Starting next school year West High School is introducing a new hospitality pathway with classes supported by local businesses for students to take. The hospitality pathway will be a unique pathway to West and will join West High’s 26 other pathways.
The hospitality pathway will help lead students into many hospitality related careers that they may be interested in.
McEwen said, “With hospitality and tourism, there’s a lot of careers that it can go into, a few big ones would be anything that has to do with travel, tourism, things like hotels, working in hotels, working in restaurants, working in anywhere that people come and visit.”
The hospitality pathway is exclusive to West and differs from West High’s other pathways in how it uniquely relates to our city.
Herter said, “So this is something that is completely new to West, completely new to the district, and probably the biggest difference is that this is something that relates to our city, Wichita is one of the largest cities, is the largest city and locally around and I don’t think a lot of our students realize that and I think that just opens up the opportunity for them to keep a job here.”
This pathway is being paid for through federal funding, and it is seeing support from local businesses in Wichita.
Herter said, “We’ve been talking a lot with some of the surrounding businesses just trying to get those internships available for once those kids get into the application level. We have a lot of support from the district and West High so now we just need the students.”
Classes in the hospitality pathway will be available for any student here at West High and they will be able to move up to higher level courses in the pathway.
“Anybody can take these classes,” Herter said. “With the introduction classes, that’s going to be more for your freshman year, and then as you move up throughout, and then your senior year is going to be those applications classes.”
The hospitality pathway will help students develop important skills that are required to succeed in hospitality related careers and fields.
“Things like organization, understanding kind of what’s going on in Wichita and how to coordinate those things,” McEwen said. “I know a lot of students want to maybe open their own business, or open a specific shop, or something like that. However, you need to make sure you’re looking at demographics and what is happening in Wichita, and so the hospitality is going to help a lot with that, to see if there’s a need for these types of things.”
Students are recommended to take classes in this pathway if they have any interest in exploring hospitality careers.
Herter stated, “I would suggest anybody to take them especially if you are interested in maybe branching out, there’s a lot of different categories with classes, we have entrepreneurship, travel and tourism, hospitality and lodging, event planning so there’s a big variety of classes that people can take. I would recommend everybody take at least one, kind of get your foot in the door and see if it’s something that you would be interested in.”
