Graduate-level MBA Professors Share Real World Experience

Aysegul Timur, Ph.D.
Professor / Program Chair of Business and Public Administration
Johnson School of Business
Hodges University, Naples

For academics aspiring to join the faculty at Hodges' Johnson School of Business, evidence of a track record in the real world is no option; it's a requirement.

"Our Faculty Credentials Guide man- dates that we hire faculty with both academic credentials and real-world experience," says Aysegul Timur. "If I see the resume of a person with only academic experience, no outside work, I do not hire. We must have real-world experience."

It's one reason Timur herself came to be at Hodges. An MBA graduate of the University of Istanbul, she knew firsthand the value of practical experience. During her tenure there, many faculty members served as consultants to private business and they always hired grad students to help. Timur was one of them.

"That experience opened up a completely new perspective for me and, as a result, I never studied purely from textbooks or journal articles. I always looked at what was happening in the real world."

Timur expects the same for MBA students at Hodges, and so she encourages faculty to take on consulting work and get students involved. "If we don't find ways to establish the relevance of what our students are learning in the classroom to the real world, this education means nothing. You're not improving skills, critical thinking or understanding of the big picture."

You might even be hurting the students' chances for employment. "The more we're involved in the real world," says Timur, "the more valuable we are in preparing our students to enter the workforce. So we go out and talk to employers. We find out what they need, and we make changes to align our curriculum with business expectations."

It's an approach that seems to be paying off. Says Timur, "One of my MBA students graduated in December and got a job at Hertz right away. This is working."

Craig McAllaster, Ed.D.
Professor of Management / Dean
Roy E. Crummer Graduate School of Business
Rollins College, Winter Park

In 20 years at Rollins College, Craig McAllaster has seen MBA students of divergent backgrounds and varying interests come and go, but he says they share one thing in common: "They want to hear from someone who talks about how to use what they're learning at school in the real world."

At Rollins, he says, "the majority of our faculty actually worked in industry before they became academics." The MBA curriculum at Rollins is a combination of life experience and case method instruction. Students identify a real problem at an actual company, work on ways to solve it and then present their findings to the class — often to that company's CEO.

"It's an approach I describe as ‘putting our students in harm's way' while they're still in the MBA program, when their career's not on the line," says McAllaster. "The idea is that when they're called to go up against a CEO or CFO — which we know they will be one day — they've at least done it once in a learning environment where it's not a career-limiting move."

Actual consulting work for real companies is another way MBA students benefit from on-the-job experience, and, at Rollins, there's plenty of it. The school aver- ages three to four consulting requests per semester from domestic and international firms. Recently, for example, five students and a faculty member traveled abroad to advise an Italian firm considering entry into the U.S. market.

"This is how our students get involved in real-world issues," says McAllaster. "What they learn today in the classroom, they may use tomorrow in their own offices."

Steven Perfect, Ph.D., CFA
Associate Professor of Finance
College of Business
Florida State University, Tallahassee

Steven Perfect had his life pretty well mapped out when he enrolled in grad school at the University of Texas at Austin. He planned to earn advanced degrees (MBA and Ph.D.) in finance, which would propel him to a university teaching position.

After earning his doctorate from Tex- as, Perfect landed a faculty post at Florida State University, where he would remain for seven years before taking a two-year sabbatical to work in the energy industry. The two years became 15 at energy firms in Texas and south Florida. In August 2012, Perfect rejoined the business faculty at FSU, this time bringing a trove of "war stories" along with all the textbook knowledge he'd gleaned in Austin. It's a combination he feels enriches the classroom experience for both himself and his students.

"I'm more effective personally be- cause I've had that real-world experience," he says. "It gives me the ability to bring up actual examples which illustrate a point or demonstrate a text- book theory. I've found too that when you have interesting stories to tell, the students want to participate in class; they're eager to ask questions."

The biggest lesson learned from his 15 years in the workplace? "How to present difficult concepts to management. That's a skill I didn't learn in business school. Now it's something I teach my students."

Perfect believes that just hearing his real-world stories is a confidence booster for students. "It calms them to think, ‘Well, if he lived through that, maybe I can too.' "

Perfect: Paying Attention to Market Signals

"I caution my students that if something looks too good to be true, it probably is, and I illustrate that principle with a story from my days on the trading floor of an energy company in Houston back when Enron was dominating the markets. Our traders would get a series of calls over a few days or weeks from someone at Enron wanting to buy or sell natural gas. This made the traders happy because part of their job was trading natural gas, but it didn't make sense to me. I was just getting to know the industry then, and I figured if a company is buying natural gas, it's because they need it. But if they need it, why would they sell it? I finally figured out what was going on. There was a slight error in the way our company was pricing natural gas for the long-term. Enron had figured out the error and was using it to essentially borrow money for free by buying and selling natural gas in deals that seemed too good to be true. We fixed the error and, within days, Enron quit calling."

Tags: Education