YOUNG CULINARY STUDENTS
WIN $178,000 IN SCHOLARSHIPS

High school students enrolled in a Mission College culinary arts class have been awarded nearly $180,000 in scholarships to pursue their studies at prestigious schools.
The scholarships were awarded as part of the Careers Through Culinary Arts Program (C-CAP), which provides training for students interested in careers in the food service and hospitality industries.

Top awards in the senior division went to Wesdin Hernandez, a senior at Monroe High School, and Guadalupe Ramirez, a senior at Sylmar High School. Both were awarded $80,000 scholarships to attend the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.

Another Sylmar High student, Joseph Serna, was awarded a $11,600 scholarship to the Philadelphia Culinary Arts Institute. Jasmin Gutierrez, also a senior at Sylmar High, won $4,500 in scholarships - $3,500 at the Westlake Culinary Institute and $1,000 at Mission College.

All of these students are enrolled in Chef Rudy Garcia's culinary class for high school students held at Mission College under the college's Tech Prep program.

In addition, several of Garcia's students won scholarships in the junior division. Robert Valdovinos, a junior at Monroe High, was awarded a $1,265 scholarship to attend the Culinary Institute of America's Greystone campus in Napa Valley for a week this summer. Rudy Martinez, a Sylmar High junior, won a $1,000 scholarship for a week's training at the Cordon Blue in London, as did his instructor, Chef Garcia.

The scholarships were awarded based on a system combining points for a student's grade point average in high school classes and performance in a test designed to challenge the student's culinary arts skills.

The Careers Through Culinary Arts Program was created in 1990 as a non-profit organization to teach the culinary arts to high school students. What began as a pilot program in 12 New York City high schools has since expanded to similar programs in six other cities, including Los Angeles. C-CAP boasts that since 1995, it has awarded over $735,000 in scholarships to Los Angeles Unified School District students.

# # #