Execs share expertise in classrooms

Eric Shinault has plenty to keep him busy during the day as manager of treasury operations for City Utilities.

It's a job that could leave others too drained to consider a second gig, but Shinault gets excited about teaching corporate finance classes at Webster University's Springfield campus.

"It's almost like a night out ... it's just fun," Shinault said. "Some nights I come home so energized from the evening, it takes me a couple of hours to wind down."

That energy, area educators said, is just one of the benefits of having executives in university classrooms, either as adjunct faculty who typically are paid, or guest lecturers, who may share their expertise on a paid or volunteer basis, depending on the speaker and the school.

Danny Arnold, dean of the College of Business Administration at Missouri State University, said high-level executive guest speakers regularly make appearances in the college's classrooms.

On the job since March, Arnold said he's seen benefits for students, faculty and guest speakers alike.

For the executive, it's an opportunity to coach or mentor students and fill them in on what life is going to be like in the real world.

"The overwhelming majority just get a real kick out of doing this because ... they understand how much more they have learned (since graduation) and what we did not have the opportunity to teach the students," Arnold said.

Business leaders can talk to students not only about how to apply theory in practice, but also about the other elements of a successful career, including the importance of continuing to learn and performing well from the outset, Arnold said.

At Webster, about 90 percent of the instructors are executive-level managers, said Laura Ward, senior director of the college's Springfield campus.

The minimum requirement for adjunct faculty is a master's degree and at least seven years of experience in the field. At the Springfield campus, the average is 12 years of experience with some adjunct faculty having as much as 30 years, she said.

Giving students access to that kind of real-world outlook is crucial to helping students understand the theories found in textbooks.

"Having someone who works in that field explain how they use that on the job every day ... helps the student relate in their mind how that would work in their workplace," Ward said. "Oftentimes, people come back the next week and say, 'I had class Tuesday night and on Wednesday I talked to my boss and we tried this and this,'" she said.

CU's Shinault said it's important for him to remain involved in the classroom because it keeps him on his toes professionally.

"It keeps you current with your reading and what's going on in the marketplace - and I just enjoy the interaction," he said.

Ward said Webster's programs are a good fit for executives who want to have roles in the classroom.

"The good thing about our program is it's an accelerated program. It's one night a week for four hours," Ward said. "I think that's attractive to someone who is in a higher-level position so they can teach and stay connected."

At MSU, Arnold is working to develop a program to formalize executives' roles in COBA. It would create a teaching partnership between a faculty member and a business leader who would essentially serve together as a teaching tag team. It would require regularly scheduled appearances by the executives, Arnold said.

He's also working to expand the role of the school's advisory board. In recent months, he said he's approached several executives who have acted as guest speakers to serve on the board.

"The way I talk to a potential board member is, 'Look, we're a college of business administration and we cannot stay in an ivory tower and we need ... businesspeople who are willing to talk with us and share their advice on various issues," Arnold said. "They've never turned me down."

Rather than holding agenda-driven meetings, Arnold said he's established work missions for the group. The first meeting focused on what graduating students need to know and what do they need to be able to do, Arnold said. The second was to help establish a mission, vision and a strategic plan for the college.

"We try to pick a topic like that that is relevant to us that they can get interested in," he said.

He points out that faculty benefit from guest lecturers from the business world, because although many of MSU's faculty members do have real-world experience, it may be from several years in the past. Regardless of the topics they teach, when faculty members sit in on guest executives' lectures, they hear fresh tales from the front they can incorporate into classes later.

"Even statistics," Arnold said. "You get the right (speaker), he can say this is how we use statistics, this is how statistics or quantitative analysis kept us from going astray."[[In-content Ad]]