The culinary arts program at Southern Maine Community College has received accreditation from the American Culinary Federation, a distinction that should draw more students to the school and help its graduates compete for jobs in kitchens around the country.

SMCC’s culinary school is the first in Maine to be accredited by the federation, which has 50,000 members nationwide.

Chef Wilfred Beriau, a professor of culinary arts at SMCC, said the accreditation will provide something “almost like licensing” for graduates of the program.

“Before you can just say that you’re an executive chef or a master chef or a chef de cuisine, you have got to have certain professional skills,” Beriau said. “You’ve got to be able to prove that, in fact, you can do food cost and control analysis, that you can handle foods sanitation-wise, that you can actually supervise a crew in the kitchen, that you can actually perform the duties of a certified executive chef.”

SMCC began the accreditation process about three years ago with a “self-study” that described in detail the school’s culinary course work and the qualifications of its faculty.

“It’s a book almost 3 inches thick,” Beriau said. “We had to submit all our own qualifications, and did we actually have people that were qualified to teach? Did they have the experience they said they did? We had to analyze all our own courses, inch by inch, from the day each course starts until it ends, with course objectives, outcomes.”

In September, a three-member team from the American Culinary Federation visited the SMCC campus in South Portland. Then, the federation’s Accrediting Commission reviewed the team’s report and the self-study before granting a three-year accreditation to the school.

Torrey Pollard, a second-year student in the culinary arts program and a cook at El Rayo, a restaurant in Portland, said the school’s accreditation will save students time and money.

To get similar credentials, a graduate of a program without accreditation would have to get an independent certification.

“To receive the certification that we now receive when we graduate would cost $300 or $400 at an outside test site, and we’d have to set it up in a kitchen that we don’t know,” said Pollard, 24. “So to have it be built in, it’s unbelievable. It’s like a package deal. And to employers, it looks great to have come from an accredited school.”

Staff Writer Meredith Goad can be contacted at 791-6332 or at:

mgoad@pressherald.com