Aspen Undergraduate Business Education Consortium

Aspen Undergraduate Business Education Consortium

July 29, 2014
The Aspen Institute travels to Richmond

From June 8th to 10th the Robins School of Business hosted the Aspen Undergraduate Business Education Consortium welcoming faculty and administrators from 39 colleges and universities across the world to a forum dedicated to integrating the liberal arts and business education.  

Claire Preisser, senior program manager of the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program, explained, “The Consortium is sparked by the enormous popularity of business as an undergraduate major coupled with our belief that our forthcoming business leaders are critical to shaping our future. We’ve created a space where faculty and administrators from a diverse set of schools can come together to share innovative courses, curricular ideas and campus cultures.”

Nancy Bagranoff, dean of the Robins School, shared, “We were delighted to host this year’s Convening. The University of Richmond is uniquely a highly ranked liberal arts university with a large, accredited and acclaimed business school; we believe passionately in the marriage of the liberal arts with business. This year’s Convening included many great examples from some of the world’s best schools of ways these linkages are being made so that students can have the benefit of professional education integrated with a liberal arts foundation and appreciation." 

Each school takes on a pilot project that furthers the integration of liberal arts and business at their campus. Rachel Reiser, assistant dean of the undergraduate program at Boston University School of Management (SMG), described their project. "We work to infuse ethics themes throughout the curriculum. The first course undergraduate students take is Business, Society and Ethics; our goal is to make sure this class is not the only time students encounter these themes, but rather to make ethics an interwoven part of their studies." 

Sandra Deacon Carr, master lecturer in organizational behavior at SMG, led a session with Washington & Lee University faculty members. "We shared our experiences incorporating performing arts into large organizational behavior courses and discussed the importance of exposing business students to art, emphasizing how we use performances as case examples of teamwork and leadership in action while showing students how teams can also be adaptive and innovative."

University of Richmond faculty led several sessions. Sandra Peart, dean of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, shared the philosophy behind her leadership and economic policy course. "Since the economic challenges in 2008 students are increasingly interested in developing a historical perspective on policy. They want to understand their future in a changed economy, so I use the Keynes-Hayek debate about the business cycle to help students develop a framework to talk about current events. My goal with the session was to provide examples that draw students into historically oriented material with the aim of sharing approaches with other faculty members.”

Joe Ben Hoyle, associate professor of accounting, led a class demonstration with Libby Gruner, associate professor of English, of their paired government and nonprofit accounting and Victorian literature courses. Hoyle began the session as if he were lecturing to a room of students. Over the course of the session he and Gruner showed faculty members the methods they use to pair accounting and literature lessons with the goal of establishing an enhanced framework that combines the topics, drawing students that gravitate toward accounting into a literary mindset and vice versa. 

Phyllis Brown, associate provost for undergraduate studies at Santa Clara University, shared she departs from each Convening with actionable ideas. "A discussion on the importance of storytelling gave me new insight into ways we can communicate the value of some of our requirements to students more effectively. Additionally, informed discussions focusing on translating students' classroom lessons into real world opportunities allowed for considering new approaches toward assisting students in their internship and job searches."

Cynthia Clark, director of Bentley University's Alliance for Ethics and Social Responsibility, hopes the Aspen Institute continues "to engage with AACSB and testing services to ensure what is being taught and tested incorporates integrative thinking." 

She concluded, "I took away concrete ideas for my own classroom and for additional fused courses we can implement. The well-planned, engaging atmosphere at University of Richmond was perfect for openly sharing our trials and successes with our great new colleagues."

Photo: Professors Libby Gruner and Joe Ben Hoyle lead "Victorian Literature for Accounting Students" class demonstration. (Credit: The Aspen Institute Business and Society Program)