beverage or in hospitality. It all is rooted in people serving people. And I think, you know, it’s so cool to be a part of an industry like that. But it also creates so many opportunities. And we’re gonna talk about some stories. Which I think is, is really the best way to share that career path that you were talking about. But we’ve got the location, we’ve got the partnerships, but you guys are also doing a fantastic job of the curriculum that you’ve put together. Recognize number one in the nation by Shanghai rankings. First of all, congratulations to you and your staff on this achievement. But one of the things is how do you keep this top spot? You’ve said some of the ways so far, what does this mean to you, and how can you leverage that ranking for prospective students that might be uneasy of about whether hospitality is a career for them, or if they do know hospitality that UCF Rosen is the right college for them?

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
That’s a good question. So the Shanghai rankings follows a research ranking. So, we have faculty members here who are research faculty, and then also who are instructors, research faculty. You know, 40% of their job is to conduct research on, on whatever topics they find of interest, whether it’s, you know, consumer behavior or it’s economics or, you know, marketing or employee experience. So there’s a wide range of topics. And our faculty who are engaged in research are among the finest in the world, for not only the quality of research that they conduct, but for the numbers of papers and grants and things that they’re going after to produce. And, and it’s called knowledge dissemination. So when you have faculty who say, are teaching a class and they’re teaching a group of students, and they’re also conducting some research, and they are having findings because they have to go to industry to collect data or they do panel data, or they work with consumers, they, they might, you know, look at something they did in the morning, and then in they’re in their class and they’ll say, this is what I’m seeing this morning. Some of the findings in my research. And to go a step further, faculty also engage students to help collect data, especially in master’s program and the PhD program. So they are not only learning about the context, but they’re learning about the how and the process behind it. And that I will share an interesting story about one of our graduates who utilize some research techniques to get herself a really, really good job in the industry. So when, when we say the Shanghai ranking, that establishes sort of a research profile and a knowledge dissemination. And that is actually advantageous at an international level to bring lots of talents to UCF Rosen College. It’s also helpful on the recruitment side because people wanna be on a winning team. Right. And they wanna be part of that culture. And we have so much collaboration with our faculty, not only internal, but also internationally. And so when we talk about it, it’s more of a function of that research side. But students gain and industry gains knowledge, they gain knowing the latest trends, they can help make different types of decisions. Our students can then go work in these companies and understand something they learned in class that was based in facts and research, and bring those findings, you know, to how they want to do their jobs, how they want to lead, or making decisions and such. So we do talk about it in that way and students gain the benefits of that. But it’s also can be recognized that, that in our PhD program, many of our students, well all of ’em in their PhD program, go to work in other universities. So they take a skillset, they take a knowledge base, and it just goes on and on and on. They teach others who are gonna teach others who are gonna teach others, both for industry, but also on the research side.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, absolutely. It keeps you ahead of the curve as far as any trends. You are right there knowing what guests are saying, people that are going to restaurants, trends, technology, a new technology in the way that travelers, the way that guests are receiving that technology sentiment about it. So, absolutely. And obviously, has some very positive benefits on both the education side, but also the real world side. And we’re gonna talk about one of those rows and research focus when it comes to staffing. We talked about it, we alluded to it. There’s a staffing shortage right now in our industry. How are programs like this kind of helping create, as you’ve put it, Dr. Mia the leaders of hospitality for the future?

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
Yeah. So, as we talked about sort of post COVID, we had something called the Great Resignation. There was, prior to COVID, there was challenges in the industry around benefits or pay or hours. And there, there’s always been kind of those, you know, issues. But during COVID, when all of society, we had collectively figured out how much we need people who make food, who will serve food, who will deliver food, anyone in the service industries. We figured that out. And after those furloughs and layoffs, there was a little bit of disheartening, people who worked in the services industry, we won’t just call it hospitality, but in the services industries more broadly, they left because they were valued so much, but they wanted pay, they wanted benefits and all of those things that they wanted. And we’ve seen an increase in benefits, an increase in salaries.

Ryan Embree:
Flexible pay, flexible schedules.

