These college students run a restaurant — for class

INDIANAPOLIS (MIRROR INDY) — Jada Mills remembers the first time she ever cooked a perfect medium-rare steak back in middle school. When she handed the plate to her dad, both father and daughter beamed with pride.

“He was like, ‘You did such a great job,’” Mills, now 20, said. “And I was like, ‘Thank you. I learned from the best.’”

Now, Mills is pursuing her longtime love for cooking as a culinary student at Ivy Tech. This semester, she’s taking a French cuisine class with a unique twist — once a week, she works a shift at the college’s restaurant, Courses, a student-run establishment that’s open to the public.

Courses is a core element of Ivy Tech’s hospitality curriculum. Students manage all parts of the restaurant: Culinary students prepare the food, while students in a customer service class run the front of house, waiting tables and hosting. At the end of each shift, students from both classes clean up and wash dishes together.

Through it all, culinary and hospitality professors are there to guide students through some of the thornier parts of running a restaurant. Students are able to learn in an authentic environment without fear of being fired.

“Although it’s close to a real world experience, because we are a live operating restaurant, it is within the structure and framework of the college,” said Jeffery Bricker, chair of Ivy Tech’s hospitality administration department. “Those training wheels come off when they work out in the industry.”

Food as a ‘common language’

On a Wednesday morning, the college’s restaurant kitchen is awash in the thuds of chopping potatoes and hisses of sauteing shallots and mushrooms.

The Courses classes are some of the last culinary students will take before they graduate. By this time, professor Thom England said, his students are able to make most of the dishes on the Courses menu.

Now, it’s just about practice under pressure.

“They have to get that real life experience to get in the industry and not only be able to work on the line but also know how to manage the employees on a line,” said England, who’s also the college’s culinary program director. “So it’s not just the experience of cooking; it’s the experience of seeing how it’s done.”

Classes meet two days a week. Students in day classes work the lunch shift and in night classes, the dinner shift. Wednesdays are for prepping food, reviewing recipes and cleaning stations — a French process common in restaurants called “mise en place.” That way, when students come in for lunch or dinner service on Thursdays, everything’s ready to go.

In his 20 years teaching at Ivy Tech, England has noticed that food and cooking tends to unite students of different generations and backgrounds. Learning to cook is about more than just skill building — it’s community building, as well.

“Food is that common language,” England said. “They want to talk about their comfort foods and what they eat at home and how they prepare stuff. It’s not food education as much as it’s teaching people life skills.”

The food is just one cog in the wheel that makes the restaurant turn. During class time on Wednesdays, customer service students are in the dining room dusting, polishing silverware and ironing table linens.

When customers arrive on Thursdays, the students will be showing them to their seats, taking orders and facilitating communication between the servers and the kitchen.

Matt Jarson, who teaches the customer service class, isn’t training his students for a career as a server or a host, strictly speaking. Instead, he focuses on teaching them the leadership and managerial skills they’ll need to eventually advance in their chosen fields — whether it be restaurants, hotels or event planning.

“When you get on-the-job training, you’re learning how to do something,” Jarson said. “When you come to our program, you’re learning why we do it that way.”

Although Courses can seat more than 120 customers, the restaurant is almost always intentionally half empty — especially at the start of each term. Capacity increases incrementally throughout the eight-week semester so students can acclimate slowly.

“The guests have a good experience, but the students likewise have a good learning experience,” Bricker said. “They don’t feel in over their head from the beginning.”

Helping students thrive

Austin Gaither didn’t always want to be a chef. For a while, he considered going to dental school.

But when the now 24-year-old was with his friends and family, he found that his part of the conversation naturally leaned toward cooking.

“I’m always talking about food,” Gaither said, as he sliced veal for a stew. “I just get joy out of it.”

During Gaither’s year in the culinary program, there have been times when cooking felt more like a chore than a passion. But in the Courses class, he is able to be creative and rely on his skills rather than directives from professors.

“That’s what they really encourage us to do, help us to step out of our comfort zone and do something that’s not the norm,” he said. “Every day, we gotta improve from yesterday.”

Constant and steady improvement is a motto for the restaurant’s front of house, too. Although Haylee Jeter, 21, has worked the front desk at a hotel for the past few years, she has found that restaurant service requires a different skillset — more casual conversation, for example.

For Jeter, who’s hoping to build a career in hotels or event planning, working at Courses is a way to expand her horizons.

“You get that hands-on training without the consequences, essentially,” she said.

As for Mills, she’s hoping that she can leave the high-intensity kitchen environment behind soon.

After she graduates in May, she plans to go to Utah to be with her boyfriend and work at Kroger so she can learn the grocery side of the food industry.

But Mills’ ultimate dream is to open up her own coffee shop. She envisions creating a space where friends can meet up and talk for hours — a place where community is built through coffee and food.

“I want to make people feel like they’re at home,” she said.

Claire Rafford covers higher education for Mirror Indy in partnership with Open Campus. Contact Claire at claire.rafford@mirrorindy.org or on Instagram/X @clairerafford.