201 - TMG Hospitality Campus Crawl: Georgia State University - Cecil B. Day School of Hospitality Administration

In this episode of the Suite Spot podcast, we’re heading to the prestigious Cecil B. Day School of Hospitality Administration at Georgia State University. We sat down with the school’s Director, Dr. Benjamin Lawrence, to go behind the scenes of one of the country’s top hospitality programs.

In this video, we explore:

• How Georgia State is shaping the next generation of industry leaders. 
• The innovative curriculum driving modern hospitality education.
• Insights into the future of the hospitality profession.

Whether you’re a student, a professional, or just passionate about the industry, you won’t want to miss this deep dive into hospitality excellence!

Episode Transcript

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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. Ryan Embree here with the Suite Spot for another edition of our TMG Campus Crawl Series. We are here in the heart of downtown Atlanta at Georgia State with Dr. Ben Lawrence, Director of the Day School of Hospitality Administration. Thank you so much for hosting us and being a hospitable guest.

Dr. Benjamin Lawrence :
Happy to have you down here. Go Panthers!

Ryan Embree:
Well, we’re excited about this. You know, we’re here in Atlanta. We’re gonna talk about the location. But before we get rolling with this episode, Dr. Lawrence, this is your first time on the podcast. We would love to hear. Hospitality is all about collection of stories, right. Of individuals. Share a little bit about your hospitality journey and how you came here to the Georgia State, Day School of Hospitality.

Dr. Benjamin Lawrence :
So, people sometimes are surprised about my past because I was born in Singapore and I grew up in Indonesia, and I came to the States when I was 18, and I came to the States because I wanted to go to the best hotel school in the world. And so, when I was 17, I went to one of those high school, like, what are you gonna be when you grow up? And this Swiss hotelier said, you wanna go to hotel school? Go to Cornell. So, I applied to Cornell and I arrived in the States when I was 18, and I went to Cornell. And so, I went to hotel school there met my wife at, she was a hotelier at Cornell. After I graduated, we ran an inn in upstate New York, historic inn, went back to get my MBA, then worked, in a couple of different industries for a while. Went back to Indonesia to help my family and their business, and then came back to the States. Then I worked in a community college, a couple of community colleges, teaching hospitality. Then I went back and got my PhD at Boston University and my PhD, focus was in franchising. And I know we’ll talk a little more about franchising in a minute. But, franchising is the primary form of distribution of our product. After I graduated from Boston University, I got a job back at Cornell. So I went back there and I was a food and beverage professor. People always laugh. What was your professor? Food and Beverage? So I taught the most of the freshman students at Cornell, Food and Beverage Management. And I also taught, a multi unit franchising course there. And then this position at Georgia State opened up and a benefactor of ours gave money for an inapt professor in franchising. And there’s nothing better as an academic to get inapt professorship in the area that you study. And the weather in Atlanta is a lot better than the weather in Ithaca.

Ryan Embree:
I don’t know this week my, uh, my…

Dr. Benjamin Lawrence :
True. We’ve been cold, but it’s gonna be 80 degrees. 80 degrees this weekend. So when my kids moved down here from Ithaca, they were like, oh my Lord, you can play soccer in January, and we have a pool. So, I really loved working here in Atlanta. Georgia State is a very dynamic place. It’s a large state university, so very different from Cornell, but we really transformed the lives of our students here. So I’ve been here, I was here for seven years as a faculty member, and then just last July I became the director of the the Day School of Hospitality. So, we’re working on a lot of interesting stuff here. I’m excited about the position and excited about the potential of Georgia State and Atlanta.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah. Excited to share it with our audience and your story. Dr. Lawrence is a true indication of what hospitality is international. Right? We say that all the time. Hospitality is the language spoken all over the world. Your journey is certainly a reflection of that across the globe and, and now across the country here. So, share a little bit about the school’s history, Georgia State’s history, and where you think that this program is unique based on maybe others across the country.

Dr. Benjamin Lawrence :
So Georgia State was founded, the university was founded in 1913 as the kind of nighttime business school of Georgia Tech. And that has evolved over time. We’re a very large university. We are over 50,000 students here. And we’re a very diverse university. So we graduate more African Americans at Georgia State than any other university in the states. So we are a majority minority institution and a research one institution, so an R1 institution. So, we are not only a research powerhouse, but we also transformed the lives of our students. So we are the Day School of Hospitality, was founded in 1973, as a school of Hospitality, and was named in the eighties by the founder of Days Inn, Cecil B Day. So that really ties back into the franchising story, into the entrepreneur story. You had a local Georgian building, a brand that became worldwide brand, which is amazing. We joined the College of Business, and now we’re a school embedded in a business school. So there’s two forms of hospitality programs. There’s hospitality programs like UNLV or University of Houston. They’re standard loan colleges. And then there’s schools like ours that are embedded in a business school. So those are two basic models. There’s advantages and disadvantages to both. One of the advantages that we have is that we are in a college of business that allows our students to take many different courses from marketing department to computer information systems. One of the disadvantages is that we tend to be fairly small. So cost guide programs in business schools tend to be smaller, than standalone colleges. I took over the program in July, and we’re working on our strategic plan right now to grow the school to get more students. Because industry’s always looking for great hospitality students. And also looking to expose hospitality to students in other disciplines. And so if you’re a real estate student, if you’re a finance student, if you’re a student, a psychology student, right? So getting those students among all university students interested in hospitality. And I think that’s, that’s a model in which, will help grow enrollment. Well, only our majors and our minors, but also students just interested in hospitality. Many of our students are working in hospitality, right? They’re working as waiters or they’re working at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. So, they’re exposed to the industry especially being here in Atlanta.

Ryan Embree:
Even if they’re not in hospitality jobs, you could still be using hospitality skills within those jobs. Which is very important to share because, I think there’s that common misconception of, you think of a hospitality or a hotel worker, you think of all the disadvantages sometimes, right? Of like the holidays, the long hours. It’s a 24 hour business. But at the same time, there’s these different departments, whether it’s accounting, marketing, all the HR, these different avenues within hospitality, that you can be exposed to franchising. And being, which we’re gonna talk about. But one of the things is you look for that strategic plan, I think is a huge advantage, is obviously your location. Right? You’re in the heart of downtown Atlanta. It’s massive headquarters for global brands, sports venues, I mean, state of the art sports venue. You got World Cup coming here this summer. Talk to us about how you’ve used this location to your benefit for the students and prospective students.

Dr. Benjamin Lawrence :
Yeah. I mean, we have people on campus all the time. We have headquarters for ISG is here. We have, you know, we can walk from our campus to Mercedes-Benz Stadium, state Farm. We have the World Congress Center here, which is one of the largest convention centers at the day school. We don’t really have that many physical facilities. We don’t have a restaurant, we don’t have a hotel, but we don’t need to because we have Atlanta. Right. So that is a huge advantage for us. When we want people to come to campus to speak, they just need to just turn the corner and they’re here. And so we get great speakers to come to campus. Our students are engaged with the local industries here. Atlanta is the capital of franchising in the us Right? So if you think about the brands that we have here, Chick-fil-A, inspire brands, Rourke Capital. Rourke Capital, which is one of the largest private equity companies that owns Inspire and go-to Foods and over 50 franchise brands. And Atlanta’s growing. Right? And so if you’re a student and you come here, you can stay here afterwards, right? So if you’re a student at Cornell and you go to Ithaca, you’re probably not staying in Ithaca, right. Because there’s not much there. People have to get on a p