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
All of that we’ve seen. So what’s happened was, after the Great Resignation, there was something called the Great Reshuffling. So what I call them are people, those of us who love people, those of us who love service in this industry we’re people. People. And so, if in the great resignation, they all moved to other types of jobs where they weren’t around people, then came the great reshuffle where they started to move into other related services industries to work with people again in the service industry. And what’s really interesting, I hear this anecdotally from large companies that we work with, a lot of them ultimately came home. They came back because they missed their hospitality or their service work family. And so we’re trying to understand that. We’re trying to understand those dynamics. We’re doing a lot of research around it. And again, gen Z wants something else. So we’re all coming to this nexus right now and trying to understand. And one of the things I’ve said before is, you know, we can’t continue to work in silos and think we’re gonna figure this out individually. We have to work with industry, we have to work with high schools, we have to work with parents, high school counselors, and even go into middle schools to reeducate people to listen to their needs, how they want to work, where they want to work. And we have to be more responsive. And so we’re kind of coming into this reckoning. We’re seeing that there was some disengagement, of course during COVID right. This certain last four years. I have a daughter who was also behind a camera for two years in high school. So I saw this at home and coming back and ramping up opportunities to engage with each other, or asking students or supporting students to figure out the ways they want to engage. And so we can’t do things the way we used to do. We have to listen, be still, be empathetic. Mental health is also something we pay a lot more attention to wellbeing. We’re paying more attention to taking the stigmas away from not feeling so great sometimes and needing help and putting more resources there. UCF has done an amazing job on that. And so, you know, it has to be a full force effort among many stakeholders to understand how to better serve our student, how to create more opportunities for them to engage. And industry is right there waiting to do it. They are supporting, they are funding, they’re creating those things within their own businesses. And so we’re kind of going hand in hand right now to understand and kind of recreate what this is gonna look like. But we always have those theoretical perspectives of human behavior that are tested through research. So we understand best practices. We’re kind of at this point where we’re, we’re listening, we’re applying best practices, we’re changing how we teach. We’re including a little more technology. But at the same time, we’re also going back to some old school face-to-face meetings. Going to office hours, bringing dogs to come and pet in the middle of classes. Like for the wellbeing and water balloon throwing or whatever it is. So we’re trying to find the right fit of both ways to go after being responsive to students and also supporting their learning journey. Because they’re gonna be the leaders. They’re gonna be the future leaders.

Ryan Embree:
No, absolutely. It’s super commendable on the versatility and the way that you’re adapting to that. Because I do think you’re right, this staffing shortage has forced our industry to make changes a lot quicker than maybe our industry was ready for. But I think there is any silver lining, there’s gonna be a lot of great things that come out of this.Because there were a lot of stigmas to the hospitality industry. Long hours, sometimes not the greatest pay, always working on site versus remote.

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
And that’s, that’s a tough one. Because, you know if you’re HR, marketing, or accounting or whatever, yeah. You can have your two or three remote days or even work from home. You can’t do that when you’re customer facing. So something you had mentioned before about alternative, work arrangements or giving employees more flexibility to create their own schedule. You know, do I wanna work morning, night? Can I switch? And those with families, we’re seeing companies bring more support for daycare and different things like that or continuous education and tuition reimbursement. So it’s changing out there. It must change. And there’s some top companies here in this region that are leading the way and doing that.

Ryan Embree:
It’s really cool to see, ’cause again, it’s going to present opportunities that I don’t think were there in hospitality before. And ultimately it’s gonna do what we want, which is bring in a bigger pool of talent. And we’ve really had to dip into different pools that we haven’t really historically gone to the, well, I mean, think about every time that you’ve talked to someone, whether it’s a hospitality industry leader where they said, I started in this and now I’m here. And we want to try to create paths where its, I started in hospitality and this is where I want to end my career because I love people so much and I love what I do. So, but that’s a story to tell. And that’s where I want to ask you today. I’m sure we live in an industry full of stories, feel good stories. Any recent ones that you’ve come across, whether it’s somebody landing that dream job or just feel good story about our industry.

