Episode 76: Academic Disciplines, Management

Episode 76

• Episode 76 Transcript

  [0:00:07] BHA: For the past few episodes on College Admissions Insider, we've done a deep dive into academic disciplines, one episode at a time.

  [0:00:15] BT: So far, we've covered sciences, mathematics, the humanities, and engineering, and we encourage you to jump back and listen to those episodes if you haven't yet. Today, we're exploring management. I'm Brooke Thames from Bucknell University.

  [0:00:26] BHA: And I'm Becca Haupt Aldredge, also from Bucknell. On this episode of College Admissions Insider, we'll get to know the kinds of majors available in this discipline, what management might look like in college, and the careers you can break into post-graduation.

  [0:00:40] BT: Our guest is Matt Bailey, a chair in business administration and professor of analytics and operations management at Bucknell. Welcome to the podcast.

  [0:00:48] MB: Thank you.

  [0:00:49] BHA: Let's start by chatting about what those titles mean for you and the work that you do at Bucknell.

  [0:00:54] MB: Okay, I'm the department chair of one of our departments, analytics & operations management. It's actually one of the four departments we have, so I'm not representing everybody, but I'm going to try and at least speak for those different departments. The other ones we deal with are markets, innovation & design, accounting & finance is another department, and then finally, our management & organizations department.

  In terms of titles and areas, so I broadly teach in the area and work in the area of data informed decision-making for problems and operations. The courses I teach are tied with two things in the areas of data analysis, operations management, supply chain management, data visualization and some machine learning for business courses also is part of our major. In terms of actually what else it means in terms of the work that I do outside of that, the research and scholarship that I've worked on is focused on health care and education operations. I've done some problems in decision support systems for staffing and patient assignment decisions, partnered with the hospital in the area, Geisinger, and also, some other work with other organizations around the country on some daily scheduling problems. For example, for tutors scheduling and similar problems.

  [0:01:56] BT: Thanks for that overview. It’s so interesting hearing some of the areas that management can be involved in. You mentioned health care, data visualization. But to start from a bird's eye view…I mean, management might be less familiar term than business when we're talking about colleges, right? Can you give us an idea of the differences between business and management and why that matters?

  [0:02:17] MB: Looking at it, business is broadly defined as activity with purpose. More commonly, you'll see across the country, you'll see the idea of business schools, MBAs, programs like that. The thought of it is that — they're viewed at least — as being focused solely on for-profit corporations. That may not be true, but that's the idea that the terminology of saying "business," that perspective.

  We have purposefully chosen and elected to use the term "management" as a way to distinguish ourselves and look at things more broadly and organizations more broadly. We're trying to look at all types, such as nonprofits, non-government entities, for-profit corporations obviously, startups large and small — running the gamut of all the organizations. We want to have students be open to that and realize they're going to have opportunities to explore all the different areas.

  Now, with that said, all these organizations — whether it's a nonprofit, or whether it's a for-profit corporation — they still focus on the core functions of any organization. We have those through our departments, through our majors, through our courses. Things such as operations management, my area, which talks about the delivering of that good and service that you provide to the company or as a nonprofit. You also have to manage your resources in a proper way. That's where financial management comes into play, your accounting, your finance. On top of that then, how do you actually get your message out to who you're providing the goods and services to, whether you're a nonprofit or for-profit? Your marketing operations, your advertising, things that go on that way. How do you sell, or market what you're actually providing? Then finally, internally and externally, you have the ideas of management and organizations. That's the people side of your company. The structure, how it's labeled, who does what and when, that idea has to be driven to it also. Those corporations are going to be not the same, but they're going to be similar structures for any organization, regardless of whether you are a for-profit or nonprofit.

  [0:04:06] BHA: That's super helpful. So far, you've provided an overview of the different departments within the College of Management at Bucknell, but also, the nuances between both business and management and how those four departments really show up in all types of businesses. Can we take a closer look at the majors that a student might find in a school of business, or management, including those at Bucknell?

  [0:04:30] MB: I'll focus on, I guess, what's offered at the Freeman College. There are some other options with outside of there, but for us, we hit those core functions through those. Really, right now, we have five majors available. We have the accounting & finance major, again, tied to how you manage your resources and control those things. We also have a major in markets, innovation & design, which includes things like marketing, but also the broader sense of design, designing products, designing services. The creative side of things. My area, our major we offer, is in business analytics, which ties to that quantitative methodology for making decisions across the business and across functions. Then finally, we have our other major in management & organizations, probably the more broad one that deals with the general sense of how these things are structured, who's doing what, the ethics of an organization and the human resources aspect of it — and entrepreneurship ties into there also.

  Now, within these majors, we also have the ability — especially in management & organizations — we have concentrations that are available to students. If you have an interest in one of the areas, such as entrepreneurship, we have a concentration in global management, human resource management, and then also managing for sustainability.

