Courses Taught and Example Content

MGMT 439: Strategic Management (Capstone for Business Majors)

 

Taught Fall 2016 – Spring 2021 (two sections each semester)

 

This course is designed to give students a big picture view of the entire organization. Strategy is different from other courses that emphasize the development of expertise related to a specific aspect of the organization (e.g., finance, operations, marketing, accounting, etc.). Instead of focusing on a particular functional area, this course provides students with a process for problem-solving and decision-making and requires them to build on, to integrate, and to apply the knowledge gained from those disciplines in order to develop an integrative general management perspective. I teach this course in a very applied manner, meaning that we move beyond comprehension of strategic management concepts to a focus on the growth and development of students’ own strategic thinking, decision making, and skill sets. As such, in addition to some lecture on relevant content to insure understanding of key concepts, I draw on a range of learning tools such as in-class activities, guest speakers, team presentations, and illustrative case analyses to enable students to learn to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate strategic decisions.

 

  • Here a sample final individual capstone project. This project is a culmination of what students have learned about strategy throughout the course of the semester. Students are asked to address a current strategic issue within an organization of their choosing.
  • Live strategic case competition: In Fall of 2019, I began partnering with the Griggs Center to offer a case competition. In teams, students analyze a live strategic scenario for a local entrepreneur in Abilene and provide recommendations to the client; the winning team, as chosen by the client, receives a small cash prize.

 

Fall 2019 Team Competition: winning team with client, Big Country Title

 

  • Sample video presentation from Spring 2020 client competition (recorded virtually due to COVID 19):

 

 

 

MGMT 322: Business & Sustainability

 

Taught May 2017, January 2018, January 2019, January 2020

 

The goal of sustainable business is the simultaneous integration of economic prosperity in service of human development in ways that also create social and environmental value. This course considers global and local sustainability dimensions and introduces students to a wide range of sustainability topic areas. I teach this course in a very interactive manner. I draw on a range of learning tools, including, but not limited to, videos, class discussions, guest speakers, field trips, in-class exercises, and illustrative cases. My overall course goals are to familiarize students with the social, environmental, and financial challenges and opportunities faced by businesses today and to introduce them to a range of responses and innovations by and for business.

 

Field trip around ACU learning about on-campus sustainability efforts

 

MGMT 440: Social Enterprise Consulting

 

Taught Spring 2019, Spring 2020

 

This project-based course is designed to give students hands-on experience dealing with a real and substantial issue or challenge faced by a socially-minded organization. Student teams are assigned to a specific management project with a client organization under the supervision of faculty. Student teams define the issues, identify salient facts, and analyze the situation. In a series of classroom meetings, students work to understand the organizational and situational background of the specific project. Then, they travel overseas during spring break, gathering information through on-site visits and data-based research, after which they prepare and present a final report to the client organization. For both iterations of the course to date, Dr. Laura Phillips and I co-taught this course and our clients were female entrepreneurs in Central Costa Rica interested in expanding their offerings in the international experiential tourism market. Our hope is to continue to work with these clients in Costa Rica and to consider developing additional client partnerships in other locations. We are taking a hiatus from this class for the 2020-2021 academic year due to COVID-19, but we hope to revisit offering this class again in the future.

 

 

  • For the 2020 course, the deliverables focused on developing marketing content that the female entrepreneurs could utilize for digital marketing purposes. Below is a sample video:

 

 

Students capturing marketing content for Spring 2020 project

 

 

BUSA 419: International Business 

 

Taught Summer 2018 (Study Abroad in Oxford), Fall 2017 (residential), Summer 2020 (online)

 

(study abroad in Oxford description) We live in a complex, global world in which business is increasingly done internationally. BUSA 419 provides an intensive exposure to these global environments with a focus on the UK and Slovenia and an emphasis on sustainability. The beginning of the course provided foundational international business through an online format with a focus on reading and written responses. The second part of the course was based in Oxford, England and was enriched with guided learning experiences in and around Oxford, London and an excursion trip to Slovenia.

 

 

 

Excursion trip to Slovenia – view from Pyramida Hill in Maribor

 

Below is a sample individual reflection presentation from the summer 2020 online course (that was originally supposed to be taught in a study abroad format but moved online due to COVID-19):

 

 

 

 

MGMT 330: Management and Organizational Behavior

 

Taught Fall 2018, Fall 2019

 

This course explores how to foster and lead organizations in which people excel. A core component is the underlying assumption that there are many types of organizations and that organizational excellence depends, in part, on identifying the right fit between people and organizations. This course involves a variety of in-class activities, individual and group assignments, and guest speakers.

 

  • Here is a sample deliverable for the course. Here are the assignment instructions for this deliverable.
  • Guest speakers: since this is largely a sophomore class, I invite guest speakers to come and talk about what a day-in-the-life looks like within a particular type of organization (representative of different types of organizations and professional roles). Students get an opportunity to see how the management concepts we are discussing in class play out within actual organizations. Guest speakers give a short introduction and then students are expected to ask the guests questions for the remainder of the time, so it is designed to be highly interactive in nature. Below is a follow up email I received from David Swearingen, retired Vice President of Corporate Communications for Johnson & Johnson, who served as a guest speaker in the 2018 Fall class:

 

 

Let’s Eat! Exploring the Food Industry as Seen in Abilene (Honors Colloquium)

 

Taught Spring 2018, Fall 2020

 

This interactive and hands-on colloquium was organized around visiting a variety of Abilene restaurants in order to introduce students to the business management and operation of different types of restaurant venues including: a recent local start up (Vagabonds), an established local landmark with a national recognition (Perini’s Ranch), restaurant operations with multiple establishments (Sharon Riley’s Lytle Land & Cattle and Sharon’s Barbeque), a national franchise (Chick-fil-A) and a food truck (1881). In addition to experiencing a different restaurant each week, we spent time in the classroom debriefing the visit, including discussing and analyzing each restaurant from a variety of different business lenses (e.g., marketing, management, economics, sustainability) and talking about the venues in the context of the wider food industry. For the sixth and final night of the colloquium, we focused on comparing and contrasting the different restaurants visited to look for common themes, distinctions, etc.

 

Class night at Perini’s Ranch, including an interview with Tom Perini, Spring 2018

 

 

Griggs Center Study Abroad Trip to Southern Africa (postponed due to COVID-19)

 

Prior to the arrival of the global pandemic, I planned to teach MGMT 419: Global Entrepreneur at African Christian College located in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) in Summer 2020. This three-week program was to feature a unique, cross-cultural learning opportunity where our ACU students would be in the classroom with students from African Christian College while studying global entrepreneurship. As a part of this course, students were slated to work on a project to help ACC expand their macadamia nut business in the U.S. market. As well, we were planning to visit Kruger National Park (a highly regarded safari experience) and travel to Cape Town, South Africa. Here is an ACU Optimist article about the planned program.

Since this was to be COBA’s first study abroad experience to the continent of Africa, Dr. Katie Wick and I took a scouting trip in summer 2019. Below are a few sample pictures from the June 2019 trip to South Africa, Eswatini, and Rwanda. My hope is that we will be able to offer this unique and highly experiential study abroad program in the future.

 

 

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