Training the Trainers: Imparting Skills to Faculty

• Because entrepreneurship is such an important economic driver, Clark University and North Carolina Central University run workshops that teach professors the basics of creating new businesses.
• Qatar University has established a unit that trains faculty how to write, teach, and publish case studies that focus on the MENA region.
• Faculty at the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research run workshops that show professors at schools across India how to use short simulations as teaching tools.

 
Whether the topic of the day is finance, entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, or data visualization, business faculty must be prepared to convey crucial business knowledge to their students. And whether they deliver that knowledge in person, online, through case studies, or through simulations, they must create courses that are effective and engaging.

That’s why it’s so important for business schools to develop initiatives that “train the trainers”—that provide faculty with learning and development opportunities designed to continually improve their teaching skills. Here, four schools recount the steps they have taken to strengthen their professors’ abilities so they can prepare their students for the working world. All four stories are drawn from material submitted to AACSB’s Innovations That Inspire initiative over the past three years.

Bringing Entrepreneurship to Developing Economies

Entrepreneurship is one of the biggest drivers of the global economy, so it’s a critical topic within the business curriculum. To ensure that faculty anywhere in the world know how to create elective courses and programming on the topic, the Clark University School of Management in Worcester, Massachusetts, launched the Learning to Learn Entrepreneurship workshops about five years ago.

The workshops were designed by professor of practice John Dobson, a former entrepreneur with a particular interest in promoting entrepreneurship in developing economies. Before he sold his own company, he used it to connect Indigenous producers to global markets.

As part of his entrepreneurship classes at Clark, Dobson had for several years been taking students to Bogotá, Colombia, to participate in social entrepreneurship experiences. During these trips, he would also offer entrepreneurship workshops to faculty at local Colombian universities, giving them the tools to help small-scale urban farmers grow their own food and sell the surplus to generate income.

Eventually, Dobson sought to expand his impact by making the workshops available to faculty around the world. For the first Learning to Learn Entrepreneurship workshop, held in the economically challenged Bogotá community of Altamira, Dobson collaborated with Yovani Castro from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and María Andreína Moros Ochoa from Colegio de Estudios Superiores de Administración. Twelve participants attended. Over the years, the programming has expanded, developing strong partnerships with the mayor’s office, the department of the environment, the Botanical Garden of Bogotá, and the office of the U.S. Embassy Fulbright commission.

Currently, Dobson makes a yearly trip to Bogotá, accompanied by faculty from Clark University, Grand Canyon University, San Diego State, and Harvard University, as well as a representative of the Royal Bank of Canada. Together, they train faculty in the DYME Framework Dobson has created to empower entrepreneurs to build successful businesses. Most recently, they have been working in Cúcuta, Colombia, to help immigrants create successful businesses. Additionally, Dobson conducts faculty development workshops at over 40 universities and entrepreneurship centers around the world.

The sessions consist of three parts: Learning to Learn Entrepreneurship; The Theory Behind the Practice of Entrepreneurship Education; and Developing Effective Entrepreneurial Ecosystems. Participants are trained to become classroom facilitators who guide students through self-directed learning. At the end of each workshop, faculty develop problem-based micro lessons with the goal of developing problem-based courses.

The Learning to Learn Entrepreneurship workshops teach faculty around the world how to create programming that helps small-scale entrepreneurs generate income.

Dobson recognizes that, while American entrepreneurs tend to see a need and create a company to fill it, entrepreneurs in developing countries often have a different motivation for launching businesses—namely, earning enough income to support their families. Therefore, he tailors the lessons to these different cultures, covering topics such as risk tolerance and the challenges of business expansion. He also has found that the workshops are particularly valuable for participants from countries such as Mexico, where governments prioritize and encourage entrepreneurship.

Back on Clark’s campus, the Learning to Learn Entrepreneurship workshops have sparked a growing interest in the topic among students, staff, faculty, and alumni. The result is that the school is making an economic impact—locally and around the world.

Promoting Entrepreneurship Across Campus

North Carolina Central University in Durham is also investing resources in entrepreneurship education. Because the university has made innovation, research, and entrepreneurship its strategic priorities, it wants all students, regardless of major, to increase their knowledge and experience in these areas.

To this end, the School of Business established the Center for Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CEED) with two goals: to help business and nonbusiness faculty infuse entrepreneurship and innovation into their curricula, and to help students create and sustain businesses. In 2023, CEED launched the Faculty Entrepreneurship Certification (FEC) Workshop to encourage faculty from nonbusiness disciplines to incorporate entrepreneurial material into their existing courses.

Taught over a two-week period, the FEC covers entrepreneurial concepts as they relate to creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, and teamwork skills. Participants are exposed to the Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative’s Ice House Entrepreneurship Program, which teaches eight fundamental concepts that support venture creation. Participants also learn lean startup concepts, such as how to develop minimum viable products, gain customer feedback, and pivot when necessary.

The FEC consists of three phases. In the first, faculty develop assignments, exercises, and quizzes to incorporate entrepreneurial content into existing courses. In the second phase, they demonstrate to observers how they are teaching the course to students. In the final phase, they learn to coach and mentor students who apply for the NCCU Eagle Idea Competition.

Faculty who complete the workshop are empowered to teach their students how to adopt entrepreneurial attitudes, behaviors, and skills; recognize social, situational, and discipline-specific factors that encourage or inhibit entrepreneurial behavior; identify, evaluate, and validate business opportunities; and implement lean startup methodology.

