San José State is helping students tee off their careers at one of golf's oldest and most distinguished events—the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. For three years, San José State's Hospitality, Recreation and Tourism Management Department has provided a 30-student Special Event Management Team to handle hospitality needs at the Pro-Am, a PGA Tour golf championship and charity fundraiser where professional golfers and celebrities compete for $6 million in prize money.
"It's a classic win-win situation," says Rich Larson '76, Special Event Management Team program director and lecturer in the departments of Hospitality Management and Nutrition & Food Science. "Pebble Beach gets qualified managers for its event and San José State students get a unique level of training and great experience." Before the team can rub nine irons with golf elites and celebrities, they are required to complete more than 70 hours of specialized training on management skills and Pebble Beach procedures, and study profiles for clients like Yahoo!, Microsoft and General Electric.
"It's a crash course in world-class service," says John David Young (at right), '06 Hospitality Management, and member of the inaugural Special Event Management Team. "It was the most valuable experience of my college career—and the most real."
Now the front office assistant manager at Pebble Beach's Inn at Spanish Bay, Young is putting the experience to work. "After getting to know a client like Charles Schwab, you find out the more you know about a client, the easier it is to build a rapport with them."
The program teaches much more than practical skills. "The students really learn about themselves—how good they are as managers and how far they can go," says Beat Giger, Pebble Beach director of special events.
During the weeklong tournament, students work grueling 12-hour days managing teams of up to 50 employees who serve spectators, corporate clients and their guests. But the rewards are invaluable.
In addition to the ongoing partnership for the Pro-Am, SJSU students often work as managers at other Pebble Beach events such as Concours d'Elegance, a world-renowned celebration of the automobile. And 125 SJSU students are slated to manage the 2010 U.S. Open men's championship at Pebble Beach.
"Every school has relationships with industry," says Larson. "But I've never seen or heard of anything that is so empowering for students."
—Jody Ulate, '05
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