COURSES
Management 211: Organizational Behavior (OB) and Team Skills [Syllabus]

This sophomore-level course is a psychology-of-business course, which includes the standard micro-OB topics, such as motivation, personality, values, and ability.  The prime emphasis is learning team skills, such as communication, group decision-making, group dynamics, and managing interpersonal conflict in groups. 

Lecture is used sparingly, to provide a basic foundation for understanding each theory.  Role-plays, short cases, in-class experiments, small group discussion and problem solving, along with video examples, are the primary teaching methods.  Application of OB theory to the student’s work and personal experiences is frequent. 

Course Preview: The major assignment for this course is a fourteen-week team project. Each team has five students, and their assignment is to review all of the concepts and theories presented in the textbook and in class and then decide whether these concepts should be included in their end-of-semester paper.  For example, take the concept of telecommuting -- teams were required to address this question -- How are the OB concepts and theories impacted by the use of telecommuting?  Students revisit previously discussed OB concepts, decide on their relevance to telecommuting, and present logical arguments supporting their connection, or lack of connection to telecommuting.  By semester's end, the goal is for students to see how changes in the work context (i.e., a telecommuting work setting) affect the organizational-behavior field.

Sixty percent of the test questions in this course are short answer and essays.  Forty percent are multiple choice questions.  I am told that my testing format is challenging to the typical college sophomore.

Management 339: Rewarding and Maintaining Human Resources [Syllabus]

Two-thirds of this course focuses on compensation topics (i.e., traditional base pay, skill-based pay, financial incentives, benefits, etc.).  The other third looks at performance management, voluntary and involuntary termination, downsizing, problem employees, harassment, arbitration and grievance, workplace safety, health, and wellness. 

Short cases, leaderless group discussion, mock legal trials, guest presenters, and simulations are frequently used in this course. Students are encouraged to develop their communication skills by presenting sound, logical arguments that are persuasive in the informal leaderless group discussions, case discussions, and mock trials.

Sixty percent of the test questions in this course are short answer, short cases, and essays.  Forty percent are multiple choice questions.  There are also individual applied projects (no teamwork).  One project, for example, requires that the student develop a performance-management process and a financial-incentive system for a particular job in a specific organization.    

Graduate Management 626: Communication in Teams [Syllabus]

This MBA elective course attempts to improve the graduate student’s communication skills.  Specifically, group facilitation skills and communication skills in small group discussion are the focus in this course.  These communication skills are developed while students learn a number of organizational-behavior (OB) and human resources management (HRM) concepts.  Each student is responsible for facilitating a small group’s discussion and resolution of a case.

Leaderless group discussions are incorporated in the last half of the course.  Students are presented an OB or HRM case; they are given five minutes of individual reflection time to prepare their strategy and their best solution.  Then, the group has twenty minutes to arrive at a workable solution.  Each LGD problem comes from an empirical study published in a high ranking peer-review journal.  Hence, the LGD has a correct solution that is presented to the students after their small-group discussion.  Leaders emerge in these group discussions.  Supportive behavior is one goal of these exercises.  Rational persuasiveness and critical/creative thinking is another important student objective.  Arriving at a workable solution to each case problem is the small group’s responsibility; sound logical argumentation and debate on the part of students is the key to discovering these workable solutions. 

ADVISING

I'm a “hands on” advisor, meaning that advising accuracy is most important and the advisee’s career thinking and choices are continually discussed in the advising sessions.  I promote the benefits of internships and encourage students to participate in Fisher’s Career-Center activities.  Each semester, I allow thirty minutes for each advisee so that we can discern whether two majors, two concentrations, a major and a minor, etc., make sense considering one’s career leanings.  I know the Business Management curriculum well.  I expect the advisee to know the relevant curricula (both major and minor) as well.  Breadth and depth of coursework are considered each and every time that I meet with an advisee.  The hope is to maximize the advisee’s learning.