As a history major at a small liberal arts college, I never learned about corporate strategy or human resources management, but my experience made me realize that the most important role of a college education is to teach students the ability to learn new skills and understand new concepts. After graduation, these students’ roles, jobs, and even careers will likely change multiple times in the coming decade, and I see part of my job as helping them prepare for their future. My philosophy is that there are four steps to help students move towards this goal – motivation, creativity, respect, and a broad perspective.

The first element is to challenge them, to get them to take the ideas we’re discussing seriously. The brightest students are often the most easily bored by goals that are set too low, and getting those students to engage later is difficult. Therefore, I intentionally set my expectations high – hopefully high enough to provide a challenge for all students, but achievable enough that no one gets discouraged. I don’t believe that teaching to either the highest or the lowest level in the classroom is the right way to motivate students, so I pay attention to how quickly students are progressing within the class and push each student’s thinking with follow up questions designed to present a real hurdle for them. While some students will progress quickly and require bigger challenges, others will start off slowly but can still use the challenges as motivation and the performance of the other students as benchmarks for their goals. This provides every student a reachable goal, which helps increase motivation and interest.

Of course, too much of anything (especially seriousness) is a bad thing. The real goal is to push students to be creative and test out new ideas that no one in the room (including me) has ever thought of. And the best way to do that is to encourage the expression of any idea that a student might think is a relevant point, even if I don’t quite see where they are going initially. The undergraduate environment is a very safe place in which to try and fail, and I want to make sure my students take every advantage of this opportunity. So I actively push students to think beyond the obvious, to test new ideas, and not to be afraid of falling short – because they have to try many times in order to come up with great ideas.

This requires an environment where students are willing to try and fail, one where they understand and expect that their ideas will be respected. The first step here is to show the utmost respect for them and their ideas (even while challenging their thinking), and show them that, however high my final expectations are, I am interested in hearing what they have to say. The most important part of respect, however, is for students to listen to each other’s ideas. The environment isn’t really “safe” if I show respect but their own colleagues don’t, so I ask students to really listen to each other’s ideas (both written and verbal) and understand what the good and the “needs work” elements are of those ideas. The trick is to push students towards bigger and better ideas, while still showing respect for their progress along the way. And, of course, to reign in people who are taking up “air time” for the sake of talking – so I encourage students to think carefully and frame their point before they raise it in class as a means of helping them self-police whether their idea is bringing something new and relevant to the discussion.

Finally, I hope my students will be able to see the big picture and how all of the pieces fit together. One thing that excites me about the field of management is that it is the most integrative business discipline, and as such requires the most holistic thinking and perspective. Therefore, I’m always pushing students to think about the specific implications of their ideas and suggestions, so they can think about how any changes they are recommending in one area will reverberate throughout the bigger picture. By not just understanding an individual element in depth, but also understanding how that element relates to and interacts with the other elements in the system, students can gain the perspective that allows them to see how various (seemingly unconnected pieces) of a larger puzzle fit together.

While I believe that it is terribly important to ensure that students leave their college experience with the right set of “tools” for their initial chosen careers, it is just as important that they learn how to be motivated and interested, to be creative and adaptive, to show respect for various ideas, and to see the big picture – in short, that they learn how to learn.