Spotlight Online for Career Services Professionals, January 20, 2010
In the mid-2000s, the University of Houston’s C.T. Bauer College of Business was preparing to implement “Business Process, Procedure, and Protocol, ” a required, for-credit class that would prepare students to enter the work force.
“There wasn't a clear plan [for the course] other than the recognition that our students still needed more skills than they were already getting in the classroom in order to succeed in business,” says Jamie Belinne, assistant dean for career services in the Bauer College of Business’s Rockwell Career Center. “I begged the administration to let me take it over and the dean joked that I could take it over if I did so for free. The course [could be] such a tremendous help to the work of the career center that I was glad to do it.”
Belinne says the catalyst for the course was feedback from employers who said that, from an academic standpoint, Bauer College’s graduates were well-prepared for the workplace. However, they also pointed out that there were a lot of subtleties to operating effectively in the workplace at which Bauer students were not proficient.
“Many of these skills are ones that typically are taught at home,” she explains. “Because a good number of our students are first-generation, many of their parents weren’t able to offer them practical insight about the business world. So, in addition to communication skills, career exploration, and resume preparation, we teach them about things such as choices, consequences, and accountability.”
Belinne’s iteration of the course is “Connecting Bauer to Business,” a hybrid course delivered online; during weekly in-class sessions; and in “labs” that include a speaker series, career panels, and workshops conducted by industry leaders. To supplement the in-class discussions, students complete individual and team readings, projects, and presentations outside of the classroom to further explore and understand workplace and business issues. The goals of the course are to give students a clear sense of how they fit into the world of business, where they want to go with their careers, and how to get there.
Belinne is constantly updating and enhancing the course. For instance, the college developed a custom-designed video game to use as a teaching tool.
Perhaps the course’s biggest innovation came out of a lunch that Belinne had with an employer in November 2008.
“I said that I would like to incorporate mini-internship experiences into the course so students can put what we are teaching into practice,” she says. “We brainstormed about it and the employer was interested.”
The career center contacted other employers to gauge interest in their participation in the course.
“We asked them if they would experiment with us and promised that we would do all of the heavy lifting,” she says. “That first semester, we did a lot of surveying and we learned a lot. All of the employers said they felt their participation was worthwhile.”
Several of the topics that “Connecting Bauer to Business” students have worked on with their corporate project sponsors are:
- Using social media to change consumer behavior
- The future of global energy companies
- Effective internal communications
- “Going green” at the office
- Benchmarking internship programs
- Sequent credit methods for rating retail customers
- Strategy of employee accountability (being efficient in lean times)
- Comparing recruiting strategies of companies within an industry
Belinne says having “real-life” companies participate has been very beneficial to the students.
“We have an online virtual project that we use in the course, but we have found that students just check off boxes,” she explains. “With corporate projects, there is more accountability. When students participate in a corporate project, they are forced to deal with group dynamics, ambiguity, and managing communication, among other nuances. You can’t give a multiple-choice test on group dynamics and it’s difficult to teach in the classroom.”
However, only about one-third of the class’s students participate in the corporate projects; most students choose to complete the virtual group projects. While Belinne allows that many students just aren’t ready to work on a group corporate-sponsored project, there is a distinct difference in the students’ experiences with the class.
The course’s instructors asked corporate project group participants about the greatest learning experience of the project, and the results were, in order of number of student responses:
- Working in an ambiguous context with little guidance.
- Effective communication with diverse group members when face-to-face access was limited.
- Dealing with group dynamics.
- Keeping the group organized and moving forward without a faculty/professional leader.
- The content of the project itself.
“In addition, 59 percent of the students who participated in a corporate project said it was among the top-four most useful non-classroom experiences they had, whereas less than one-third of the students who participated in a virtual group project listed it in their top four,” Belinne says.
Belinne says employers benefit because they get free ideas from the student project groups. They also get exposure to students and are able to assess talent without committing to a traditional internship.
“Some of our students have parlayed their projects into internships with their corporate sponsors,” Belinne adds.
Student project groups must select an assignment and attend research and presentation workshops. They participate in a call with their corporate contacts and set up a meeting with them when the employer is on campus for the career fair. The group designates a point person to communicate questions with the corporate project sponsor. The point person also provides weekly progress reports to the corporate sponsor by e-mail or phone.
The groups upload their projects to a discussion board for final review by the instructor before presenting at the companies, which review the groups’ performances. Each project group member also completes a peer review of every other member of the team.
“None of the students has ever undergone a 360-degree review process before,” Belinne says. “It’s an interesting and very practical process for them.”
Response to the course has been so positive that it has grown to the point where Belinne has one co-instructor and 10 teaching assistants. The program also now has a contractor calling employers and managing the student projects.
Still, Belinne and her staff have faced challenges implementing and managing the class. Because it’s required of students accepted into the Bauer College, there are approximately 750 students—mostly sophomore and juniors—in the class each semester.
“Scalability is a big challenge,” Belinne says. “It’s difficult to make sure 750 students have an intensely personal experience.”
Belinne says, however, that the positive impact the course has had on Bauer graduates has been well worth the effort. For example, the career center measures student perceptions before and after completing the course. In September 2009, 42 percent of students felt their resume was strong or extremely strong. At the conclusion of the class in December, that number jumped to 73 percent. Similarly, at the start of the course, just 38 percent of students thought their resume included what the recruiter wanted to know about them. In December, 85 percent thought their resumes were effective, and 87 percent indicated that they feel better prepared for the business world upon completion of this course.
Belinne recommends schools interested in launching a similar course should not be deterred from doing so by what may seem to be an insurmountable amount of work.
“It’s really not as hard as it sounds,” she says. “The trick is not to force it. If a project is not good for students, don’t use it. If students are not ready for a project, don’t make them do it. It’s about managing expectations of all involved. Set realistic goals for students and make sure employers see this as a true partnership effort.”
While some may see proximity to employers as an impediment, Belinne doesn’t see it that way.
“We make heavy use of phone calls and electronic communication,” she says. “Not all of our corporate sponsors are local. Many corporations have global teams that operate remotely and group members may never meet face-to-face. It’s just another way that our students can learn by operating in ‘real-world’ conditions.”