HISTORY
The college has enjoyed a unique and exciting history characterized by rapid expansion in its 60 years of service. The Culinary Institute of America opened in 1946 as the New Haven Restaurant Institute, a small cooking school in downtown New Haven, CT, with an enrollment of 50 students and a faculty consisting of a chef, a baker, and a dietitian.
The Institute, at that time a vocational training school for World War II veterans, offered a 16-week program featuring instruction in 78 popular menus of the day. Members of the New Haven Restaurant Association sponsored the original school, whose founders, Frances Roth and Katharine Angell, served as its first director and chair of the board, respectively.
As the foodservice industry grew, so did enrollment, necessitating a move in 1947 to larger quarters: a 40-room mansion adjacent to Yale University. The school's name was changed to the Restaurant Institute of Connecticut; in 1951 it became known as The Culinary Institute of America, reflecting the diversity of the student population.
The educational program was expanded to two years, and continuing education courses for industry professionals were introduced. By the time of Mrs. Roth's retirement in 1965, the school had increased its enrollment to 400 students and operated a $2 million facility.
In 1969, double-class sessions were initiated to accommodate a backlog of applications, and an auxiliary campus was leased, but with more than 1,000 students and with facilities strained to the maximum, the school's administrators launched a search for a new home. They found it in St. Andrew-on-Hudson, a former Jesuit seminary in Hyde Park, NY.
The college purchased the five-story, 150-room building, situated on 80 acres of land overlooking the Hudson River, in 1970 for $1 million. Two years and $4 million in renovations later, the new school opened, with its main building renamed Roth Hall.
In 1971, the Board of Regents of the State of New York granted the CIA a charter to confer an Associate in Occupational Studies (A.O.S.) degree. The new campus offered a trimester program: students entered three times over the course of the year. In 1976, this was replaced by the Progressive Learning Year (PLY) program that enabled smaller groups of 72 students to graduate and enter the industry every three weeks, 16 times a year. A paid externship semester was created, offering students the opportunity to gain on-the-job experience by working in the foodservice industry.
The expanding curriculum and the additional space available in Roth Hall enabled the CIA to establish the Epicurean Room in 1973. The public restaurant provided a realistic, hands-on setting for students. Later renamed the Escoffier Restaurant, it was awarded a three-star rating by The New York Times and four stars by the Mobil Travel Guide. The restaurant has also won Restaurants & Institutions magazine's Ivy Award. Its menu highlights modern interpretations of classic French cuisine.
Today, students also gain experience in our other on-campus restaurants: the Ristorante Caterina de' Medici, St. Andrew's Café, the American Bounty Restaurant, and the Apple Pie Bakery Café Sponsored by Rich Products Corporation. CIA students also prepare and serve meals for catered functions and student and employee dining.
As the curriculum expanded, the CIA continued to grow. Three residence halls were built in 1974 to accommodate 880 students, and a fourth residence hall for 350 was completed in 1986. An extensive culinary library, named for Katharine Angell, was established, as was the Marriott Career Planning/Information Center and the Learning Resources Center, where instructional videotapes were produced.
In 1981, the CIA became the only school authorized to administer the American Culinary Federation's (ACF) master chef certification exam. The CIA employs the largest concentration of master chefs certified through the 10-day ACF-sponsored exam.
The college's Continuing Education Center opened in 1984. More than 2,400 foodservice professionals come to the CIA's Hyde Park and Greystone campuses annually to update and expand their culinary knowledge by participating in continuing education courses.
The college received a $1 million grant in early 1988 from The General Foods Fund, Inc., and built the General Foods Nutrition Center to encourage education and research in nutritional cooking. In 1990, the CIA opened the School of Baking and Pastry, which in 1992 was dedicated as the Shunsuke Takaki School of Baking and Pastry.
The CIA purchased 70 additional acres for its Hudson Valley campus in 1992. In 1993, the college was approved by the New York Board of Regents to offer two Bachelor of Professional Studies (B.P.S.) degrees—one in culinary arts management, the other in baking and pastry arts management. That same year, thanks in part to a $1.5 million gift from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the college opened its Conrad N. Hilton Library.
The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone (a branch campus of the CIA, Hyde Park, NY), located in California's Napa Valley, opened its doors to food and wine professionals in 1995. Today, in addition to a variety of professional development offerings, the Greystone campus is home to two certificate programs and the A.O.S. degree program in culinary arts.
The CIA opened the Student Recreation Center at its Hyde Park campus in July 1998. In January 2000, the Apple Pie Bakery Café Sponsored by Rich Products Corporation went into operation on the first floor of Roth Hall in support of the CIA's baking and pastry arts degree programs. The following year, the college opened The Colavita Center for Italian Food and Wine, which subsequently won the Ivy Award in 2004. This spectacular educational facility is devoted to the study of the culinary traditions of Italy. In November 2002, the college opened the doors to the newly named and renovated Farquharson Hall (formerly Alumni Hall). The site of graduations, student dining, and special events, Farquharson Hall was painstakingly restored to its original splendor as the main chapel of the St. Andrew-on-Hudson Jesuit seminary. In 2004, four Adirondack-style lodges were added for student housing. Anton Plaza, completed in 2005, offers an underground parking garage that accommodates 140 vehicles, as well as a rooftop plaza that features gardens, seating areas, and a large fountain. That same year, the college acquired 20 additional acres of land, bringing the total campus acreage to 170. A new Admissions Center, completed in 2006, was built to enhance our students' enrollment experience. Two additional lodges for student housing were added in 2007.
Today the CIA's physical assets (Hyde Park and Greystone) are valued at $164 million, and its total annual budget is in excess of $117 million. The college currently enrolls more than 2,800 students in its degree programs and employs more than 130 full- and part-time chefs and instructors representing 16 countries as well as adjunct instructors who are experts in their fields.
