Business Not as Usual
By Holly Miller
At 8 p.m., Dr. Michael Wiese strides into Decker 360 and announces to the gathering of 17 men and 12 women that “We’re taking over!” A round of high-fives follows, with students mustering the enthusiasm to stand, stretch, and greet their prof as he works the room from a narrow path between the desks. Everyone is on a first-name basis here, and the atmosphere is relaxed. Students burrow into their standard-issue black canvas briefcases — perks for MBA enrollees — and trade one textbook for another. A young man takes advantage of the break and slips out the back door, props his Dell laptop on the windowsill and quickly scrolls through the day’s e-mails. Another student phones home to check on the kids.
The class has been in session for two hours already; it began with financial management from 6 to 8 p.m. with Don Engel, and now shifts to marketing from 8 to 10 p.m. with Mike Wiese. Mondays often translate into 14-hour days for faculty members and the “working professionals” at whom the master of business administration (MBA) program is squarely aimed. The classes used to meet on separate nights, but students indicated that they preferred once-a-week marathon sessions. Majority ruled, and the faculty rearranged the schedule to accommodate the consensus.
“We’re constantly seeing ways to improve the program,” says Dr. Terry Truitt, who joined the faculty in 1995 and now directs the MBA program. “A lot of the changes originate with student suggestions. Having two classes meet on the same night gives students one more evening a week at home with their families.”
Adjusting class schedules comes under the heading of “fine tuning.” More sweeping changes involve curriculum design and are attempts to meet the demands of the ever-shifting marketplace. As an example, AU launched a master of accountancy program this year in response to an Indiana law requiring additional academic hours before would-be certified public accountants can sit for the state examination. A doctor of business administration program (DBA) began in May for persons interested in teaching at institutions — many of them faith-based — that place a heavy emphasis on pedagogy as well as research. Because no other school fills this particular niche, the DBA program immediately attracted 14 students from as far away as British Columbia, Texas and New York.
“Business is so changeable, and that affects curriculum,” says Dr. Ken Armstrong, dean of the Falls School of Business. “We have more changes coming this summer, and we’re already looking beyond that and asking, ‘What’s our next step?’”
Taking care of business
Strengthening the undergraduate business major and initiating a range of graduate programs were the goals of a 10-year plan that took 11 years to implement, according to Armstrong. The effort began in 1990 when Dr. Patrick Allen, vice president for academic affairs at the time, recruited Armstrong and challenged him to build a model business department. “The dream we had was highly unusual for a small Christian university,” admits Allen, now an administrator at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. “But it doesn’t cost any more to dream big; in fact, the real cost is in thinking small.”
Allen’s dream centered on AU offering a DBA degree, but he wasn’t sure how to plot the course that would lead to the program’s launch. That’s where Armstrong came in. “Since Ken had graduated from one of the finest business graduate schools in the country [Northwestern University], I asked him one day to put in a nutshell what he had learned about strategic planning,” recalls Allen. “He told me that the future is accomplished in a series of one-year plans. I said, ‘Okay, give me a series of one-year plans to start a doctorate in business.’ And that’s what he did.”
The Armstrong plan culminated this spring with the arrival on campus of the first DBA students, the naming of the business school in honor of Professor Emeritus R. Glenn Falls and the move to the newly acquired Hardacre Hall (see sidebar). Along the way, the department of business and economics became the school of business in 1991; the faculty doubled in size from eight in 1990 to 16 this fall; and the MBA program, launched in Anderson in 1992, expanded to four locations. By 2000 it was thriving at three Indianapolis sites and, according to a recent study by the Indianapolis Business Journal, currently ranks sixth in size among Indiana schools. With 180 students, it is larger than the programs offered at Ball State and Indiana State universities and smaller than those at Indiana University, Indiana Wesleyan, Purdue, Notre Dame and Butler. “Right now, our MBA enrollment in Anderson is full,” says Truitt. “We have more people interested in participating in the program than we have seats in the class.”
Building “profit centers”
But size was never the primary goal. AU’s motivation in offering an MBA degree was twofold. First, faculty-initiated research indicated a need for a program that combined the strengths of a cohort-based model with the strengths of a traditional program. Students who were working professionals would enter as a “class” and would move through the curriculum in lock-step fashion. Unlike programs at other universities, AU’s MBA would be taught by full-time professors with years of teaching experience to their credit. “Our positioning strategy has always been to accommodate the working professional but at the same time ensure academic rigor, require a traditional number of contact hours and place veteran faculty members in the classroom,” explains Wiese.
