Odds are students will like course offered by Kent State

By Rick Armon

Akron Beacon Journal

KENT

Kent State professor Rob Heiman noticed a hole in the school’s hospitality management program several years ago.

Casinos were popping up in states all around Ohio, and he figured it was just a matter of time before they came here.

But KSU, which has one of the few accredited hospitality programs in the state, offered no training in the field. So Heiman built a course to expose students to the expanding industry.

Today, Casino Management and Gaming Operations is one of the most popular classes at the university — thanks in part to a field trip to Las Vegas, where students get a behind-the-scenes look at the gambling mecca.

“I thought it was too good to be true,” said Joshua Dickey, 26, of Warren, who wants to go into the casino industry. “I really didn’t think that Kent would offer a course like this.”

Heiman, who teaches the class with Nicholas Bellino, wants to increase the number of casino-related courses, especially with Las Vegas-style casinos set to open in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus and Toledo. There’s also the possibility horse tracks in the state might one day add slots.

Thanks to the Ohio casinos, students are taking the course more seriously and no longer consider the industry “some fantasy land out in Las Vegas or Atlantic City,” Heiman said.

The current class serves as a basic introduction, but he said he could see adding more focused classes dealing with management, accounting, technology or security that would provide specific skills for students to enter the casino work force.

“What we’re trying to do is give them opportunities,” Heiman said.

The American Gaming Association estimates there are about 350,000 people working at the 443 commercial casinos and race-track casinos in the United States. (That doesn’t count 456 Indian casinos. The association doesn’t track employment at those sites.) The casino industry has struggled in recent years, as many consumers have had fewer dollars to gamble.

“But even during the difficult economic times, expansion in states like Pennsylvania, Maryland and others have added significant employment to those states,” said Holly Wetzel, spokeswoman for the American Gaming Association in Washington, D.C. “This will continue to be the case as new markets, like Ohio, come online.

“And there are indications from the numbers we are gathering for our 2011 report that the industry has begun a slow recovery process, so the outlook is favorable.”