Fast Food Putting Students on Fast Track : Education: Taco Bell professor turns out graduates ready for service industry careers.

PULLMAN, Wash. —  Fast food is serious stuff to Don Smith, the Taco Bell Distinguished Professor at Washington State University. There are no easy A’s in Burger Flipping 101 here.

“We are a business school,” says Smith, who holds what is believed to be the first university endowment paid for by a fast-food chain. In his classes, students study market research and motivational training, not milkshake theory or the physics of french fries.

Fast food is big business, Smith said, with $60 billion in annual sales. And that is of more than academic interest to his students.

“The number one thing that drives a student in our college is career,” he said. “That may not be what academics like . . . but our kids come here so they can get out of here and improve their state of living.”

Graduates of Smith’s program leave with five or six job offers, he said, with salaries starting at $20,000 a year and rising to more than $30,000 after three years.

Of this year’s 90 graduates from the university’s hotel and restaurant administration program, 18 entered the fast-food service industry.

One such former student is Scott Fisher, a Taco Bell district manager in the Seattle area.

Fisher, who says he makes “damn good money” and drives a Corvette, thinks more colleges should offer career training for the fast-service industry.

“There’s a lot of engineers coming out of colleges, but at two years out of college I was making more than an engineer,” said Fisher, who supervises 120 employees at five restaurants that do a combined $4 million worth of business annually.

“Where is a 24-year-old going to get that kind of chance?” Smith asked. “Fast food.”

Taco Bell Corp., the Irvine-based subsidiary of PepsiCo, gave Washington State a $250,000 endowment this year--matched by a state grant--to increase the number of trained professionals in the industry and conduct academic research.

Smith, 60, was chosen last month after the university advertised the post nationally and reviewed about 40 applicants. He has a master’s degree in education from the University of Illinois and has been teaching at Washington State’s hotel and restaurant school since 1986.

Smith knows the fast-food business from bitter experience. His attempt to open a taco restaurant in the 1960s was less than a rousing success.

“I didn’t know the farmers in Dekalb, Ill., didn’t like tacos,” he recalled with a laugh.

He went on to a successful 13 years as managing partner of a Chicago restaurant, Chateau Louise and then became director of new ventures for Kentucky Fried Chicken, served as president of the Shakey’s Pizza chain and moved on to become director of the School of Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management at Michigan State University.

He approaches every task with the energy and enthusiasm that made him a successful high school football coach in the 1950s. Some of the management skills he teaches students come straight from the locker room.

Successful fast-food managers must give their teen-age employees self-confidence, just as a coach must do, Smith said.

“When you can enhance a teen-ager’s self-esteem, they’ll kill themselves for you,” he said. “And by the way, money ranks fourth in what motivates them.”