The upcoming school year looks bright for the more than 10,000 students who are enrolled in Careers through Culinary Arts Program (C-CAP),the 21-year old non-profit dedicated to providing culinary career training and scholarships to under-served high school students throughout the nation. C-CAP has partnered with the online Rouxbe Cooking School to bring a modern approach to culinary teaching and give students of the “net generation” online access to the C-CAP Approved curriculum enhanced with Rouxbe’s instructional culinary videos, recipes, and assessment tools. The C-CAP Approvedcurriculum program will also be available to high schools who are not affiliated with C-CAP.
As public school funding is slashed across the country, budgets are being cut to the point that some culinary teachers can’t afford the ingredients to demonstrate culinary techniques, and teachers without culinary training are being asked to teach cooking classes. The C-CAP Approved/Rouxbe partnership transforms culinary education for both students and teachers as it gives lessons additional focus and brings professional quality training to more students than previously possible.
“Our job is to ensure all of our students are prepared for college or careers upon graduation and we are excited to start using the new and innovative C-CAP/Rouxbe curriculum to help our students achieve excellence in the culinary arts,” said New York City Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott.
Teachers are preparing to adopt this program this fall. "I am overwhelmed with excitement," says Yvonne Bernino C-CAP teacher in Arizona. “This is my fourth year teaching culinary arts, I am not a professional trained chef...but, an award winning Family & Consumer Science teacher. Rouxbe is exactly what I have been praying for! I believe C-CAP Approved/Rouxbe will give my students (and me) that professional training I always wished I had."
To create this new integrated product, C-CAP and Rouxbe correlated Rouxbe’s library of over 1,000 instructional videos to the C-CAP Approved curriculum. Rouxbe’s close-up videos differ from those on other websites in two important ways: they focus on skill and technique rather than recipes, and on education rather than entertainment and celebrities. Supplementing the instructional videos are hundreds of practice exercises and recipes, more than 1,000 interactive quiz questions, and numerous tools for teachers to assess student knowledge.
“I spend a lot of time teaching young cooks better technique,” said world famous Chef and author Marcus Samuelsson. “Whether students are in school or working in the industry, Rouxbe has created an exceptional culinary training tool that can reach aspiring chefs on a scale not previously thought possible. Together with C-CAP’s strong focused curriculum and its industry respect, this partnership will have a tremendous impact on any student considering a culinary career. I also believe that by teaching young people how to prepare and cook fresh ingredients, it will help to address the obesity epidemic ravaging this country.”
For teens preparing to work in professional kitchens, this training resource is a unique tool for readying students for culinary careers. “Never in my four decades of culinary education have I seen a resource with Rouxbe’s potential to transform the way students learn and teachers teach,” said Richard Grausman, C-CAP Founder, culinary educator, cookbook author, and winner of a James Beard Award for Humanitarian Service. “I’m particularly excited to combine Rouxbe with our C-CAP Approved curriculum so that schools and teachers have a turnkey solution to prepare students for jobs in the food services industry.”
“C-CAP is a pioneer in culinary education and has helped thousands of public school students prepare for careers in the food services industry,” says Paul Bloom, CEO of the Rouxbe Cooking School. “We are excited to combine our professional instructional cooking videos with the C-CAP Approved curriculum as a resource for schools to teach essential cooking skills to their students.”
