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The hospitality industry might best be described as “people intense.” As university educators with over thirty years’ experience in hospitality ranging from ownership to multi-unit management and development in numerous geographical areas within the United States, and four foreign countries, I have a good grasp of the particular adaptations in thinking urban metropolitan settings require. Socially, culturally, and physically, all geographies share similarities and distinct qualities that make them unique. I consider practical knowledge for hospitality students who are inexperienced with “urbanity” and “self” to be vital. My interest in internships centers on two realities. The expectation for graduating students is productivity from the first day they arrive to work --- a tall order for any person or program. The experience a student gains in a work environment then returning to the classroom, allows for pause and contemplation as well as time for the student to process the experience, take stock of themselves, and better prepare for that short walk across the street where the working world lives and measures ability.

The second reality centers on the university itself. Each year many our culinary students undertake internships in various urban metropolitan areas in moderate to high volume operations who can afford the added cost of the extern. While we are confident that gaining a usable threshold of knowledge occurs because of internships, important questions drove our interest and included to what depth and breadth is this threshold achieved with so many students to attend to and oversee? What factors encourage and empower students to acquire durable knowledge from their internship? What forms of personal ‘social capital’, the ability to advocate for oneself, do they have to enhance their experience?

Additionally, we explore the roles of foodservice sites who agree to participate in the internship process. Finally, we questioned what contributions educational facilitators offer as constructors and evaluators of internships from their particular vantage. Thus, this book provides a synthesis of meaning that each participant group attaches to the internship and how these meanings interact in the construction of experiential knowledge to achieve the best critically contemplated experiential learning experience for each student regardless of knowledge level. Therefore, the book content structure begins with an explanation of what an internship really is from the various fields that use work-study as a learning tool. The book also presents internships from the vantages of those who participate in the belief that to understand the true worth of an internship, it must be situated pedagogically through a meaningful understanding of the reality of the experience rather than be limited to only what the student might perceive on their from an inexperienced perspective.

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