Head of SDSU hospitality program 'always innovating'

By Penni Crabtree
STAFF WRITER

June 27, 2007

As a decided nonacademic who heads an academic program at San Diego State University, Carl Winston is uniquely positioned to offer students both a rigorous traditional education and what he calls “life skills.”

EDUARDO CONTRERAS / Union-Tribune Carl Winston, director of the SDSU School of Hospitality & Tourism Management, helps train the next generation of leisure industry professionals.

But they also get a lot of practical wisdom – Winston-style.

Take the 21-year-old student whom Winston spotted drinking a cosmopolitan at a San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau reception. Winston pulled her aside and asked her what impression she thought she was making on a room of potential employers.

“Someone who is, like, partying?” came the student's chagrined reply.

Exactly, said Winston. Want a drink? Have a glass of wine. But don't finish it. And save the cosmos for friends, he advised.

“It's a silly thing. It's not part of the college curriculum or a college education, but it is a metaphor for how we are trying to create self-awareness in these kids,” said Winston, director of the SDSU hospitality school. “So much of what we personally do here is share our mistakes. Because I've had the cosmo in my hand, so to speak.”

What began in 2001 as an almost quirky experiment – local hospitality industry leaders worked with university officials to devise a curriculum and provide seed funding for training the next generation of hospitality professionals – the program was elevated in April to the status of an official SDSU school.

That elevation, which provides more prestige and state funding, is a reflection both of the importance of the tourism and leisure industries in San Diego and of Winston's leadership in shaping the program and its students, university officials said.

Joyce Gattas, dean of SDSU's College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts, under whose umbrella the school is sheltered, praised Winston's ability to “think outside the academic box.”

Winston, a lifelong veteran of the hospitality industry before he took the SDSU post in 2001, has helped improve and enhance the school's curriculum, recruited industry leaders as part-time faculty and lecturers, and helped hone an internship program that gives students real-world experience in San Diego hospitality businesses.

“He's always innovating, and he has been a really effective director,” said Gattas. “Working with other directors, I point to his way of thinking as a model for how others ought to think in order to innovate.”

That doesn't mean that Winston's often maverick style hasn't ruffled a few academic feathers. The hospitality program and Winston have had to grow – and grow up – together, learning to maneuver the university's often laborious system for getting things done.

“There is a saying that reminds me of Carl: 'It's easier to ask forgiveness than seek permission,' ” Gattas said of Winston's tendency to try to bypass layers of decision-making or a faculty committee to get speedier resolution to an issue. “I wouldn't say that Carl breaks rules, but he has been wonderful at stretching them.

“I'll get emails from him that began 'I think I goofed . . .' ” said Gattas, with a laugh. “It's like standing on a precipice.”

Winston, 50, concedes that he's always had a business penchant for the precipice. Before switching to academia, Winston was the chief operating officer at San Diego's Trigild Corp., a company that takes over failed businesses, either propping them up and selling them or liquidating them for lenders.

“I loved the variety and the humanity of the job,” said Winston. “We'd get a call: 'I need you to take over 37 gas stations in Oklahoma tomorrow.' You had to put a whole business plan together fast, get your arms around it, deal with the people and the problems. How cool is that?”

Other stints included working for several hotel companies and heading Jeepers, a Boston-based amusement park chain that was “like a Chuck E. Cheese on steroids,” Winston said.

Brian Blake, who has worked with Winston off and on since 1991 at different companies, and now as internship and placement director for the SDSU hospitality school, describes his boss as a “stimulation junkie” and “workaholic.”

Blake said Winston gave him his first chance to prove himself in the hospitality business, sending him to San Francisco to run a problem hotel for a British franchise. Using a combination of expense-cutting and creative marketing, the hotel made a spectacular turnaround.

“One thing about Carl that is really unique is that he makes people think outside the square box,” Blake said. “ 'Get out of your comfort zone' is one of Carl's favorite expressions – and one he's used on me many times.”

Winston began learning the hospitality industry at his mother's knee, literally. The oldest of four children, Winston was 6 years old when his father was killed in a car accident, and his widowed mother supported the family by managing a fine dining restaurant in Sausalito.

“If you wanted to have anything when you were a kid, you got a job in the restaurant,” Winston said. “It was, 'Mom, can I have a car?' And she'd say, 'There's the dishes, have at it.' ”

Winston said he rarely stayed more than a few years at any one company, always moving on and up, always looking for a new challenge. Along the way, he said, he became “a bit of a bastard as a businessperson.”

“I wasn't very sensitive. I'd fire people and laugh, or make an inappropriate joke: 'I have great news for you, your stress is over. I have to let you go.' ” Winston said. “Part of it was a nervous tick but part of it was I didn't have much emotional intelligence. Any businessperson has to make hard decisions, but mine were a little too hard and a little too quick and without, maybe, enough humanity.”

About a decade ago, Winston said, he began to take stock after he moved to New York and began working for a company led by not-so-very-nice people.

“I started looking in the mirror and going, 'Dude, some people think that's you,' ” Winston recalled. “As you get older and mature a bit, you start thinking about what kind of legacy in life you will leave.”

Winston got a chance at a new legacy when he became involved in the industry effort to launch the SDSU program. While Winston was serving on an advisory committee, a university official challenged him to “put my hat in the ring” for the director's position.

“Many people with Ph.D.s are really, really smart and committed, but they may not have the entrepreneurial skills to run, let alone launch, a new venture, and the search committee just wasn't finding anyone,” Winston said. “They offered me a 50 percent pay cut and I just kinda had to take it.”

In 2001, the fledgling program's first class had 13 students; today, the school has more than 700 students and 21 full-time and part-time teachers.

As an academic director at SDSU working closely with bright, eager students, Winston said the traits that drove him in business – ego and competitiveness – and his desire for a more mellow, “humane” existence have aligned nicely.

“If these students are successful in 10, 15, 20 years, I'm going to feel really good because I was part of helping them get started,” he said. “I get immense satisfaction from that.”

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