April 27, 2009

Ghiselli named head of Purdue's hospitality and tourism management department

The appointment of Ghiselli, a former hospitality and tourism management faculty member at Purdue and currently director of the School of Hotel and Restaurant Administration at Oklahoma State University, takes effect July 1. Ghiselli succeeds Raphael Kavanaugh, who died last fall.

"We are excited to have recruited Rich back to Purdue," said Dennis Savaiano, dean of the College of Consumer and Family Sciences. "With his teaching experience and practical background in the industry, he will do a great job."

Ghiselli will lead a department that has the No. 1 undergraduate program in hospitality and tourism management, as ranked by the Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Education. A new building, Marriott Hall, is planned to house the department. It will be located at the corner of State and University streets, with construction scheduled to begin in March 2010. Plans call for the facility to include a restaurant demonstration classroom that will seat more than 100 students, several new laboratories, a career center, a student services area, reception space, larger venues and expanded areas for quantity food production to service the student-operated John Purdue Room restaurant and HTM Café.

After receiving his bachelor's degree at the University of Illinois, Champaign, Ghiselli earned both his master's degree and doctorate from Purdue in restaurant, hotel and tourism management. He received an associate's degree in occupational studies in culinary arts from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. He also has 10 years of managerial experience in restaurants and country clubs.

Ghiselli was assistant professor in human and family resources at Northern Illinois University from August 1993 until June 1994. In 1994 he returned to Purdue, where he was assistant professor and then associate professor in hospitality and tourism management. He served as associate department head from May 2006 through June 2007 prior to being named professor and director of the School of Hotel and Restaurant Administration at Oklahoma State University. At Oklahoma State, he held the Marilynn Thoma Endowed Chair.

He has won several best paper awards and while at Purdue was the recipient of the Bruce Lazarus Undergraduate Teaching Award and the Mary L. Matthews Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Ghiselli's research areas are job satisfaction, turnover in the workplace, behaviors in the workplace, managerial behavior and ethics, performance evaluation, the relationship between training and performance, and consumer needs and expectations in food service.

Writer: Greg McClure, 765-496-2296, gmcclure@purdue.edu

Source: Dennis Savaiano, 765-494-8210, savaiano@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

To the News Service home page