Smiles Build Business
Penn State Behrend Hosts Eat’n Park CEO
Jim Broadhurst, chairman and chief executive officer of Eat’n Park Hospitality Group, will speak at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, on Tuesday, April 22, at 6 p.m. in the Samuel P. “Pat” Black III Conference Center of the college’s Research and Economic Development Center (REDC).
His presentation, titled “Creating Smiles While Building a Business,” is sponsored by the Sam and Irene Black School of Business. It is free and open to the public. Parking is available in the REDC parking garage located off Jordan Road.
Broadhurst, a Penn State alumnus and Titusville native, joined Eat’n Park as executive vice president and treasurer in 1973 following a seven-year career in commercial banking with PNC Bank. He was elected president of Eat’n Park Restaurants in 1975 and nine years later became chairman and CEO.
Eat’n Park Hospitality Group, which encompasses three integrated business divisions, provides diversified food services to more than 200 facilities throughout the mid-Atlantic region. The three divisions are Eat’n Park Restaurants, a full-service, family restaurant chain with locations in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia; Parkhurst Dining Services, a provider of contract dining services to colleges, universities, corporations and The Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh; and CURA Hospitality, Inc., a Lehigh Valley-based provider of dining services to senior living facilities, retirement communities and regional hospitals. The company’s newest venture, Six Penn Kitchen, is an upscale American bistro in the cultural district in downtown Pittsburgh.
Broadhurst was named Penn State’s 1994 Alumni Fellow by the College of Health and Human Development at the University Park campus. He received the University’s 1997 Distinguished Alumnus Award and was chosen to serve as the Conti Distinguished Professor at Penn State in 1999. Broadhurst earned his MBA from the University of Pittsburgh, where he also received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Katz Graduate School of Business.
He is actively involved in the western Pennsylvania community, serving on numerous boards and committees. He serves as chairman of the Penn State Board of Trustees and is a member on the Board of Directors of National City Corporation and the Allegheny Conference on Community Development.
The Sam and Irene Black School of Business at Penn State Behrend offers one associate, nine baccalaureate and two graduate degree programs, as well as two certificates in financial planning and SAP. The Black School of Business is accredited by AACSB International—The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, which is the leading accrediting agency for bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs in business administration and accounting. The Black School of Business and the School of Engineering are co-located in the college’s $30 million, 160,000-square-foot Research and Economic Development Center, making Penn State Behrend one of the first institutions of higher education in the country to house its business and engineering schools together in the same facility. For more information, visit behrend.psu.edu.