Click here to view video of DePaul's announcement of the School of Hospitality Leadership.

When Chris Roberts looks at the current economic downturn, he sees opportunity for students enrolling in DePaul University’s School of Hospitality Leadership, which will launch its first undergraduate degree program in the fall.

"The economy will turn around eventually, and when it does, DePaul will be poised to produce its first hospitality management graduates who will emerge into the job market just as the hospitality industry employers are hiring again."

Roberts, 54, a strategic management professor with nearly two decades of professional experience in the hospitality industry, has been appointed by DePaul’s College of Commerce to direct the new school, which was founded in September 2008 with a $7.5 million gift from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.

Roberts comes to DePaul from the hospitality and tourism management program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (UMASS), where his teaching and research has focused on hotel, resort and casino management. Prior to his academic career, Roberts worked in corporate management for Holiday Inns Inc. and the Bell Telephone System (which provided reservation switchboard services), and he owned a travel agency. He earned his doctoral degree in strategic management from UMASS and also holds MBA and bachelor degrees in finance and management.

"Chris brings a valuable blend of academic, research and industry experience to the helm of DePaul’s School of Hospitality Leadership," said Ray Whittington, dean of the College of Commerce. "We are confident he will use his abundant energy and knowledge to establish a high quality curriculum for our new bachelor’s degree in hospitality leadership and future programs at the school."

Roberts has already begun a series of meetings with lodging and tourism industry leaders to build a career-oriented hospitality management program, and he will join DePaul’s faculty full-time July 1 after finishing the school year at UMASS.

Roberts said he believes Chicago is "a natural laboratory" for a program devoted to preparing students for management roles at hotels, restaurants, convention and tourism ventures, spas and related leisure industries. "One of the things that excites me is that Chicago is the United States’ third largest marketplace, with a world-class convention and tourism industry, yet it doesn’t have a premier business school program to educate strategic managers for this industry," Roberts said. "It’s clear from our meetings with industry leaders that there’s a thirst for a high quality hospitality management program in Chicago. We’re already getting requests for internship programs and recruiting access to graduates."

Roberts said he believes he can grow the program to at least 400 students within five years. In the future, DePaul plans to introduce hospitality leadership graduate degrees, continuing education programs and a research center at the school, supported with additional fundraising.

Roberts said he is intent on building a multidisciplinary program that will provide DePaul students with a well-rounded, real-world education in hospitality and tourism leadership. His other objective, he said, is "to have students understand and embrace DePaul’s Vincentian mission, which to me parallels hospitality so beautifully, in the sense that you’re serving others."

Part of that mission includes creating educational opportunities for underserved communities. In addition to targeting traditional undergraduates, the new hospitality leadership degree program will seek to enroll qualified Chicago hospitality workers who want to move into management but lack the educational credentials to do so. The goal is to help these workers—many of whom are minorities and/or potential first generation college students—embark on management career paths through greater access to education.

Roberts, who has taught at colleges and universities in Switzerland and Russia, said study abroad will be another important component of the program, and he intends to use DePaul’s international educational partnerships to create opportunities for students to learn first-hand about the global business of hospitality and tourism.

A well-published author, Roberts’ works have appeared in the "Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Education" and the "Journal of Hospitality Research." He also co-authored "Casino: Operations and Culture," which will be published in April by Prentice Hall. Among the courses Roberts has taught are hotel systems and management, global issues in tourism, hospitality research methods and hospitality business ethics.