The school’s Culinary program is currently undergoing a change for the 2023-2024 school year. The new kitchen, located in Building 11, is set to open in September and will offer new equipment and a fresh new space for students to create their meals in.
The program, instructed by Chef Thomas Masse last year, was located in the Innovation Campus, which was torn down to make way for technical college classrooms. The new culinary teacher, Chef Greg Berner, is a professional chef who is starting his first year teaching high school students at University. “It is my first year teaching high school, but I taught taught education classes for people with dietary needs and I both developed and taught culinary curriculum for corporate wellness programs,” said Berner. He was also a corporate chef at Disney in his early career.
The culinary students are currently in building 4-153 for class until the renovations are completed . Chef Berner plans on teaching the students in his class about cooking in the professional world. “I wanted to teach the next generation the proper way of cooking and preparing them to be chefs in the real world,” said Berner.
Starting without a kitchen or a teacher, the start of the year was shaky, but is now taking off in the right direction. “Without a teacher it was unstructured, so I treated the class like a study hall to get work done with other classes; it wasn’t really the culinary experience you’d expect,” said junior Anthony Gaskins.
While they wait for construction to be completed, students are learning the skills necessary to be Safe Serve Certified. The certification shows students know the proper procedure for cooking, handling and storing food, which provides the student the opportunity to work in the food service industry while still in high school. “I plan on doing this for a long time, and get better at this as I go on. I wanted to help in the culinary program because this class shaped me into the person that I am and helped me feel like an individual instead of as another kid in the classroom and that is the same experience that I want to provide to the students,” said Berner.
Construction for the new classroom, which was to have been completed before the beginning of school, is now expected to be done by mid-September.
