Yesterday, the culinary and foodservice employers, faculty, and regional partners gave four hours of their morning to something that matters: a Regional BILT (Business and Industry Leadership Team) convening hosted at the beautiful Orange Coast College.
The focus was understanding and (sample) scoring the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that entry-level Food Service and Restaurant Managers will need 12 to 36 months from now.
Employers voted. Faculty listened. And the results will potentially drive real curriculum change across OCC, Saddleback College and Cypress College. This is what co-design between education and industry looks like in practice.
The BILT model, developed by Dr. Ann Beheler, Director of Innovation at CORD flips the script on the educator-employer relationship. Rather than asking industry to rubber-stamp what colleges have already decided to teach, BILT gives employers co-leadership over program direction.
The result is faster alignment, deeper engagement, and graduates who arrive at their first job already oriented to what the field actually needs.
Beyond the KSA voting, employers named real gaps that programs are not yet addressing: labor law and wage compliance, coaching skills for first-time managers, and the essential skills that separate a technically prepared hire from one who actually succeeds.
One of the tangible outcomes of this work is a sample KSA scoring rubric, co-designed with the California Restaurant Association and OCC District Office staff and leadership.
This kind of tool does not happen without the right people in the room and the right structure to sustain the conversation. It is a concrete example of what regional workforce alignment produces when employers and colleges commit to building something together rather than working in parallel.
The BILT model works when leadership at the VP and dean level treats employer engagement as a policy priority, not a program coordinator’s side project.
The larger context for all of this is OC Works, the regional workforce initiative championed by Stephanie Feger, Program Director of Career Education and Workforce Development at the Coast Community College District, connecting these convenings, internship frameworks, and curriculum alignment efforts into something with real staying power across Orange County.
The evaluation and case study work through MN ASSOCIATES INC is designed to document exactly that: what co-design produces, what it requires, and how the region scales it.
More to come!
