Forging business leaders: UNC rivets its students in experiential learning to put them at the top
Even with a great deal of knowledge, without leadership and entrepreneurial skills, business students will not be sufficiently prepared to become leaders in their chosen field.
UNC Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
Recently, James W. Dean Jr, PhD and dean of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC Kenan-Flagler), located on the Atlantic Seaboard in the southeastern United States, told "Education" the secrets of how the business school moulds future leaders and entrepreneurs.
UNC Kenan-Flagler is ranked among the top 20 MBA schools in several business publications, such as BusinessWeek, Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. Its alumni include Hugh McColl, founder of the Bank of America, and William B. Harrison Jr, former chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase.
Dean Dean was in Bangkok to attend the annual general meeting of the Kenan Institute Asia that was held recently at the Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel.
Thais at UNC
UNC Kenan-Flagler has student exchange programmes with Thai universities, including Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration of Chulalongkorn University.
"Since beginning the MBA programme, I have been impressed with the intellectual strengths of my classmates and the challenging programme. I am confident that UNC Kenan-Flagler has given me the tools needed to help me become a global leader," explained Ornpaka Vudhikosit, who is one of eight Thai students enrolled in the MBA programme at UNC Kenan-Flagler.
The other seven students from Thailand are Chananya Jaisin, Wannawit Manoleehagul, Peerapat Srivithayaraks, Jariya Suwannapeng, Sumeth Suwanpusaporn, Kittipatr Taweechotipatr and Suchitra Thongchantra.
Leadership fountain
"Our goal is to be the number one school for leadership development," said Mr Dean.
The dean suggested that while persons climb higher in their careers, it is nevertheless true that functional skills and professional leadership tools remain important. The university tries to incorporate in its curriculum a balance between functional skills, such as marketing and accounting, with the opportunity for students to grow as leaders.
"We want [students] to think that it is important to learn how to be leaders and they can create a mechanism that, throughout their career, they can use to develop themselves as leaders," explained the dean.
"One of the stereotypes of MBA students is that they think they know everything already, so we try to show them very quickly that they have much to learn as a leader," he added.
Leadership Immersion
The unique mechanism used at UNC Kenan-Flagler to produce leaders is the "Leadership Immersion" programme (LI), an optional course for MBA students, which is offered in the last eight weeks of their degree course.
"We have so much academic work for our students that it was previously difficult for them to develop their leadership skills. I asked our staff to design a space where students can hone their leadership skills without having to juggle competing programmes," said Mr Dean, explaining the origin of LI.
James W. Dean Jr
In LI's first year, 12 students signed up for the programme.
In LI, students get involved in intensive leadership training sessions, leadership challenges, outward bound exercises, trips to various parts of the US to meet and talk with top business persons, and many other activities.
In a leadership challenge last year, students worked with the Make-A-Wish Foundation and were able to raise about $30,000 (982,000 baht) to send children to Disney World.
"This year in Leadership Immersion, the challenges are going to be even more business-focused," said Dean Dean, adding that students might get a chance to work with major firms such as Red Hat, a major open-source software compiler; VF Corp, a leading clothing maker; and other top enterprises.
The dean plans to double the number of students in LI this year. He also plans to apply the LI model to the teaching and learning of sustainable practical business concepts, which is another forte of UNC Kenan-Flagler.
Building entrepreneurs
"We have a very strong belief in our university and in the business school regarding learning from experience," said, Mr Dean, elaborating on the core of the teaching and learning approach at UNC Kenan-Flagler.
Beyond a regular MBA class, one of the tools that encourage entrepreneurship among students is to have them apply theory to practice and gain experience from business challenges.
One of the competitions hosted by UNC is the internal Carolina Challenge. Teams of students, faculty members and staff at UNC who would like to start their own businesses create business plans and present them to a panel of judges. The winners are awarded approximately $50,000 (1.62 million baht) in cash.
"The experience of developing the business plans, presenting them to people for funding and then actually going out and starting the business, is one of the best ways by which people learn," Mr Dean explained.
Another competition hosted by UNC each year is the Venture Capital Investment Competition, a contest that involves over 50 business schools in the world. In this contest, students act as venture capitalists.
"Rather than play the role of someone trying to get funding for business, they act as someone who tries to decide whether to fund the business or not," said Mr Dean, adding that the competitions aim to inculcate in students skills in assessing the goals and feasibility of a prospective business. The winners get $10,000 (331,000 baht) in cash.
In the case of undergraduate students, with the help of the Ewing Marion Kauff-man Foundation, an organisation that supports work on entrepreneurships, non-business majors can take an "entrepreneurship minor".
"Students who are majoring in, for example, biology and chemistry, can also do a minor in entrepreneurship, so that if they think about starting a business in the future, they will have the necessary skills," explained the dean.
Experience from experts
Another prominent tool that UNC Kenan-Flagler uses to promote entrepreneurial and leadership skills for students is providing opportunities for students to learn from the experiences of top business leaders.
"Experience is a very good teacher. It takes a long time for anyone to gain the experience that is needed for success. If you learn from other people's experiences, you shorten the learning curve," opined Mr Dean.
Recent experience-sharers at UNC Kenan-Flagler include Vicente Fox Quesada, a former president of Mexico, and Ellen J. Kullman, DuPont's chair of the board and chief executive officer.
"We have people come in who have started their own businesses, whether successful or unsuccessful, and talk about the challenges they faced, so that students can learn from them," Mr Dean said. "The opportunity to learn from other people's mistakes instead of making our own is a great gift," he quipped.
For more information on UNC Kenan-Flagler, visit http://www.kenan-flagler.u
Writer: Purich Trivitayakhun
Source: http://www.bangkokpost.com
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