Michael Wilson seems an unlikely student to find in the kitchen at Savannah Technical College. An MBA and member of the New York Stock Exchange, Wilson traded his stock brokerage license for a cleric's collar nearly 20 years ago. His Catholic diocese in New Orleans eventually sent Wilson to Savannah, where he led a small congregation until he decided that the term "service" might have another meaning for him.

Wilson investigated the purchase of a catering business, but his early MBA training made him think twice about investing wholeheartedly in an industry where he had no experience. So, he decided to do things from the ground up. That meant a diploma in culinary arts and catering management.

"I could have gone anywhere, to the Culinary Institute of America or Johnson and Wales," says Wilson. But Wilson chose Savannah Technical College.

Culinary training at Georgia's technical colleges and institutes is literally "by fire," and learning and deadlines often go hand in hand.

Culinary students at Albany Technical College might cater multiple business luncheons in an average week. Reservations at Gwinnett Tech's Notebook Café are claimed weeks in advance. Savannah Tech is renovating to provide its program with a much-needed, larger kitchen. The programs at Gwinnett Tech and Savannah Tech cannot supply students fast enough to meet nearby employment demands. What seems common to all of the state's culinary programs is that they are growing rapidly — serving an increasingly diverse student body and a field that is wide open.

Now a lab assistant and second-year student, Savannah's Wilson has nothing but praise for the technical college's culinary program and its director, Marvis Hinson.

"Being Chef Hinson's assistant gives me a reason to hang around all day and learn from her," Wilson says. "She is a wonderful coach — an incredibly dedicated professional who thinks nothing of a work day that starts at 7 a.m. and ends at 8 p.m."

Both Hinson and Anne Clark, director of the program at Albany Technical College, remember the early 1980s when the state's culinary training program was conceived as a utilitarian program to provide the food-service industry with cooks, and with cook's and baker's assistants. But in the past 10 years, the service sector has shifted and gained momentum, and the rules of the food industry have changed radically. In keeping with the industry's changing demands, the state's technical schools have burgeoned into training grounds for executive and specialty chefs, bakers, caterers, and food-service managers.

The state's technical colleges and institutes still offer the practical diploma program, along with basic courses in English, mathematics, and computer and interpersonal skills.

A culinary arts diploma requires four quarters of study. But with two additional quarters, students can complete the catering/culinary management diploma. The diploma from Savannah Tech is recognized even by the prestigious American Culinary Federation's Education Institute.

The student demographics in the state's culinary programs demonstrate just how vast is the shift in the food service industry. There is an even mix of male and female students in the programs, with a large percentage of students returning to school to prepare for a second career. Savannah Tech estimates that the percentage of traditional, college-age students in its culinary program is less than 35 percent.

"The executive chef field has changed dramatically in the past 10 to 15 years. A chef's career now has more recognition as a legitimate career path and is much more open to women," says veteran chef Anna Cabrina Annunziata, who was hired three years ago from the Art Institute of Atlanta to run the program at Gwinnett Technical College.

Both Hinson and Clark echo Annunziata's sentiments. "Many of my students have other degrees and considerable work experience," says Hinson. "Culinary arts may have been what they always wanted to do, but the image of the industry and low salaries kept them away. All that is changing."

"Nine out of 11 students in my 1999 first-year class are male," says Clark. "They tell me the fine salaries of senior chefs inspired them to enter the program."

Topics in a culinary diploma program include classical styles, such as French cuisine, as well as ethnic specialties, reduced calorie cooking, and vegetarian recipes. Students learn to bake, sauté, and roast. They learn about different cuts of meat, and how to prepare soups, stocks, and sauces. Current students are learning how to approach the fusion trend in cooking, where ingredients from different cultures and regions are melded in new ways, and cuisines from different cultures might be found in combination on a single menu. Culinary graduates also are taught to compete in food styling and set-up.