The second goal was to offer a curriculum so in tune with the marketplace that it would enjoy instant success, wouldn’t impose a financial burden on the university and would help fund other facets of the master business plan. “One of our reasons for the MBA was to enhance the critical mass of faculty members to support the undergraduate program,” says Wiese.
The plan worked. With the less-than-whopping sum of $5,000 in seed money, Armstrong and his team developed a program that paid its own way from its inception.
“Our only real risk came when we opened our first Indianapolis site,” says Armstrong. “AU was not a particularly well-known commodity in Indianapolis. We started with 14 students, but we could have accommodated 25.” Word-of-mouth endorsements from students and CEOs at area businesses prompted quick growth. As classes reached capacity, Armstrong was able to recruit additional full-time faculty with exemplary credentials. This benefited not only the MBA program but also the undergraduate courses of study.
“Next year, half of our business school faculty will be supported by our graduate programs,” explains Armstrong. “Unlike the undergraduate programs, we look at the graduate programs as profit centers. If the programs lose enrollment, there is nothing to protect the faculty, so we collectively feel a certain amount of internal pressure. We want to be able to sustain the high standards that we set in the beginning, and we want to contribute money back to the undergraduate program.”
All professors teach in the undergraduate and graduate programs, which means undergraduate business students are exposed to a range of teaching styles and a depth of faculty expertise that is unusual for a school the size of AU. “When I started teaching here in 1984, we were a small department of six or seven professors,” recalls Dr. Doyle Lucas, who directs the DBA program as well as teaches organizational behavior at the undergraduate and MBA levels. “The hiring of additional faculty allows us to specialize. We teach in the areas that we’ve asked for, grown into or developed.”
When Lucas, an AU alumnus and senior department member, began to sense the stepped-up momentum of the business school, he decided to upgrade his skills by enrolling in a doctoral program at Indiana University in Bloomington. Almost six years and thousands of miles later, he’s glad he did. “I don’t naturally embrace change, yet I don’t want to be left behind,” he admits. “So I went back to school, and it’s made a huge difference in how I view myself.” Others have followed suit. Of the 16 members of the business faculty, 11 have earned doctorates, two are pursuing doctoral studies and several engage in outside consulting work to sharpen their skills.
“When I was getting ready to teach auditing, I took a sabbatical and did an internship with the Indianapolis bus system,” says Cindy Peck, director of the master of accountancy program. “I did it without pay because I wanted to move around the organization and do the real grunt work — evaluating lawsuits and conducting audits.” Her supervisors were 25 or 26 years old and at first were intimidated by having a college professor work for them. “Then they realized that I wasn’t any threat,” recalls Peck. “I was just there to learn. That’s when they started to confide in me.”
Madison Avenue calling
The blend of veteran faculty members and new faculty recruits has resulted in a stream of fresh ideas. The department-turned-school no longer practices business as usual. When Wiese attended new-faculty orientation sessions several years ago, he found himself comparing views with Kevin Rudynski, a newcomer to the art department. They agreed that marketing students know too little about graphic design, and art students are rarely exposed to advertising and marketing concepts. The result of the conversation was a plan to mix and divide teams of art and business students and form on-campus advertising agencies that would offer their services to community organizations at no cost. Each team would have an account executive, a copywriter, media planner, research expert and art director working together to create advertising campaigns complete with artwork, media plan and budget.
“We did that for several years, then I ran across a collegiate advertising contest sponsored by Citibank,” says Wiese. “Kevin and I decided to try it. Our students competed against 179 schools across the country, all of them bigger than AU.” Wiese shakes his head in disbelief when he remembers the afternoon in May 1996 when he was roofing his house and his wife summoned him down the ladder to take a call from New York City. “This person said, ‘Mike, we’re not familiar with your school, but your students just won the contest.’ I was blown away. Two years later, when they again ran the contest, our students submitted another campaign and the same guy called us back. This time we had beaten more than 200 colleges to take first place. The man asked me, ‘What’s going on out there? We thought it was a fluke the first time you won, but now we know it’s not.’”
