Review Assessment Report

The Culinary Arts Program is nationally accredited by the American Culinary Federation Foundation Accrediting Commission. This ensures that the program meets the standards and competencies set for faculty, curriculum and student services. Our practices are aligned with industry practices and our faculty maintain a high level of professionalism. Being nationally accredited by the ACFEFAC, is no small undertaking and assures that the CNM Culinary Arts program is meeting the standards and competencies set for faculty, curriculum, and student services. Accreditation creates public trust by ensuring established standards, accountability and credibility, a high level of professionalism, up-to-date and current practices nation-wide, and provides CNM with marketing tools for recruiting new students, as well as having the ACFEF accreditation acting as a third party endorser for federal funding.

The data collected during this cycle shows students generally perform all measured assessments at a Mastery level. Students met or exceeded all desired outcomes, both for internal and external assessments. Students demonstrate a strong ability to prepare a variety of food products according to standard recipes as well as application of basic cooking methods using proper knife, tool, and equipment techniques. They also have demonstrated knowledge of the fundamentals of baking science by preparing a variety of products according to standard recipes using proper hand, tool, and equipment techniques, as well as hygiene and sanitation standards in a kitchen setting. Students describe basic principles of sanitation, safety, and procedures to determine and monitor critical control points in a professional food service setting and describe and evaluate organizational structures, leadership styles, and personnel management techniques as they apply to a wide variety of hospitality operations at 75% or higher.

We continue to find a strong level of student success. There was marked improvement in the areas of Baking Fundamentals, Safety and Sanitation, Customer Service, and Human Resources in Hospitality Management year-over-year. We continue to face some challenges in online sections of Safety and Sanitation, but the overall success rate has shown strong improvement.