So far, the FEC workshop has been completed by eight faculty members from seven departments, including mathematics and physics, family and consumer science, art and design, dance, mass communications, social work, and law. Instructors have not only integrated entrepreneurial principles into their courses, but also have engaged in startup ventures and collaborative industry projects.

The Faculty Entrepreneurship Certification Workshop encourages faculty from nonbusiness disciplines to incorporate entrepreneurial material into their existing courses.

School administrators consider the workshop to be more than an educational endeavor; they also see it as an investment in the economic growth of the region, as students, teachers, alumni, and local business owners start and expand their own enterprises.

“This ongoing entrepreneurial spirit at the university should lead to more partnerships, funding opportunities, and business ventures, repositioning the school as a hub for entrepreneurial excellence,” explains dean Anthony Nelson. “In essence, we see the Faculty Entrepreneurship Certification Workshop becoming a cornerstone of our institution’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, propelling us toward a future of sustainable business growth and impactful educational initiatives.”

Impacting Regional Business Through Case Studies

Another way schools can support business is by encouraging their faculty to produce case studies with local relevance. That’s why, in 2022, Qatar University (QU) in Doha established a case study unit to amplify the societal impact of its College of Business and Economics.

The unit is focused on five main goals: providing faculty with hands-on training in how to write case studies; encouraging more professors at QU to utilize case studies in their classrooms; publishing case studies tailored to the Middle East and North Africa; fostering stronger ties with the local business community; and organizing case competitions that allow students to hone their skills. These goals have yielded a host of tangible results:

• The school has established an institutional reservoir to provide cases to the public. Ten teaching cases are available, and more than 40 cases have been submitted to the unit by faculty from Qatar University and other academic institutions.
• QU faculty and students have written 24 cases about the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which was held in Qatar. These have been compiled into a handbook that will be published in early 2025 by Springer Nature.
• The school has developed a partnership with Harvard Business Publishing to encourage QU faculty to integrate case studies into their classes. So far, four MBA courses at QU have adopted fully case-based teaching.
• QU has collaborated with the International Labor Organization to develop human rights case studies.
• At QU’s Entrepreneurship for Sustainability and Impact Conference, a dedicated case-study track received 39 submissions in 2023 and 30 submissions in 2024.
• The school has signed a memorandum of understanding with the U.K.-based Case Centre. This agreement will provide QU with access to an extensive collection of teaching cases and will facilitate the publication of 10 case studies from QU faculty.
• Two student workshops on case-study writing resulted in five published co-authored cases with faculty members; more are under review.
• The school hosted a four-day case writing workshop with Emerald Publishing, which benefited 15 faculty members working on individual cases. The workshop also provided specialized support for students, helping them transform several projects into compact cases designed for inclusion in a casebook.

School officials say that the case study unit has not just facilitated experiential learning within the College of Business and Economics, it also has helped the school achieve its ongoing mission of amplifying its societal impact.

Writing and Teaching With Simulations

While case studies can be effective tools for teaching business students, simulations can have equally impressive results. That’s why the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) in Mumbai has partnered with Harvard Business Publishing (HBP) to run workshops that encourage business schools across India to adopt short simulations in the classroom.

Faculty at SPJIMR have been using simulations for more than 20 years to teach students to analyze data under pressure, work in teams, think critically, make decisions in ambiguous situations, and develop perspectives across business functions. In fact, 30 percent of core faculty members use simulations in their courses.

Over time, faculty at SPJIMR have created many short simulations that can be played out in a single class, which creates an engaging learning experience for students and allows professors to incorporate more than one simulation over a semester. This is a significant contrast to full simulations that can require multiple sessions to complete and often are part of capstone courses.

Simulations help students learn to analyze data under pressure, work in teams, think critically, make decisions in ambiguous situations, and develop perspectives across business functions.

When HBP decided to expand its library of short simulations, it invited SPJIMR faculty to provide other professors, particularly those in India, with training on how to teach these specialized tools. The “Teaching With SIMs” workshop was launched in the 2015–16 academic year.

The three-day workshop accommodates up to 60 participants at a time and is intended as a general introduction for instructors from all disciplines. Participants learn how to use simulations in class, how to design teaching plans around simulations, how to determine if group work or individual work is preferable, and how to respond to students in the middle of a simulation.

To date, 538 faculty from across India have participated in the workshops. Between 60 percent and 70 percent of these participants had not been exposed to simulation pedagogy before attending—and, according to HBP, 40 percent of them later incorporated simulations into their teaching.

Additionally, SPJIMR faculty have visited other institutions to provide customized workshops on integrating simulations into course content; in 2019, they also delivered a simulations workshop for professors attending conferences hosted by the Global Business School Network. No matter the forum, the goal remains the same: to teach faculty around the world how to bring this valuable teaching tool to the business school classroom.

Aiming for Continuous Improvement

Articles from the AACSB Insights archives offer more examples of schools that have invested in faculty development initiatives. For instance, in “Faculty Internships Nurture Cultures of Innovation,” Woxsen University describes how it exposes its faculty to real-world business through internship opportunities. In “Nurturing Tomorrow’s Academic Leaders,” administrators at the University of Wisconsin–Madison explain how the school’s Leadership Academy prepares faculty across campus to advance to senior leadership roles.

As faculty expand their skills and knowledge bases, students inevitably benefit—and so do the companies that hire them.