Too many cooks, not enough space

MATC Culinary students Hannah Tracy, left, and Morgan Dow work in the school's kitchens. New facilities are coming, which should help grow a program that trains many of the people who staff Madison's restaurants (Jennifer Gragg/Madison Commons).

Though the phrase too many cooks in the kitchen is often used as a metaphor, it is a problem that is all too real for the culinary program at the Madison Area Technical College.

Located in the Truax campus at 1701 Wright Street, the culinary program is in need of an expansion. Because while there are too many cooks in its own kitchens, the same cannot be said for Madison’s restaurants, which are hurting for staff.

“The classes are getting stuck on top of each other,” said first year student, Hannah Tracy. “We need space to do anything large.”

A quick look inside the building can confirm this fact. Many students share limited counter space and even the hallways cannot avoid the problem. Rather than being open spaces for transportation, they have become a place to store extra resources.

The reason for this lack of space can be partially attributed to the program’s increased enrollment. Currently the program has 140 students enrolled, enough to force the program to hold some classes in the cafeteria. This has created a number of problems.

“It makes it very challenging for the instructors to be able to talk over other work and things that are going on in the kitchen,” said Head Chef Paul Short. “With our first year students, we often have four of them around one table. It can be very difficult to assess their skills and their work because there’s so many of them working at such a tight little space.”

More room is coming. Funds allotted to the program as part of a $133.7 million referendum in 2010 will soon fix these problems. Initially, the school planned on using part of these funds to build a new campus in the downtown area. Eventually, however, it became more cost efficient and practical to simply expand at the program’s original location.

Beginning this summer, work will begin on an expansion for the Truax campus. This will include building an additional kitchen for the program and building individual work areas for students.

Short is hopeful that this will create many benefits for the students.

“It’s going to give them a better educational environment,” he said. “[The extra space for students] will allow instructors to really zero in on what they’re working on and make sure that they’re able to assess them along every step of the way.”

First year student, Morgan Dow echoed these hopes.

“It’ll be a little more wiggle room,” she said, while playfully elbowing Tracy at their shared workspace.

This expansion will also be good for the Madison community. Many establishments in Madison rely on the graduates of the culinary program at MATC to staff their kitchens and take on managerial positions.

“The need is so high that at times, we don’t have the same number of students that we have for job requests,” Short said. “It is our obligation to try and get as much help to those establishments as we possibly can.”

Neither the community nor the students will have to wait much longer to make this happen. The expansion will be complete and open in time for the 2016 fall semester.