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
Absolutely. I first want to give a shout out to our internships team, and I call them the job whisperers. So they are actually very closely working with industry partners all over the nation and even internationally to understand what organizations want, what kinds of jobs out there, all the different levels, the personality of someone who could work there. And so, you know, they have this very large pool, but they also really help students organize their resumes to be a match. They listen to students about what are your goals? What are your strengths? Because it’s interesting in the hospitality or the services industries, not everyone wants to be in front of a customer or a person. Some people love the industry, but they’re creative in the background. And so they learn all of these details and then they kind of do these job matches and industry trusts us and that’s why they call us, who can you send for X, y, z position? So with that said, I have a couple of success stories that we recently were able to marry together. There is Cory Clancy graduate of 2021, who is the project coordinator with Walt Disney Imagineering, he was on the team that converted splash mountain at Magic Kingdom to Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. So that’s a great story and a little dream job. I guess that, that sounds like a cool job. Right? Absolutely. This person, Emily Broker, so Emily Broker was actually my student, she was a master’s student and she and I did a lot of research together. And my research is qualitative in nature. So worked with her on collecting focus group data and interview data, and she would code things. And she was really good at it. She had a background in psychology. So she was in the Department of Psychology, but she loved people and she worked in a bar. So she came over to get her master’s degree with us. And then we got connected and did, you know, several papers together and a lot of research. Well, she loves people, but she has a very creative skillset and she loves the qualitative work. So she got together with Dr. Jessica Wiki, who leads our internship program. And Dr. Wiki knew someone at Experience Kissimmee, which is a very large destination, marketing organization, management organization, and connected Emily to that company. So now she’s an a research analyst for experienced Kissimmee. There’s several students who are undergraduates who are currently doing summer internships at Okinawa Japan on a multi rotational hotel operations internship. There’s Taylor Armstrong, who is gonna be completing his master’s degree in 2024. He’s the assistant director of safety and security at the Ritz Carlton Hotel here in Grand Lakes. So, different types of people and different types of jobs.

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
All loving the hospitality industry. What’s especially lovely to me is when they get out into industry and then we have really strong connections with alumni, and then they call us and say, I need this person or that person. Because they trusted not only what they learn, but they trusted the shepherding process towards their job and the care that we gave them to a right match. And so they believe in us. And so we do the same thing, and it just goes on and on. And in fact, when I spoke with some graduates, we just had a master’s hooting ceremony here, a fancy hooting ceremony on this stage last week, Friday. And I told a couple of them, okay, hurry up, move up in your company so that you come back and, you know, get some of our graduates. And it’s just, this is a trust and an understanding of the quality of, of people that we work with and the care that we have, um, in helping people to find their, their dream jobs.

Ryan Embree:
It’s so cool. I love hearing those stories. And it’s cool to know that there’s a UCF Rosen footprint on a lot of the major hospitality brands out there, and it is a snowball effect. And like you said, when you’ve experienced it, you know what you’ve learned, then you can trust to call back and say, yes, I know what type of program, extensive program, what type of education that they’re getting, and they’re gonna be a valuable resource for my organization. Such a cool story. Obviously UCF Rosen, this is our final college for this particular series and the campus crawl. But we’ve visited several others, FIU and FAU.

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
All good colleagues of ours.

Ryan Embree:
Absolutely. That’s what I wanna talk about, because earlier in this year, Rosen hosted the inaugural Florida Deans and Director Hospitality and Tourism Summit. So super interested in this. Obviously Florida, tourism is the name of the game for this state. How did this idea of coming of getting together all these deans and directors, and where do you see it moving forward?

