|
 |
Professionals
Who Teach
|
Adjunct
professors are learning as much as their students.
By William Poe
Business professionals from all walks of life are heading back to
the classroom, not as students, but rather as teachers. And they
say they are learning as much as their students.
“Most of my students are professionals themselves, and I learn from
them,” says S. Lee Keathley, senior executive assistant to the chief
financial officer of Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc., and who teaches
business as an adjunct professor at Webster University. “Students
represent a variety of businesses and offer great exposure to a
diverse cross section of companies. A lot of that experience comes
together in the classroom, and that is a great opportunity for everyone.”
“It’s the old adage about what the teacher learns from the class,
and I’m here to tell you it’s really true,” says Mark Kinzie, an
attorney with Stinson, Mag & Fizell, P.C. in downtown St. Louis
and an adjunct professor in product liability law. Kinzie is now
publishing a textbook that is an outgrowth of his teaching duties.
Robert J. Calcaterra, an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at
the Olin School of Business at Washington University, has even incorporated
students’ ideas into his earlier technology incubator businesses.
Mostly, though, professionals who are back in the classroom are
there because they believe students can benefit from the real world
experience.
Kathleen Glenn Doyle, a licensed clinical social worker with a business
background and her own private practice, teaches graduate students
in the Saint Louis University School of Social Service. She says
her students “can use business background in conjunction with the
social worker background. It gives them some very real experience.”
Anheuser-Busch’s Keathley says he sees teaching “as an opportunity
to put business acumen and experience into the academic curriculum
and to put real world business experience into the academic environment.
Some real world experience is very helpful to the students.”
Keathley, who teaches MBA candidates a course in operations and
production management, believes today’s business world changes so
rapidly that students benefit more “from teachers who are current,
not learning from someone who was in business 20 years ago. The
business world has changed a lot in the last 20 years.”
Sandra M. Moore, president of Urban Strategies for developer McCormack,
Baron & Associates, actually designed the course she is teaching
for Washington University’s George Warren Brown School of Social
Work. She says she did so at the request of the university, which
recognized the value of her unique professional background. Prior
to launching her community development work with Urban Strategies,
Moore served as vice president for St. Louis 2004, head of the Missouri
Family Investment Trust, director of the Missouri Department of
Labor and Industrial Relations in the cabinet of the late Gov. Mel
Carnahan.
“The school wanted me to share the lessons I’d learned from being
at the cabinet level of public policy development, then moving into
grassroots community development activities at 2004 and McCormack,
Baron,” Moore says.
Her course is targeted towards masters of social work candidates.
Recently retired vice chairman of Firstar Bank–St. Louis, W. Randolph
Adams now teaches an MBA course in strategy consulting at the John
Cook School of Business at Saint Louis University, as he continues
his active civic leadership role as chair of the RCGA's Surface
Transportation Committee and Regional Fellow at the RCGA.
Prior to his banking career, Cincinnati-native Adams served as a
management consultant with the international management consulting
firm of Cresap, McCormick and Paget in Chicago.
Of his new adjunct professorship, Adams says, “I think it’s a lot
of fun. The students ask tough questions, and they are energetic
and curious and fun to be around. And I’ve got real experience that
adds value to of the theory they’ve already learned.”
For Calcaterra, instructing students in entrepreneurship comes naturally.
As president and CEO of Nidus Center for Scientific Enterprise,
Calcaterra brings a decade of experience in incubator management
to the classroom. In addition to Nidus Center, an incubator in the
life sciences, Calcaterra established two other successful technology
incubators, the Arizona Technology Incubator in 1992 and the Boulder
Technology Incubator in 1989, where he provided technical and business
support to technology-based entrepreneurial companies. A Ph.D. chemical
engineer, Calcaterra also serves on the boards of Technology Gateway
Alliance, Missouri Venture Forum, InvestMidwest and on the advisory
board of the National Business Incubation Association.
Better yet, Calcaterra has been teaching part time for years. Before
joining the adjunct professor staff at Washington University, Calcaterra
served as an adjunct professor at Arizona State University and the
University of Colorado. At each university, Calcaterra has brought
his wealth of entrepreneurship experience to the classroom.
“Students really like the course, because it is practical,” Calcaterra
says. “Entrepreneurship is an apprentice-type of program, and my
satisfaction is that they feel they learned something from the course.
It’s exciting to teach them.”
Attorney Kinzie, who teaches at Webster University, is a product
liability attorney by day and teaches product liability by night.
“It’s the perfect combination of practicing law during the day and
bringing some real world experience to the classroom at night where
students can apply what they learn.”
Moreover, Kinzie, who represents national product manufacturers,
found no textbooks that adequately provided students with information
on “black letter product liability principles” along with the more
common case law approach.
“When I began teaching four years, ago, the legal studies director,
Tena Hart, and I searched and searched for a text book,” Kinzie
recalls. “We couldn’t find what we were looking for, so we wrote
one.” The result is “Product Liability Litigation,” which is to
be published later this year and which has been tested and refined
in the classroom at Webster, Kinzie says.
“I never thought I’d write a text book,” Kinzie says. “I’m very
grateful that Webster University let me grow in this way.”
It seems these university adjunct professors are learning at least
as much as their students.
William V. Poe is principal of Poe Communications, a St. Louis
advertising and marketing communications firm. |
|
|
|
|
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
|
