North Carolina Department of Correction - Correction News - February 1999
Courses allow food service workers to become certified dietary managers
New dietary food certification classes and a personnel reclassification study are the latest professional development efforts to benefit North Carolina prison food service managers.
Community colleges in Buncombe, Mecklenburg and Wake counties now offer courses that allow prison food service workers to become certified dietary managers. Division food service director Nancy Porter said work is underway to make the programs available at more community colleges in the state. Porter said the program will help food managers brush up their skills, build on their dietary knowledge and develop their professional credentials. She said maintaining the food service certification will require staff to take 15 hours of continuing education classes annually.
While the certification program develops food service skills, Porter said she hopes to work with the American Correctional Food Service Association to develop training for correction skills. Porter will become the ACFSA president in August 1999 when the association holds its yearly conference in Virginia Beach, Va.
State personnel completed the first personnel reclassification study in 20 years for prison food service employees last fall. The study created a career ladder of four pay grades for food service managers and led to food service assistants being renamed food service officers. u