  Now, if you go over a little bit farther beyond the concentrations, we have something a little bit more than that, which is the minors that are available to any students. This is for students in the Freeman College, but also for students in any of the other two colleges in arts & sciences and engineering. We do offer minors that are available for students in business analytics, a minor in entrepreneurship, one in human resources, there's a one in accounting, and then finally — one we've had for a while, which is of great interest — in real estate.

  Beyond the majors themselves, then, the core functions that are offered within those classes…as a college itself, we were an early adopter, an early signee of the UN principles for responsible management education. This governs and ties to the mission of the University and of our college of what we're providing, which is more than just how to do things, but understanding that it's about learning the functions of management and its education that should be connected beyond that, to things like the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

  Through the things that we do and the seven principles of PRME: purpose values, how we teach, the research we do, who we partner with companies, corporations and even computer organizations, how we practice things. Just the idea of being a good corporate citizen. These are connected to and tied to the sustainable development goals of the UN, which has to do with issues of poverty, hunger, health, education, gender equality, etc.

  I think that one thing you'll see, and as we talk later on about what it seems to be a student at Bucknell, that you'll see this right away for our students who major in the Freeman College, any of these majors. You'll have to go through our experience with Management 101, and that's our experiential learning course, where students develop a company and a product, so what you classically do in many business management schools. The experience, all the facets of that, the management, the marketing, the human resources, all of that's done. To our mission and to the idea of these UN prime goals, the students are also expected to tie that work to a service project. To learn that, as an organization, it's not just about doing what you're doing. It's about how you connect with the community, how you connect with the people around you. You find a partnership where the outcome of the product you develop and sell, the time and effort and even the resources in terms of financial resources are then sent over to a local organization to help them with their doing.

  It's getting students to understand that it's not just about producing a service, or good. It's about using organizations as a way to contribute to a community in a broader sense. Hopefully, they take that mindset beyond Bucknell to when they're actually starting their own companies and working for other companies to be agents of change.

  [0:08:13] BT: It's so great that there are so many different options of majors, concentrations and even minors. And it sounds like, regardless of what you choose, you're going to have a base of those prime principles. Things are going to fill your toolbelt with skills and even perspectives that are going to help you go out into the world.

  There's also the option for students in any of our colleges to pick minors, or even double majors and other colleges, correct? A student who is majoring in management might even supplement their education with education outside of that as well, right?

  [0:08:45] MB: Yes. Being at Bucknell, it is a professional program, but we've always been housed into the mentality of the liberal arts. When I came here to Bucknell, actually, at that time, it was a department of management that was actually housed in the College of Liberal Arts. We became a school, and now we've transitioned to become a college. But in that whole process and part of that being done, the faculty was very cognizant of never saying, "We want to have a silo of Management, a silo of Arts & Sciences and a silo of Engineering." We want to understand how can we work with these different colleges to make everybody better and to offer programs in that way.

  Hopefully, arts & sciences students understand and value the programs that we offer in management, so they have access to them through some of our courses, or a minor, or other opportunities in that way. In the same way, our students have the opportunity through the core courses they take, which we can talk more about in a bit, but also the opportunity for developing beyond that and doing dual majors and doing their own minors.

  Because of that, we're not what I would call, in some programs that you see, where they focus on the idea that an undergraduate degree in business is really just a mini MBA. You take the same courses pared down as you would, and you learn the core skills, and you are very heavy and deep in those areas of management, with not as much, in a broader sense, outside of there. Our focus is more of get those principles there — yes, definitely understand all of them — but understand your place in the world, understand your place in education. That's where we encourage our students to pursue interests outside of what they're doing.

  What I've seen because of that is we have more of our students that are doing things that are outside of traditional management areas. For example, I have a business analytics major, which is a more equant field, very focused field, but they're minor in dance. We have accountants who have a dual major in art and art appreciation. Things that I see and really, I guess, warms my heart in the sense that they go beyond what we're doing. I think it's a better idea of educating the whole student beyond just what you want to do going forward.

  [0:11:28] BHA: What you're really amplifying and echoing is what we see when we read applications. We see that Gen Z is multi-passionate and they are looking for flexibility and their educational experience is not necessarily going to be linear or a straight line. I'm really liking that, a liberal arts school, like Bucknell offers opportunities for students to pursue intersecting interests.

  [0:11:50] BT: With all of that in mind, let's give our audience a taste of what a four-year experience might look like in any, or all of these majors at a school like Bucknell.

  [0:11:59] MB: Okay. At Bucknell, we have our standard students who come in, would have 32 classes across that four years that they come in for. You would apply directly into the Freeman College, so you would be accepted in there. We don't expect you to have your major picked at that point. In fact, I actually hope that you don't have your major picked at that point. I hope you take that first year and a half roughly to explore, and we give you the opportunity to do so. That exploration should happen not only within the college, the Freeman College — so looking at other majors within the college of management — but it should be looked at across the University.

