Business college partnerships with advisory boards are growing
Together, they are cultivating the College of Business Administration’s future and preparing students for theirs
By Erik Gunn
As an undergraduate in the College of Business Administration, John Mau changed majors “two or three times” before he settled on what he wanted to do. But Mau, a student-athlete on the soccer team, found his niche when an athletics academic adviser steered him toward the Center for Supply Chain Management. Then the director, Dr. Doug Fisher, explained how the program was being upgraded, and Mau’s enthusiasm really took off.
Key to the upgrade was the center’s business advisory board. The cadre of business leaders active in supply chain management was working closely with Fisher and the center’s faculty to revamp course offerings, enhance its hands-on methodology, and forge deeper ties with the profession across a range of industries.
The board’s involvement was “a game-changer,” says Mau, Bus Ad ’14, Grad ’16, who works for Rockwell Automation and is now himself a member of the center’s advisory board. “The group was not afraid to tackle the tough stuff by revamping curriculum, to challenge the status quo in academia and provide students opportunities to get insights into the real world.”
Full-time and adjunct faculty may be the core of Marquette’s business college. But the role of advisory boards like the one for supply chain management is expanding as they become critical contributors to an increasing number of the college’s specialized business programs. From advising on course offerings and giving feedback about what well-equipped graduates need to know about fundraising, internships for students and jobs for new graduates, “They’re a conduit through which we make our connections externally,” says acting Keyes Dean Joseph Daniels. “They’re invaluable partners in the success of the college overall.”
A ROLE IN FACULTY RECRUITMENT
The concept was slow to develop initially. But in recent years, it’s become second nature. Today, Daniels says, “When we start a new program, like our Sales program, we start an advisory board on day one.”
The college’s oldest advisory board appears to be in the Accounting Department, where Dr. Kevin Rich, chair and associate professor, says records trace the department’s advisory team to 1986.
The accounting board plays a key role in fostering networking opportunities, responds when called upon to assist with faculty recruiting, and sponsors an annual on-campus event to help recruit students to become accounting majors. More recently, the board has taken an active role in strategic planning and has expanded the annual recruiting session to include quick presentations covering the different career paths in accounting, says Rich.
The board also plays a key role in recruiting new faculty to the Accounting Department. “In the last year alone, I’ve had a chance to meet four accounting faculty candidates over dinner,” says advisory board member Daniel Kramer, Bus Ad ’03, assurance office managing partner for BDO’s Wisconsin practice. “Our role on the board has evolved from evaluator to seller. Accounting professors are in extreme demand. … I enjoy sharing with candidates the amazing community and culture Marquette has built and the support it receives.”
RAISING PROGRAM PROFILES
At the other end of the timeline, one of the newest advisory boards serves one of the college’s newest programs. Dr. Kent Belasco, director of the Commercial Banking program and assistant professor of practice of finance, says the need for such a group was readily apparent from his program’s launch in 2015.
“The group was not afraid to tackle the tough stuff in revamping curriculum, to challenge the status quo in academia and provide students opportunities to get insights into the real world.” — John Mau, Bus Ad ’14, Grad ’16
“As I was developing courses, I needed a sounding board,” he says. “Commercial banking is a very dynamic industry. It has been changing over the past several years.” Regulations tightened up following the 2008 economic crisis; more recently, they’re loosening again under the current administration. Either way, the profession has to keep up.
Evolving technology, from smartphone apps for remote banking to complex software systems taking over more transactional tasks, further roils the industry. Belasco turns to the advisory board members for help — whether they’re people like John Byrne, Arts ’78, an expert in financial crime and money laundering, or bank CEOs such as Bill Lynch, Arts ’74, with Wintrust Bank, or Douglas Gordon, Grad ’81, with Waterstone Bank.
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“I’ll bring them into the classroom and have them do presentations,” Belasco says. “I’ll share the curriculum with them and make sure we’re focusing on the right topics.”
