{"id":771,"date":"2024-01-01T00:10:30","date_gmt":"2024-01-01T08:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/crimsonpineapple\/?p=771"},"modified":"2025-10-29T12:58:44","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T19:58:44","slug":"jessica-murray-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/crimsonpineapple\/2024\/01\/01\/jessica-murray-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumna Jessica Murray Joins Hospitality Faculty"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Jessica
Jessica Murray, left, works with a hospitality student on knife skills. WSU Photo Services<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

It\u2019s fairly uncommon when a student who earns two bachelor\u2019s, a master\u2019s, and a doctorate at the same institution stays on to become a faculty member there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for alumna Jessica Murray<\/a>, a new scholarly assistant professor in the School of Hospitality Business Management<\/a> (SHBM), it made sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019s spent the last 11 years at WSU working on her education and career, gaining culinary, research, and teaching experience as she completed multiple degrees in hospitality and food science. Her broad focus and skills aligned perfectly for a faculty position in the hospitality program and cross disciplinary research opportunities in agricultural tourism and food science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fall 2023, she joined the hospitality school\u2019s faculty and is team teaching a course on the fundamentals of cooking with Executive Chef Mat Morgan<\/a> and a business course that addresses environmental practices and principles in global travel and tourism. She also has a 20 percent time research appointment and will be leading study abroad experiences in Italy, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWSU is unique in that it offers interdepartmental and interdegree study opportunities,\u201d Murray says. \u201cThere are lots of avenues that work for people who want to pursue more than one path. Initially, I hadn\u2019t considered doing a second bachelor\u2019s degree in food science or going on to earn graduate degrees, but seeing the direct application of what I was learning to real issues intrigued me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Murray\u2019s academic journey seems very linear, it didn\u2019t start that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A unique path to WSU<\/h2>\n\n\n
\n
\"Jessica
Jessica Murray instructs students taking an HBM course on the fundamentals of cooking. WSU Photo Services<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Growing up on a farm in Woodland, a small town near Vancouver, Washington, Murray wasn\u2019t even sure she would go to college. She knew she wanted a culinary career, but as a first-generation student, she wasn\u2019t sure a four-year degree would be attainable or necessary. The chefs she worked with while attending culinary school part-time during her high school years thought otherwise. They encouraged her to go to community college and then apply to culinary schools and to WSU\u2019s highly ranked hospitality program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile I had decided to pursue a culinary career, I knew I didn\u2019t want to be a line cook forever,\u201d Murray says. \u201cThe hospitality program seemed like a way for me to be flexible. WSU was one of the only schools in the state that had a hospitality program, and it was also ranked as one of the best in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other influencing factor: she needed a job. She visited the Marriott Foundation Hospitality and Culinary Innovation Center and talked with former Executive Chef Jamie Callison and also interviewed with the center\u2019s student HR lead. She was hired to work on the catering team before classes started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs long as I was willing to say \u2018yes\u2019 to experiences, people were willing to give me opportunities,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, while she was working as the lead pastry chef for SHBM catering, Craig Morris, director of the USDA-ARS Western Wheat Quality Lab, asked the team to bake some goods with some flour he was testing. From that interaction, Morris wanted to hire Murray. Summer research opportunities developed, which led to the USDA funding Murray\u2019s master\u2019s project in the  WSU School of Food Science. She tested and developed recipes for soft durum wheat flour that doesn\u2019t require energy-intensive milling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were able to transfer the research directly to the consumer in products served at WSU\u2019s Feast of the Arts<\/a> and at local restaurants including Lodgepole, Black Cypress, and Porch Light Pizza, where the flour is used in pizza dough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once she completed her master\u2019s degree, Murray planned to do her dissertation on wine pairings with Asian-fusion foods, but the pandemic shut down the opportunity. She worked with Robert Harrington, SHBM director, to create a new project exploring the role of agricultural tourism on food systems and consumption. As the CEO of her family\u2019s agricultural tourism company, Murray brings personal experience to her research in this growing industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI love helping WSU students match their passions with careers in hospitality whether it\u2019s event planning, cuisine, hotel management, tech, or something else,\u201d she says. \u201cFiguring out what\u2019s next as a land-grant university as education and industry evolve is an exciting challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s rare when a student who earns four degrees at the same institution stays on to become a faculty member there. But for alumna Jessica Murray<\/a>, a new scholarly assistant professor in the School of Hospitality Business Management, it made sense. She\u2019s spent the last 11 years at WSU working on her education and career, gaining culinary, research, and teaching experience as she completed multiple degrees in hospitality and food science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":[561],"featured_media":1138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_wsuwp_accessibility_report":null},"categories":[537,539,547,554],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/crimsonpineapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/crimsonpineapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/crimsonpineapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/crimsonpineapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/561"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/crimsonpineapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/crimsonpineapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1386,"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/crimsonpineapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions\/1386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/crimsonpineapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/crimsonpineapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/crimsonpineapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/crimsonpineapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/business.wsu.edu\/crimsonpineapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/author?post=771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}