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
So I was the interim dean at the time, and because I wasn’t in that deans and directors position very long, I didn’t know any of them. So I went to a conference and I was being introduced and then, we’re drinking coffee and we’re talking about our same challenges and same hopes and dreams. And I would ask, have you ever gotten together? All of you? ’cause they all seem to know each other. There’s eight of us. There’s eight institutions in the state of Florida, and none of them had ever gotten together to meet. They sort of knew each other. Some texted each other. I said, I think we should meet. Like, do you wanna meet? Would that be a good thing to do? And so they said, you know, okay. And they were all over it. And I thought, well, you wanna meet with us because we’re in the middle. Wanna come over? Central Florida. It’s like when you’re a kid, like you wanna come over. So I was like, you wanna come over? And you know, we said, okay, so we set up a first meeting, but we had some conversations about what is it that we wanna meet about? What, why are we doing this? And there is, in the state of Florida, there’s a list of classes and discipline, not classes, but disciplines and majors that are called the strategic programs of interest. And they’re things that the governor and the legislature deems as very important programs to advance the economy in the state of Florida. Things like aerospace is in there, nursing, engineering, those types of tech jobs because that’s something of emphasis, strategic program of emphasis. And I had often looked at this list and I never saw hospitality or tourism. Yeah. And I thought, why don’t they think that’s important? And maybe there’s reasons, there’s probably lots of reasons that they didn’t think. So as we got to talking amongst ourselves, we learned that that was something that’s important to us because what you had mentioned about staffing and industry, and we are the pass throughs for all of this talent that goes out into industry. And so we all decided, well if we are those programs, how can we be supported at, you know, a legislature level with high schools, with all the other institutions? We can put this up as a program of prominence that is recognized. And there’s some ancillary benefits. Nothing major, but it’s mostly this is of emphasis. And it gets talked about. It gets marketed in this way. Parents hear about it, high schools hear about it. There’s potential grant fundings for it to help with scholarship, I’m told. But what it is, is all of us, the eight institutions of directors and deans, we decided let’s work on getting hospitality and tourism management on that list. And so we worked through some of those things. We’re all gonna be meeting again. We email and talk a lot whenever we see each other at conferences. We actually have the governor’s conferences coming up in Tampa pretty soon. And we decided to get really organized to kind of, you know, get all, all of our efforts and lobby for this. And we’ve, we kind of planted some seeds and asked some associations and dmo, you know, would you be interested in coming? And they’re like, yes. Because they need people to work in the industry. And so we all, it turns out that this kind of snowballed. So it’s been very exciting. Yeah. And the other thing is, is they’re just the nicest people. Yeah. They’re just, they’re kind and nice. There’s nobody showing off or anything like this. Right. We’re all interested in students in our programs, so they go out into the industry and they make it change for the better. That’s what we all want.

Ryan Embree:
Absolutely, and hospitality, so people serving people, that sounds like a great cause. And you know, I’m sure there were a lot of people shocked when they heard that.

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
That we never met before or that it wasnt on the list?

Ryan Embree:
Yeah. That it wasn’t on the list. But it’s so cool to hear that. And again, you know, we’ve had the pleasure of visiting some of these campuses and interviewing some of these directors and deans. So, really exciting to see how that progresses. As we wrap up today, we’re gonna lean on some of your advice and wisdom to a couple different maybe segments of people. So, you know, I was here just over a decade ago in this auditorium about to graduate, about to start my hospitality career, not really knowing what was out there, what advice, you know, we just got done with, with graduating some, some students. What advice are you sharing with them right now as they enter the workforce here in 2024?

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
So, couple of things. One is we, all of us have this idea of how something’s gonna look right. You know, for all us. And I don’t know about you, but for me it didn’t look at all like that. Right? But we have to be open to the opportunities that come. So plan B, plan C, right? To not be disappointed or the world falls apart because it doesn’t go this way. And to understand what our gifts, each of us have certain gifts and our skill sets and how to either leverage those or take positions when they become open. That can build new skill sets or we can meet new people who can help us. So, you know, I had this advice a long time ago. If you can’t, if you can’t go up, up, up, then go lateral. Don’t go down. Go laterals. So, and there’s so many jobs out there now.

Ryan Embree:
Great advice.

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
There’s just so many jobs out there right now. So get in somewhere. Do your very best. Stay as long as you can. Be honest and forthright with your expectations. Also know that when you graduate, you, it depends if you come in, there’s, we have a lot of non-traditional students who’ve been managers for seven or 10 years. They’re gonna go out and be general managers or directors. But a lot of students, you know, are sort of entering in lower mid-level supervisory or managerial roles. And it takes some time, it takes some savvy and some emotional intelligence to build, to understand the people side of it and how to advance yourself through the levels. And so rather than seeing this position that you think is yours, or could be yours or should be yours, you gotta understand there’s process and entering into an organization, there’s all these other people who also want that thing. So kind of a good awareness of where you sit and informally how you can advance through the channels. That’s a really important skillset to have. But I would also say that, I always tell people, don’t look, compare yourself to all others. That’s not good for us. That’s not good for our mental health. Look down work, work harder than everybody else, but stay in your lane. Understand your skillset. Maybe you have to go do a little bit of, you know, online training or different kinds of education, or maybe go onto a master’s if you want, get an MBA or whatever it is to build other skill sets. So it’s always learning. And that’s what I love about our industry, especially the food and beverage side, where I come from. It’s always learning. There’s always something to learn. And I recently heard this wonderful advice that if you, if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. The graduation speaker said that at our last commencement. I like that. Which means to me is go where you can learn something. And if the opportunity presents itself, do that. And if you think that you’re supposed to be somewhere and an opportunity comes and it wasn’t what you thought, is it something where you can learn something to at least advance? You know, so taking that perspective of being open, constant learning, willingness, I think those are are helpful things for people going out into the industry. And for me, you know, any of us for me too.

