Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the MyBU Student Portal for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• SHA HF 701: Hospitality Operations Analysis
  This course investigates the distinctive operational characteristics, operational mechanics, technology and management practices of hotels and restaurants. Throughout the course, students will be provided with advanced techniques and tools to analyze and improve operational capabilities of a hospitality organization. Analysis of daily operations with a focus on developing viable solutions to problems is emphasized. The first half of the course will focus on the theoretical principles and operational tactics of lodging operations and on how the departments within the rooms division of an individual hotel operate. Students will explore the managerial aspects of hotel reservation, the front office, housekeeping, engineering and security. The second half of the course will focus on principal operating problems facing managers in the restaurant industry. Topics such as concept development, pricing strategies and restaurant revenue management, menu performance analysis, cost control, labor management and customer service processes are addressed. 4 cr. Offered Summer II.
• SHA HF 702: Innovation and Disruption in Hospitality
  In today's suddenly uncertain world, disruptions are the norm and are mandating that we adapt our organizations and our individual selves. To stay ahead and remain resilient, businesses must ready themselves for crisis and change management. They must also excel at problem-solving and identifying opportunities to innovate effectively. Using case studies, media coverage and other content, this course will examine some of the most dramatic changes encountered by the hospitality industry, from the onset and impact of Uber and Airbnb to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Hospitality leaders need to know how to be the disruptors in the industry, as well as learn how to survive and capitalize when the industry is disrupted. In both situations, effective innovation is key to staying relevant and succeeding. Each week the class will meet to discuss different challenges that businesses have faced and approaches that entrepreneurs have taken to manage them. Examples will focus on both proactive change (addressing disruptions through innovation and early detection), as well as reactive change (leading in times of crisis). This course is offered in the FALL term in lieu of the required HF 701 for students entering with extensive industry experience. It is also offered in the Spring as an elective for those who have completed HF 701 and for those pursuing the Innovation & Entrepreneurship concentration.
• SHA HF 707: Hospitality Entrepreneurship
  This course is intended to be a capstone experience for students seeking to understand hospitality entrepreneurship and innovation as a professional business system. Student teams will create, develop and design a concise Pro Forma Business Plan for a start-up non-profit or profit-driven hospitality enterprise. At the end of the semester teams will make a competitive presentation integrating the principles and skills mastered in previous coursework to a panel of successful hospitality entrepreneurs. 4 cr. Offered Fall Semester.
• SHA HF 710: Finance for the Hospitality Industry
  Studies the techniques financial managers and external analysts employ to value the firm and its assets. Topics include financial statement analysis, taxation, discounted cash flow, stock and bond valuation, cost of capital, and capital budgeting. The techniques of discounted cash flow and the command of taxation principles developed in the course are applied to commercial real estate analysis, including hospitality properties. 4 cr. Offered Fall & Spring.
• SHA HF 711: Hospitality Financial Management
  Accounting has been described as the language of business. Consequently, the ability to speak and understand this language is a fundamental competency for practitioners of business. A central aspect of accounting is the composition of financial statements that depict the underlying economic reality of the firm being operated. This course is intended to introduce fundamental elements that are used to compose these financial reports. Specifically, course content will include an examination and quantitative analysis of the balance sheet, income statement and statement of cash flows from both a conceptual and pragmatic perspective. How these statements are both composed and relate to business planning, control and decision making in hospitality enterprise will be a central topic. 4 cr. Offered Summer II.
• SHA HF 712: Managerial Accounting for the Hospitality Industry
  After a review of financial-accounting principles, this course examines how financial information is assembled and presented according to the Uniform Systems Accounts for hospitality enterprises. The primary emphasis of the course is on analytical and decision-making uses of financial information, including such topics as cost behavior, leverage, cost-volume-profit analysis, contribution-margin pricing, and budgeting. The course concludes with a review of hotel operating forms, including franchising and management contracts and assessing their impact on financial performance and risk. 4 cr. Offered Fall Semester.
• SHA HF 714: Hospitality Market Feasibility and Valuation
  Graduate Prerequisites: Graduate students only.
  This course provides an introduction to and detailed instruction regarding the hotel market and feasibility research process including hands-on preparation of a feasibility analysis for a proposed hotel development. The course will consist of a series of lectures and possible guest lectures regarding the fundamental aspects of hotel feasibility analysis. Students will learn about and then put into the practice the analytical techniques presented, building to completion of a full feasibility analysis in a team fashion which will be presented at the end of the semester both in written and oral form. 2 cr. Offered Spring Semester.
• SHA HF 715: Fundamentals of a Hotel Real Estate Deal
  The purpose of this course is to introduce the students to the various aspects of a Hotel Real Estate Deal. The target audience is any student who aspires to have a career involving the ownership, development and/or financing of lodging assets. 2 cr. Offered Spring Semester.
