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Meet Our Faculty: Leslie Seiferle


Leslie Seiferle


Professor
School of Applied Technology and Technical Specialties
Commercial Foods Certificate

What she teaches:
ServSafe™, Culinary Math, Stewarding (to include personal protection and equipment safety), Breakfast, Starch and Vegetable Cookery, National Restaurant Association Certificate Course for Nutrition, Meat, Poultry and Seafood Fabrication, Soup, Sauce and Protein Cookery, Cold Pantry and Bakery applications

Number of years teaching at SLCC:
26

Undergraduate degree:
Utah State University, Career and Technical Education

Master’s:
Utah State University, MEd, Career and Technical Education


Why working at SLCC matters:
SLCC provides an open door to college that can rarely be duplicated by four-year institutions. They also reach a far more diverse group of students than do most four-year colleges and universities.

Greatest professional challenge:
Since imperative skills as an educator require time employed in industry prior to a faculty appointment, one can tread the continuum of trailing in industry currency. Prior to teaching, the renewal of professional credentialing as an industry chef required ongoing practical applications of technical expertise in a closed-circuit evaluation environment. As an alternative, competitions surfaced as an opportunity for an immediate critique by respected contemporaries in an open forum involving students. Not only has this parallel provided for measuring up-to-date mechanical competence on the watch of a pupil, but in the veneration as an instructor who has relevance. Maintaining technical currency has required 30 competitions over a decade.

Greatest professional accomplishments:
In recognition of the professional challenges involved in a dual role as an educator and competent journeyman chef, I received a presidential award (Cutting Edge Award) at our own ACF Chef Connect educational conference in Minneapolis earlier this year. While the award stipulates leadership and service in multiple forms, the acknowledgement of involving students within my own professional development creates crosswalks among SLCC certificate students and master-level mentors for generations to come. Two of my students are also distinguished alumni recipients.


Advice for students or others:
My family justified education as an opportunity to internalize something that could never be bought, sold or taken.

Future plans:
Nonprofit work with sustainable agriculture and food safety constituencies, food security, mobile markets located in food deserts, crop diversity in order to protect global food security and minimizing food waste through old-world skills with modern relevance.

Family:
Since my father was a Marines aviator, we relocated every 18 months, so no place was home, and you will always be the new kid in school. The intention of that childhood was discipline as a product, an outcome, an achievement and not something applied from without. Influences to cook were primarily tied to socialization skill building, but as with many chefs, it was a grandmother who allowed you to stir the gravy first.

Hobbies:
Horses. Gardening. Fly-fishing. Social dance. Dutch oven cookery. Animal rescue.

Chef Leslie Seiferle poses with her 2019 Cutting Edge Award.



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