{"id":3186,"date":"2016-09-09T05:21:43","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T09:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/?p=3186"},"modified":"2021-09-27T05:38:31","modified_gmt":"2021-09-27T09:38:31","slug":"hotelier-donation-to-benefit-campus-lodging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/hotelier-donation-to-benefit-campus-lodging\/","title":{"rendered":"Hotelier donation to benefit campus lodging"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Friday, September 9, 2016<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hotelier donation to benefit campus lodging<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

PRINCESS ANNE, MD<\/strong>– (Sept. 9, 2016) – One of the partners of an award-winning Gaithersburg, Md. hotel has volunteered to help UMES modernize its lodging options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vira Safai, managing partner of a Comfort Inn just a 10-minute drive from the Universities at Shady Grove in neighboring Rockville, will transfer to UMES roughly enough hotel furnishings for 100 rooms this fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UMES officials have big plans for the gift worth an estimated $200,000, including renovation of all 24 hotel rooms on the top floor of the university’s Richard A. Henson Center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur intention wasn’t to get any publicity,\u201d Safai said. \u201cWe just wanted to support your program, which is doing a terrific job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Safai occasionally does guest speaking and delivers guest lectures to students enrolled in UMES’ hospitality and tourism management program at Shady Grove in Montgomery County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was at a Shady Grove function where Safai and Dr. Ernest Boger, chairman of the university’s hospitality and tourism management program, struck up a conversation that led to the donation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMr. Safai is very enthusiastic about what we do, and he offered to help,\u201d Boger said. \u201cThis couldn’t come at a better time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Choice Hotels, which licenses Comfort Inns like Safai’s, is doing a nationwide makeover of its 6,300 properties. The innkeeper faced a dilemma: how to dispose of gently used furniture only six-to-seven years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It turns out UMES is about to ramp up a major overhaul of the Henson center, which opened in 1993.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two senior UMES administrators – Stephen McDaniel, vice president for institutional advancement<\/a><\/strong> and Kimberly Dumpson, the university’s executive vice president – traveled to Gaithersburg recently on a fact-finding mission by spending a night at the hotel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McDaniel said \u201cin-kind\u201d gifts like donated furniture of the quality he found at the Comfort Inn are as important as monetary donations if they fill a genuine need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Comfort Inn donation \u201cmeans a long-awaited upgrade of our physical facility to current standards,\u201d Boger said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anticipated changes in how Henson is managed as an on-campus lodging facility will mean a more visible role for UMES students majoring in hospitality and tourism management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A part-time faculty member in the hospitality and business program at Montgomery College, Safai said his hotel has provided part-time jobs and internships for UMES Shady Grove students, so the donation was a natural next step in his support of the university.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou’ve got a great program. You have good students who are going to be the future leaders of our industry,\u201d said Safai, who is a member of the Maryland Tourism Development Board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The donation includes lamps, art work and furniture known as case goods – dressers, tables and desks – as well as some mattresses, upholstered seating and chairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UMES also plans to utilize some of the furniture not placed in Henson at other locations, including graduate housing and possibly apartments where residence-life staff and their families live year-round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boger calls Safai’s gesture an important \u201copportunity to reach out to the broad, deep, rich hospitality community in the Baltimore-Washington corridor and show these professionals what we are doing here at UMES.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tentatively, renovations to the Henson center are expected to be completed by mid-2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Want to learn more about how to support UMES with gifts like this? Visit the Division of Institutional Advancement<\/a><\/strong> online, or call (410) 651-6676.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday, September 9, 2016 Hotelier donation to benefit campus lodging PRINCESS ANNE, MD– (Sept. 9, 2016) – One of the partners of an award-winning Gaithersburg, Md. hotel has volunteered to help UMES modernize its lodging options. Vira Safai, managing partner of a Comfort Inn just a 10-minute drive from the Universities at Shady Grove in…Read more Hotelier donation to benefit campus lodging<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3187,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-3186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3186"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=3186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}