• SHA HF 716: Hospitality Investing
  This introductory investment analysis course is designed to teach students how to craft a stock rating (buy or sell) for a restaurant, hotel, gaming, cruise or other leisure/hospitality publicly traded company. The emphasis will be on (1) combining your own experiences with these service providers (2) using financial statement analysis, modeling, valuation techniques to put some numbers behind the ultimate proposed investment rating and (3) combing through financial press, annual reports, quarterly earnings call transcripts and research reports to come up with a differentiated view. 2 cr. Offered Spring Semester.
• SHA HF 717: Hospitality Real Estate Finance and Feasibility
  This course is designed to facilitate a working knowledge of hospitality properties as financial and real estate assets. This course provides detailed instructions on the hotel market and feasibility research process and will help students understand how to analyse hotel markets across the world, identify and evaluate key forces that impact the performance of hotel markets and the hotels within them, determine the right hotel product for each site and market and forecast future performance for it. The course will also provide a grounding in the basic concepts of real estate finance and how they are used by stakeholders to make hospitality investment decisions. The course culminates with the preparation of a feasibility study and a valuation for a proposed hospitality development.
• SHA HF 721: Advanced Food and Beverage Management
  This intermediate-level course is designed to complete a student's foundation in food and beverage management. Critical issues in the food service industry are explored in depth. Course content will vary. Analysis of daily operations with a focus on developing viable solutions to problems is emphasized. The course content is grouped into six thematic competency clusters. 4 cr. Offered Spring Semester.
• SHA HF 722: Hospitality Design
  This course is designed to introduce students to the basic principles of facility planning, layout and design for hotel, dining, kitchen, public and service areas. At the completion of the course, students will be able to explain the design process common to all hospitality facilities, as well as the activities that occur during each phase of this process. 4 cr. Offered Fall Semester.
• SHA HF 723: Case Studies in Corporate Restaurant Management
  Graduate Prerequisites: SHA HF 701, SHA HF 711, and SHA HF 762
  Future restaurant leaders must possess many qualities and deal with challenging and complex business situations. This case study based elective course will allow graduate level students to apply the principles of leadership, analysis, and planning that they have learned in their prior required coursework to issues in corporate and multi-unit restaurant management and operations. The planning process for new restaurant ventures is explored. Students will critically analyze financing plans for new concept development. New ways of assessing restaurant success and failure are examined. An emphasis is placed on the use of qualitative and quantitative tools to analyze restaurant performance. Advantages and disadvantages of various market entry strategies are discussed. Opportunities for restaurant organizations to expand globally are addressed. 4.cr. Offered Fall Semester.
• SHA HF 733: Hospitality Organizational Leadership
  Graduate Prerequisites: SHA HF 701
  The hospitality / travel and tourism industry employs over 284 million people, representing about 1 in 11 jobs worldwide. In such a labor intensive field, leading and managing people are two critical elements for operating successful organizations. This course will focus on leadership and management for the hospitality industry. Using a leadership continuum as a framework, we will explore several different levels of leadership, from a traditional leadership role as the head of a major corporation, team leadership and the personal aspect of self-leadership. Several different leadership models will be analyzed and applied to the hospitality industry. An emphasis on creating organizational culture through human resource strategies and how to manage change effectively will be two critical components of the course. The course explores key aspects of human resources functions such as employment law, employee recruitment & selection, compensation and benefits, labor relations, diversity and managing hospitality human resources in a global environment. 4 cr. Offered Fall Semester.
• SHA HF 740: Graduate Internship in Hospitality Management
  The Graduate Internship allows students to gain industry experience. The zero credit internship involves 400 hours of relevant hospitality work experience and is required for all graduate students. Practical learning opportunities are available through our various hospitality partnerships, including hotels, restaurants and other placements. 0 cr. Offered Spring Semester.
• SHA HF 750: Snr Housing
  
• SHA HF 752: Monitoring the Resident Journey Experience
  This class explores the topic of seniors housing and care for America's growing middle-income senior cohort, a group that may have different preferences and demands from more traditional seniors housing offerings. Students learn the best practices for customer experience and transfer those guest services skills from the hospitality sector into the senior living and care sector.
• SHA HF 754: Senior Living Operations
  Providing an overview of the senior living sector and the process of aging, the course focuses on operations with detailed analysis of the day-to-day, expense controls and management styles, revenue enhancement techniques, staffing protocols, marketing strategies, and safety procedures. Students learn the fundamentals of all senior care services available at senior living properties. The program also includes a field trip to a nearby senior living facility where students can get first-hand knowledge of senior living operations.
• SHA HF 760: Hospitality Sales Management
  A dynamic, interactive and intensive hospitality sales management course which prepares you with fundamental skills on how to create, build and execute an effective sales strategy. This course combines theory with practical application and includes working with source markets and partners, identifying and qualifying prospects, building rapport, overcoming objections for creative proposals and successful closing techniques. 2 cr. Offered Fall Semester.
• SHA HF 761: Advanced Consumer Behavior in Hospitality
  In order to create and deliver value for customers, marketers must develop a deep understanding of how their consumers make decisions when purchasing and using their services. In this course those consumer behavior theories will be explored that are most applicable to different types of hospitality purchase experiences. 4 cr. Offered Spring Semester.