In addition to prize money, internships and plaques, students benefit in less tangible ways from their involvement in “real-world” activities. Each year faculty and students majoring in accounting offer their services to low-income citizens who need assistance in completing their income-tax forms. Students exercise their academic skills as well as learn to counsel people of different ages and backgrounds. Other classes donate volunteer hours to local social-service agencies and use the experiences as the basis for classroom discussions. “We took about 25 freshmen to Dove Harbor [a Christian outreach program] recently for a morning work session,” says Lucas. “Then we asked the students to write their responses to questions such as: What is the responsibility of a business to help the citizens of its home city? Should business owners, managers and workers be involved in these kinds of activities?”
Another opportunity for interaction with the community comes from participation in service projects sponsored by SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise). An international organization supported by many Fortune 500 companies, SIFE engages students in a range of on-campus and off-campus projects that they document and present to business leaders who gather at regional conferences across the country.
“SIFE has helped me come out of my shell,” says Amber Beaty, a junior from Indianapolis who served as SIFE club president this year. “I admit that I was a very quiet, shy freshman, but I think most of my professors would tell you differently today. Being on the SIFE presentation team for three years has really helped me with public speaking and time management. We know ahead of time what the project deadlines are, and we learn to plan so we can meet the deadlines.”
Doff the green eyeshades
Beaty is preparing for a career in public accounting, a profession currently experiencing a labor shortage. Reasons for its fall from favor include the increase in academic requirements and the expanded opportunities in more glamorous careers such as information technology. Accounting suffers an image problem; young people perceive it as a profession that is neither exciting nor lucrative. In truth, it can be both. Cindy Peck reports that some companies are offering signing bonuses, agreeing to flexible hours to hold onto accountants and paying for additional schooling now required by state law. “Students don’t see accounting as being as wide and broad as it is,” says Peck. “This is a changing profession, and a lot of people are still caught up in the little green eyeshade mystique.”
Regardless of the major — economics, finance, management, marketing or accounting — good jobs are out there, and AU graduates are getting their share of them. The popularity of the MBA program has boosted the prospects for graduating seniors who are looking for opportunities to show their skills. A recent survey indicates that 95 percent of AU grads would readily recommend the Falls School of Business to friends. MBA graduates in particular are enthusiastic about their experience in the business program and are offering internships and full-time positions to the next wave of graduates from their alma mater.
“Companies seemed very anxious to recruit, which made the job-search process a little overwhelming,” recalls Brett Spangler, an AU accounting graduate who now works at Ent & Imler CPA Group and commutes to campus to complete hours toward a master’s degree in accountancy. Spangler began college at a large state university but transferred to AU after he heard glowing recommendations from family and friends. He learned the value of his diploma when he took his credentials to a job fair in Indianapolis and fielded a number of requests for second interviews. The most stressful part: “I had to research several firms so I could weight the offers that I received.”
Building on Common Ground
As a boy growing up on East 10th Street, Bill Hardacre used to deliver eggnog from his family’s dairy to the neighbors at Christmastime. Included on the gift list were the first and second presidents of AU. “John Morrison and my grandfather were close friends,” recalls Hardacre, now a member of the AU Board of Trustees. “Rev. Reardon was pastor at Park Place Church, and his son, Bob, was our paperboy.” He adds with a laugh: “Whenever Bob Reardon needs to be humbled, I like to remind him of his newspaper days.”
The university later celebrated the contributions of J.A. Morrison and Robert Reardon by naming campus facilities for them. The Hardacre family experienced a similar honor April 30 with the dedication of Hardacre Hall, new home to the R. Glenn Falls School of Business. “In many ways, the college and the Hardacre family business grew up side by side as neighbors,” noted President James L. Edwards, host at the unveiling of the building’s marker. “They supported each other’s vision and took pride in each other’s success.”
The location of Hardacre Hall is significant. When Cliff and Ruffina Hardacre arrived in Anderson in 1916, the land now occupied by the business building was home to a small herd of Jersey cows. After the cows’ owners, the Gospel Trumpet Company, decided to launch a Bible training school, it offered the cows for sale. Cliff Hardacre, by then an employee of Gospel Trumpet, bought the livestock and started a small milk-producing business. The fledgling Bible training school evolved into Anderson University, and the modest Hardacre operation grew into East Side Jersey Dairy.
“They survived together,” says Bill Hardacre, grandson of Cliff and Ruffina. “I don’t think one would have made it without the other.”
