Southern Connecticut State University has developed a new certificate program, exclusively for employees of Mohegan Sun, in an effort to boost employment in the hospitality, tourism and event management industry.
SCSU’s Recreation, Hospitality and Sport Management program will launch its new Tourism, Hospitality and Event Management (T.H.E.M.) advanced certificate for Mohegan Sun employees this month.
The program is fully online and costs $995. Five courses are being offered and include tourism, hospitality and management; event management; food and beverage operations; lodging operations; and entertainment management.
SCSU officials said the new program was developed in response to employees ditching their jobs in the industry during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our industry saw a 180-degree turn from the pandemic,” said SCSU Assistant Professor of Recreation, Tourism and Sport Management Annamarie Sisson, the program’s coordinator. “It lost a lot of employees throughout the world, so now our industry of hospitality and tourism is essentially hiring a brand-new set of employees.”
Sisson noted that when the pandemic compelled many employees to leave tourism, hospitality and event management jobs, it left a major gap. That created a new challenge for the industry to attract and retain new employees with leadership skills and the ability to step into management roles.
Sisson said the T.H.E.M. certificate will provide Mohegan employees with hands-on experience to understand the components of how the industry operates. It also will offer the opportunity to apply their “soft skills” to their current jobs while working to advance in their careers to middle and upper management roles.
The collaboration with Mohegan Sun will give students a chance to explore internship and potentially career placement opportunities. Mohegan Sun has approximately 8,000 employees and offers 275,000 square feet of meeting and event function space as part of its gaming and entertainment complex in southeastern Connecticut.
The T.H.E.M. advanced certificate is designed to help students build their business skills through a five-course module that students can take at their own pace. The coursework is expected to take students about 15 hours to complete, working asynchronously as a class in tandem with SCSU’s spring semester schedule.
For more information, visit www.SouthernCT.edu/THEM-certificate.
