Istanbul Gelişim University (İGÜ), Faculty of Fine Arts (FFA), Gastronomy and Culinary Arts Department, organized the Career Counseling Event with the support of the Career Center in the 2024-2025 Fall Semester, on Tuesday, November 26 at 14:00 under the consultancy of Career Counselor Res. Asst. Ayşe Seray Engin.
As the Gastronomy and Culinary Arts Department, Res. Asst. Ayşe Seray Engin has been appointed as the Department Career Counselor for the 2024-2025 Academic Year. In this context, a practical workshop was organized with Food Stylist Simay Yılmaz, one of the former graduates of our department. Since the event was held in the student area on the 16th floor, it was open to all students.
Participant Simay Yılmaz; made a short informative presentation about her education and career life at the beginning of the event. In the presentation, she talked about the programs she attended while she was a student at Istanbul Gelişim University (Erasmus, Erasmus+, Accreditation Committee, GastroArt student club founding member) and talked about the experiences the university brought to her life.
Then, in the same presentation, she explained her career journey and development process. She talked about the trainings she received and the experiences she gained on her way to food styling. She answered questions such as the companies she worked with, the experiences she gained there, what students can do in this direction and how they can improve themselves, and gave advice to our students. After the presentation and Q&A, a short break was given and the second part of the event was started.
The second part of the event was carried out as an applied workshop. In this part, participant Simay Yılmaz worked with 1 assistant student from both the GCA department and 2 assistant students from the RTC department. In the application part, questions such as “How is a meal designed? What is the effect of the artistic perspective in the design process? How can we make a meal aesthetic?” were explained with examples. The workshop was supported with examples specific to food design and styling. The participant set up 2 different sets with the materials he/she provided and their short shooting examples were demonstrated practically. Salad and bowl were prepared on the sets and these two products were photographed. RTC students did the photography throughout the event and this experience was also provided to GCA students. Interactive support was also received from students for different setups on the sets and students who wanted to did both the set setup and the photography.
Students who learned about food styling, a new field of work in gastronomy, and practiced it had the opportunity to expand their networks by contacting the participant at the end of the event and obtaining a contact number to show the photos they took and ask questions. Thus, the career counseling event achieved its purpose.
We would like to thank Simay Yılmaz who participated in the event and our students who showed interest.
