Katherine Brumley

Kelly Simmons

Far from her native California, Brumley works with clients to ensure their events exceed their expectations.
Submitted photo

With three older sisters working in the hotel industry and a father who owns an event rental company, Katherine Brumley has hospitality in her veins.

You can do just about anything with a hospitality degree.

She’s seen a lot of opportunities at the UGA Center for Continuing Education & Hotel, a hands-on lab for HFIM students. An internship in Sales and Events Management exposed her to the attention to detail needed to plan large meetings and multi-day conferences.

Learning how to arrange tables so everyone can easily see the event’s speakers or putting together a proper place setting for a multi-course meal can be confusing initially. Having the Georgia Center as a hands-on learning lab allows students to practice setting up banquet rooms repeatedly until they have the layout and table settings committed to memory, she says.

“I am a true believer that you learn best by experience,” Brumley says. “You can see exactly what goes into it.”

Brumley returned to campus to finish her master’s in agribusiness, which she had started as an undergraduate. She is the first HFIM student to take advantage of UGA’s Double Dawg degree program, which allows students to earn both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in five years or fewer.

The Georgia Center is ideal for Brumley to research her master’s thesis on food sustainability. In addition to offering experience in hospitality, the center’s restaurants and catering business generate plenty of data to study new practices to reduce waste and save money. So far, she has analyzed 12 years of data and continues gathering information in real-time.

Brumley frequents the Georgia Center kitchen several times a week, documenting how many servings were prepared for an event, how many were not served and can be reused, and how many had to be discarded. The goal is to find a more precise way to plan meals for large groups.

That kind of applied research would not be possible at a school without a facility like the Georgia Center, she says.

“You build connections. They know who you are by seeing you repetitively,” Brumley says. “They understand that students are learning.”