Like all good neighbors, the school and the family helped each other through difficult times. When the dairy needed workers, it hired students who needed tuition. During the Depression when the college needed milk products but lacked the cash to buy them, the dairy extended unlimited credit. After the school achieved financial stability, it reciprocated by purchasing and serving East Side Jersey Dairy products exclusively. When the Hardacre family sold the business, it established a scholarship fund to enable Madison County students to attend their local university. The fund continues to grow through donations from alumni who worked at the dairy while pursuing degrees at AU. Today it is one of the school’s largest endowed scholarship funds.
“Hardacres don’t like to have their name in lights,” insisted Bill, when presented with the idea of a university tribute. Family members huddled and agreed that a marker that rests on common ground seemed appropriate. Hardacre Hall would commemorate a long relationship between good friends. “We share deep roots,” says Bill.––H.M.
Mixing Business With Pleasure
When Julie-Allyson Ieron graduated from AU in 1986 with a degree in management, she struggled to answer the inevitable question posed by friends as soon as the tassels were turned: “Okay, now what?” Her interests seemed to take incompatible directions. She had excelled as a business major — graduated with honors, in fact — but she had a pesky passion for creative writing. She delayed any job decision long enough to pick up a master’s degree in journalism at Ball State University, then she explored a career in business, then a career in publishing before discovering a way the two could intersect. Fifteen years after leaving AU’s campus, she has mixed business with pleasure and created a successful Chicago-area company, Joy Media.
“My management degree initially qualified me for a corporate position at a major utility in Chicago,” she recalls. “The fact that I understood the psychology of managing people as well as the financial and budgeting areas of corporate life placed me on the fast track in the organization.”
But fast tracks leave little time to indulge a need to write. “So I shifted to the Christian publishing arena and, once again, found my business training invaluable. As managing editor of Moody Press, I was responsible for keeping my department operating within budget constraints, developing my employees and keeping them equipped to handle their jobs in a business environment that is constantly changing.” But overseeing budgets and handling personnel issues don’t satisfy a passion for prose. With the security of a book contract and the promises of a few free-lance assignments, she decided to give her education the ultimate test. “Today I’m the owner-operator of my own public relations, writing and training firm,” she says. “Here I do it all: from purchasing office equipment, to keeping the computer system up to date, to overseeing an administrative assistant, to maintaining accounting records, to planning for retirement, to tracking projects and, of course, to disciplining myself to balance an often-uneven workload.”
She gives her AU training high marks for preparing her for the challenge. “I particularly remember my advisor, Dr. Falls, and the principles he taught us about planning and investing for the long term and riding out the ‘blips’ in the market. He gave us good counsel that many people don’t hear until they’re in their 40s or 50s. But I learned it when I was only 18.” Another favorite memory of Glenn Falls has nothing to do with classes or career counseling. “Most of all, I remember playing pool in the family room of Dr. Falls’ home — after enjoying a delicious dinner served by Mrs. Falls. Their hospitality was amazing.”––H.M.
From the Valley to the Hill?
Like anyone well-schooled in business practices, Steve Davis has a 10-year strategic plan. Fast forward to 2011: “That puts me at 32 years old,” he says. “Hopefully by then I’ll be a congressman representing one of the districts of Indiana. Politics is my aspiration, and I’d like to begin in the U.S. House.”
He’s off to a good start. He leaves AU not only with a degree in marketing but also with experience as vice president of the student body. Next stop on his career path is law school at Indiana University this fall. “While I’m not planning to be a marketing person per se, I believe the major has helped me learn what kinds of things I’m good at and what things I should delegate to others,” he explains. “Law school will be very different, but the time-management and presentation skills and the overall business sense that I’ve gained here will help me in and out of the courtroom.”
He chose AU for two reasons. It was close to his Muncie home, and he wanted to run cross country for Coach Larry Maddox. An injury during his freshman year nixed the running, but by then he was hooked on AU for two other reasons. “First, is the faculty,” he says. “I’d put my professors in the business school up against Harvard’s any day. Second, is the commitment to ‘hands-on’ experience. I’ve had opportunities to work with real businesses in this area. These experiences were the most valuable of my college career.”
AU also influenced his choice of a future in government service. “It helped foster my dreams of being in politics, for sure. Although the assignments in my major were normally business-related, I was given the flexibility to make my political aspirations fit the assignment and to do research to learn what a career in politics is really like.”––H.M.