They also raise the program’s profile. Byrne, vice chairman of AML RightSource, which advises financial institutions on how to comply with regulations to curb money laundering and related violations, has done presentations on campus and in Washington, D.C., on combating financial crime. Students profit from the expertise that board members are able to bring to their education.
“When our students enter the job market, I want them to be ahead of the ball game in terms of anybody else,” Belasco says.
INFLUENCING COURSE WORK
The advisory board for the Center for Real Estate is divided into focused committees: alumni, student engagement, industry engagement, and marketing and communication. “Those committees start to dig a little deeper into helping us with some of the big things that we’re dealing with in each of those areas,” says center director Andy Hunt, Bus Ad ’08, Grad ’13.
Individually, though, committee members do much more than show up for twice-yearly meetings or committee conference calls. “They’re setting up site tours for our students. They are helping to hire our students or making connections with other companies that sponsor our events and giving a lot of great feedback about what kind of skills they’re looking for,” says Hunt. By following their lead and refining the curriculum accordingly, “We make sure what we’re teaching is cutting edge, so that it is exactly what the industry is looking for in our graduates.”
One example: About three years ago, the Center for Real Estate board evaluated the curriculum and suggested that the program could effectively scale back its teaching on real estate valuation. Instead, the advisers urged more in-depth instruction on financial modeling based on projected rental income, projected expenses and so on.
Hiring and mentoring are the board’s most important jobs, in Hunt’s view. Combined with keeping the faculty on top of the most critical skills, offering pathways for students to graduate into a job in the field “is truly life changing,” says Hunt. “It just further sets them ahead.”
For real estate board member Michelle Panovich, executive vice president at Mid-America Asset Management Inc. in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois, being able to work with students began as a way “to give back” in return for her own business success. But there’s also been a more personal business benefit. “We’re always seeking out talent to hire,” she says. Working with students to help them grow sets the stage “so they can become a successful part of the business.”
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING LEADS TO JOBS
As with other programs, the Center for Supply Chain Management also looks to its advisory board for guidance on curriculum design. The principal aim, says Fisher, was to build applied or experiential learning deeply into the program. Kohler Co., for example, worked with the center to design an applied procurement course.
The relationship demonstrates a mutual desire for the academic program and the businesses connected with it to stay connected with each other, says Kohler’s James Merwin, Bus Ad ’00, an advisory board member: “All of us involved want to have a strong program right in our backyard.”
The course and a growing number of others in the program are designed around actual projects presented by participating companies. Students are paid for their participation. “We try to make sure the company approaches it as a job,” Fisher says. “It’s a very disciplined, rigorous approach.” So far, participating companies have documented savings of more than $10 million, he adds. “There’s a real-world benefit.”
The experiential learning approach offers academic credit, but it carries far greater responsibility and rewards than the traditional credit-only internship. “One of the big differences is that students work much more under the watchful eye of somebody on our staff, a faculty member or an adjunct helping them through this,” says Bill Lee, successor to the recently retired Fisher at the Center for Supply Chain Management. “The students learn the content in the classroom and immediately get the opportunity to apply it.”
It’s also no accident that Marquette’s Jesuit values are threaded through the relationships between the college and their board advisers. “We have a really powerful umbrella that we operate under,” says Lee. In the corporate world, “Values and ethics are becoming more in demand. That gives us a unique advantage over many schools.”
Daniels agrees. “We are Marquette. We don’t forget ethics,” he says. “When I’m networking with people on our advisory boards, you find out the issues they have in their workplace, and we bring those issues back to the classroom to make sure that our students, when they go out into the workplace, are making the right choices.”
For Daniels, experience like that points to an increasingly important future for business advisers across the college.
“Experiential learning is very, very important to us,” he says. “And it’s difficult, if not impossible, to do that without partnering with our advisory boards. They’re the ones who are going to help us pull that off.
“I see that expanding,” Daniels adds, “because we’re expanding.”
