ALUMNI PROFILE
First Lady of Les Gourmets
By Judith E. Marr
A pioneer of The School of Hospitality Business will dine at Les Gourmets this year.
Zoe Peckman Slagle, BA '59, of East Lansing, Michigan, will have more than the usual diner's interest in the event, for she was its first woman chairperson during her senior year at Michigan State.
"The dinners today are marvelous and much more sophisticated than those we put on," Slagle comments. "Ours were wonderful; but we had a smaller organization."
Les Gourmets began in the mid-50s, each had a theme. There was light-hearted entertainment and dancing; dinners were served from elaborate buffet settings.
Slagle was a "go-fer" her freshman year; decorations chair her sophomore year, and food chair her junior year before becoming the event chair. She recalls about 35 students were members of the Les Gourmets Club--now 200 work on each dinner.
Tickets to the first event cost $2.75 per person; today they're $100. In 1957, 450 persons attended, compared to the 1,000 plus crowds today.
Other things have changed over the years, Slagle observes.
She was one of four women out of approximately 100 students in her restaurant management major. Another was Susan McPherson Smith, sister of the current Michigan State University president.
Slagle was a part of the Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Management Department of the college of business.
"I was interested in the business and commercial side of the food industry," says Slagle. Most women in the field, she recalls, enrolled in home economics, majoring in dietetics and preparing for institutional food service careers. Not everyone welcomed Slagle to the restaurant business major.
"I was told by two professors that I shouldn't even be in their classes and that I would never pass. I just pretended that I didn't have any idea about that. I wasn't a feminist, but I never felt inferior by being a woman."
Slagle's focus paid off as she was named restaurant student of the year her senior year. She went on to obtain her master's degree in restaurant management at Michigan State while serving as supervisor for the State Room--the fine-dining restaurant within the Kellogg Center.
Other career positions included Kellogg and dormitory food service manager; food service coordinator for the national school lunch program in Michigan; and director of professional programs for the American School Food Service Association. She retired in 1998 as USDA commodity administrator for the Michigan Department of Education (MDE).
Slagle is an appointee on a new advisory board to The School of Hospitality Business. Through the MDE, she continues to teach food service classes at schools around the state.
"Sue (McPherson Smith) and I like to joke that we've had 'spotted careers,' " she says with a laugh. But this gracious and energetic pioneer has paved the way for women Hospitality School students who have followed her.