Ryan Embree:
I was gonna say it’s great advice and, you know, being that sponge. And just, you know, there’s a lot of things after interviewing a lot of industry leaders, a lot of things we hear is one, the journey is not always the same. You know, you can start in one place and end up in a completely different place than you ever thought. And also look for mentors. Our industry is filled with them and, and they’re willing to help. They’re willing to usher in, you know, that, that next generation. So looking for those mentors and being a mentor.

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
And being a mentor is really important. I think that, you know, and that’s what I also try to do personally, but I know we all do this at the college, is we’re always asking others or identifying in others. And even when people look like they don’t need help, but they’re doing well get to know ’em a little bit more because there’s something mutually beneficial that we could teach each other. We could show each other. But you’re right about, about the mentors. And I didn’t think of it ’cause we’re always teaching, so I just assume that. But there’s faculty here who are still in contact with people two decades ago who help and answer questions and, and ask advice. I ask certain faculty here for advice all the time and that’s wonderful. I have many mentors here at this college.

Ryan Embree:
Well let’s go to another stage in life. So those students that are about to start their education journey, those incoming freshmen into the UCF Rosen Hospitality Program, what advice are you giving them day one as they step on campus?

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
Get involved, leave your dorm room, leave your apartment, get involved, join clubs, meet people, make friends, get yourself in environments. Getting a study group if you’re more quiet, find the quiet people if you like band and, you know, color guard and all those things. I’ve heard a lot of students who like that recently. I mean UCF has 68,000 students. There’s hundreds of clubs. There’s too many things for them to do. So go and do those things. Be with people, learn the people skills, practice your soft skills. Take some risks, make mistakes, fail a little bit, but keep going and trying to build your network of friends. It’s really important for the hospitality industry and just life in general. And the other thing I would say is have fun. College should also be fun. We forget that sometimes. I mean, we have a 99% graduation rate and a 98% placement rate. So students are working all the time, 30 to 40 hours. They’re taking four, five classes. Sometimes they’re working in summer, taking class in summer, joining a couple of clubs and such. And so we also have to think about this pressure to go, go, go, go. You know, you’re supposed to have fun too, you know, so carve out sometimes to have some fun. Make time.

Ryan Embree:
Your students are just steps away from theme parks, restaurant. World class restaurants. So you’re right. Easy. Lift your head up and maybe take a walk and you’ll run into something. Well, as we wrap up with the final question, as Dean, what is your vision for UCF Rosen College for the next 5-10 years?

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
It’s a pretty broad vision and I’m about to share it with our faculty and invite them in to think about it, because I don’t, I do think it’s important for a leader to have a vision, but I also think it’s should be inclusive and should be adaptable. But I think very broadly, I want for us to be the pioneer in transforming the way that hospitality and tourism education and research is conducted. And I want in 5 or 10 years for industry, for our alumni, for other institutions to say, you know, in 2024, 2025, Rosen College changed the way that this field is taught and that research is conducted. They were the ones who changed it, made the 2.0 and that’s broadly what I hope to see. We’ll see. Because we must do this. We must make these changes.

Ryan Embree:
Well, thank you so much. Absolutely. Inspired again, as an alumni of this university is, it’s so cool to be able to come here a decade after I graduated and to be back on this stage where I was watching hospitality leaders inspire me to be a part of the industry. So thank you so much for joining me, Dr. Mejia and for all the work that you and your team do here.

Dr. Cynthia Mejia :
Thank you. And it is a pleasure to have you here and I hope you’ll come back and maybe do a leadership seminar.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, it’d be my pleasure. Well thank you so much. Thank you for the UCF Rosen College for hosting us here at the Suite Spot. Thank you for listening to us, and we’ll talk to you next time on The Suite Spot. To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five-star reading on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embry, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.