"The food not only needs to be pleasing to the palate, but also to the eye," says Savannah Tech's Hinson. "The plates and serving presentation need to reflect a sense of style and creativity."

Georgia's students are competing with chefs and students from the most exclusive institutions — and winning. Gwinnett Tech's students recently took second place in a statewide baking and pastry competition, and Albany Tech's student table took Best of Show in the seventh annual Chocolate Classic dessert competition among the city's restaurants and caterers. Among the Albany competitors were two other graduates of the technical college's program.

Regardless of where they are in the state, students in the culinary programs generally work in the food industry during school and have no trouble finding a job upon graduation. Some, like Wilson, are in the program because they intend to start their own catering businesses. Others plan to open restaurants or bakeries.

Albany Tech's Mary Sanford planned her own catering business. But before she graduated, Buffalo Catering, a subsidiary of Albany's Pepsi distributorship, hired her to manage its office. "Now I have the best of both worlds," Sanford says. "I have benefits and a regular income, and I am doing what I love every day."

Sanford's classmate Lillie Bradford is finishing her course work with an emphasis in baking. In a reverse course from Wilson, Bradford next plans to go to business school to better prepare herself to market a baking service. After that? She is off to Atlanta to open shop.

According to Wilson, in industrial food preparation, you learn not to waste things. He likes that concept. "My business degree certainly was not wasted in my parish, and it won't be wasted in my catering business. My time here? It is a luxury for someone my age to pursue something that they love."

"My oldest student is 64," says Albany Tech's Clark. "She has no plans to work after she graduates. Rather, a culinary management degree has always been one of her dreams."

t's just something I've always wanted to do; I just like cooking — I find it relaxing," says Mark Linsley, a student in the Professional Chef Program at North Georgia Technical College's satellite campus in Blairsville. This fifty-year-old chef-in-training has already owned and operated his own business — a small coffee shop and bakery in Atlanta and in Blairsville. But after years of running a successful business, he decided to trade in his mocha lattés for duck á l'orange. Professional cooking will be his third career.

The Blairsville campus is a satellite of North Georgia Technical College in Clarkesville. The Professional Chef Program will see its first graduates in the spring of 2001. With its vaulted ceilings, stone floors, large bay windows, and a flavoring of local artists' craftsmanship, the facility has the feel of an exclusive resort. The kitchen is state-of-the-art, with the newest equipment available in the industry, and the program is staffed by three professional chefs who know their way around the kitchen. But it wasn't just the superior instruction and modern facility that drew Linsley to the program. He thinks it offers something even more beneficial — small class size, which allows for hands-on training. "These classes aren't so big that they [instructors] can't stop what they're doing and stand with you and help you," he says.

Al Tholen, a veteran chef who spent 15 years with the Applebee's Corporation before directing the culinary program in Blairsville, believes that students should spend as much time as possible in the kitchen. "Every lab class, these students are up to their elbows in recipes that they are responsible for," he says. "And the diverse curriculum prepares students for the fast-paced work environment of professional cooking." Tholen says students graduating from this program will be able to begin working in mid-level supervisory positions.

Nestled in-between areas like Helen and Clarkesville, the Blairsville satellite campus supports local tourism by training new chefs to fill positions in many of the area's surrounding restaurants and resorts, like Brasstown Valley, where Linsley and several other students are currently interning.

Because the program is geared to train executive chefs for five star dining, Dr. Jim Watkins, vice president of operations, says students in this program are being approached by local restaurants and resort owners for post-graduate work — well before they have graduated.

For Linsley, this experience has been a turning point — a chance to pursue a career in what has been this self-professed culinary-show junkie's hobby for years. Linsley wants to be an executive chef. Some students have plans to own their own bed-and-breakfast or catering companies. Whatever their goals, Tholen's goal for his students is simple: He wants them to enjoy cooking. In fact, he even likens the experience to biting into a Godiva chocolate: "I want our students to be able to taste that, and be so hungry for more that the hunger lasts for a career, a lifetime in this industry."