Meeting the Market’s Interdisciplinary Needs

• Cross-disciplinary partnerships enrich student learning, fostering both technical and managerial competencies.
• While academic disciplines provide a useful framework for learning, faculty should also collaborate on courses to equip students with job-ready skills.
• Leadership and problem-solving are top skills that employers believe are essential for successfully navigating society's complex challenges.

Transcript

Julie Petherbridge: [00:15] One of the things that we look at as business school being a standalone. If we do not have intentional collaboration, we are not going to end up providing the product that the market is really asking us for.

[00:31] We’re going to have to make sure we’re reaching across those barriers and providing those skills and those courses within our schools. That’s going to be a challenge because it’s a lot of change.

[00:44] Most academics don’t like change. Still, it’s going to require us to really work with that because if ultimately our job is to provide the product—what do those corporations, what do businesses need, what does an entrepreneurship need—they’re going to need those other skills that the business school is not inherently good at teaching.

If we do not have intentional collaboration, we are not going to end up providing the product that the market is really asking us for.

[01:09] They need to go to computer science and go to engineering, or even within liberal arts. I always find the best practices to engage in those other schools across campus, even with the community, it’s coming up with intentional, collaborative efforts.

[01:30] For me, it can’t start off, and you’re going to them asking for resources from them or looking at that. I always find to start with the outcome and what that external person wants. Then, reach in to say, would you be willing to have a conversation about this cybersecurity retraining, retooling that this older market needs, or providing what does this new market need?

[02:03] I always will say—I’m an accounting professor, and many of them, especially in corporate accounting, say they need SQL.

It’s an exchange of resources versus a take, and it ends up being a much better collaborative conversation.

[02:10] Well, the best way to approach it is to meet with that computer science faculty and say, hey, is there some way we could kind of look at this? Because I’d really like my students to have it.

[02:22] At the same time, we can offer some business classes that their students need. So, it’s an exchange of resources versus a take, and it ends up being a much better collaborative conversation.

[02:35] We have a certificate program that we started, which is really a concentration in MBA for cybersecurity. Well, there are four courses. We have the law school teaching a course, engineering teaches a course, computer science teaches a course, and the business school teaches a course.

[02:51] But what’s great about that is it’s what the market wants. It’s what the market will see, so they’re getting that perspective of several different directions.

[03:00] It creates a lot better dialogue when they’re actually in that business environment. Today’s market for students, what skills do they need? What is that business looking for?

Having that interdisciplinary knowledge is going to allow them to have the right set of tools and knowledge to make the right decision.

[03:11] I’m going to use an example of a student that I just had who is a mechanical engineer, and he works for a major Fortune 50 company in consulting. In one conversation, he’s working with a team on the product he’s delivering. Later in the afternoon, he’s also on the strategic management team for the entire organization. At the same time, he’s leading a team of people. He needs to have the skills as an engineer and the skills as a manager.

[03:45] And honestly, you could even add skills as an accountant or finance personnel, as you think of strategic plans, of looking forward to, what does this infrastructure look like? What are those choices that you’re going to have to make?

[04:00] Having that cross-disciplinary knowledge, when you’re looking at it between many different disciplines or traditional disciplines, we’re going to be providing the market to what we need next.

[04:13] When I look back at where I’m at now, to what it looked like 20 or 30 years ago, we’ve got to look at what it is going to look like in 20 or 30 years. When you think of artificial intelligence and some of these technologies, that student is going to need to understand many different facets because we’re dealing with very complex problems in business.

[04:38] Having that interdisciplinary knowledge is going to allow them to really attack the problem and have the right set of tools and knowledge to make the right decision.