  We've roughly, through that, we've adopted this what we call the 8-8-8-8 model for our majors. It's a subset of courses for each of them. If you look at our website and get a sense for each of them, at the baseline, we have eight courses from the Freeman College core. That's your first year that goes through these courses that you're going to be building in the first year and a half, two years, it's sprinkled throughout, where you get a foundation in those core areas we already discussed: in finance, and operations, and management, and accounting and marketing. You get that baseline going on. That's your building for any major in the Freeman College is going to have that.

  We then allow the students also — because we are making that connection across more than just business, but learning in a broader sense — we have eight courses as part of our college core. These are, typically, liberal arts classes outside of our college, arts and humanities, the sciences, mathematics, economics, and so on, that allows students to get some experiences and broaden what they're doing and pursue interest possibly, too.

  Now then, once you have a baseline, about your sophomore year, you declare a major with the College of Management and get a sense of where you're going to go. At that point, you're going to start reaching into the classes that are a little deeper, more tied to what you want to do — your higher level finance accounting, if you're in those majors, if you're in business analytics, and so on — where you're going to have roughly eight courses that are going to be tied to your field and provide that depth and that deeper level of knowledge you're going to need to pursue that later on.

  Now beyond that, then you still have eight courses floating around there, and that's where we typically, have them to be free electives, or at least general ability for students to explore. Either they want to explore more within their major, more within the college, but also the ability to pursue minors elsewhere, pursue dual majors, and just going to go up your passionate areas they want to be able to do.

  We have, in my opinion, the ability for students to get a strong foundation within management, get a broad understanding through the college core, get a depth of understanding within a particular major with those course, and then, on top of that, the ability just to explore and pursue passion and interest tied with those.

  [0:14:29] BHA: I appreciate how intentionally designed the curriculum structure is in management that really, again, gives students the opportunity to explore and get that depth of experience that they want to find while they're here. Speaking of ways that students find experiences, let's talk about some opportunities outside of the classroom, like internships or career preparation. How important is it for our business and management students to get those types of experiences, and when does it begin?

  [0:14:55] MB: It is important for students to get the experience, obviously. More and more companies are looking for people that have the connections and have experiences, in summers, typically, with a business and an interest. On top of that, a lot of the hiring is now happening through those internship opportunities. So they're taking somebody they've already seen, they've vetted them in a way, they've had them go through their program and then they hired them on full-time afterwards. Making that connection is important.

  For us, I think it plays two roles. It's a way of learning about what you want to do, but what I try and tell a lot of students — and I've seen this myself many times with students — it's also about learning what you don't want to do. I have so many students who come back after, typically, after that sophomore year is probably the first opportunity. The first year's a little too early, at that point, to have some direction. Some do get internships, but more often, it's after the sophomore or junior year that you're going to see that more likely.

  I've had students who say, “I want to be a finance major.” They go off, they get an internship — could be a great internship — and they come back and they say, “I wasted my summer. I hated that. I don't want to do that.” I stop and I tell them. I say, “You don't realize how valuable it is for you to see now that they'll find not just what you want to do, because it's easy to confirm what we already want to do, confirmation bias.” But to stop and say, “Oh, I've learned what I don't want to do.” I'm like, “Great. Then keep moving forward and look at something else.” I also caution them and say, don't let one experience spoil you on an entire field. You have to keep your eyes open that way. It offers you the opportunity to get that from there.

  In terms of finding internships now, I mean, it's a little different, I would say then when I was going through. But we do have our Center for Career Advancement; students can work with them directly. We also have a great Experiential Learning Office that works with you on getting your resume together. Our first-year students are working on that transition from college to business. How to dress properly for an interview. How to engage with an alumni. We have speaker series in that way, too, for making connections.

  We have all kinds of opportunities that are available. External speakers coming in. I think, Bucknell has a phenomenal alumni network, which you can tap into. I tell many of the students and the alumni that come back. I just had one who came back and gave a talk in class and said, “Please, reach out. If I can't find a job for you, I can find somebody else to talk with to try and point in the right direction.”

  I also think, the other part about this, it's important and that students learn to not be passive about this and say that "The Center for Career Advancement is going to give me a job" or "Bucknell is going to give me a job." You have to be active and engaging on your own. I think, even more now. Where so many things are happening online, obviously, where students have to market themselves a little bit. Those things that we do now and putting together your portfolio, getting some information available, having a LinkedIn profile, reaching out to people that you've spoken with previously, and doing a little bit of legwork on your own goes a long way for those things also.

  [0:17:36] BT: So far, we've chatted a lot about this from the college side. But let's flip it and talk about high schoolers who are exploring their options and getting really intrigued by all the things that we're saying here. What might be some signs that a student should consider pursuing business, or management? It sounds like, especially with the existence of those prime principles being infused in plenty of schools, that maybe what a student wants to do depends on their own values and goals and they should work from that place.

  [0:18:02] MB: Agreed. I mean, the driver is what you want to do, values and goals. I mean, the world is run by organizations, whether it's the government, whether it's the university, it's the hospital, it's corporations, it's driving a lot of things. You understanding that is very valuable for your own long-term goals you want to do, whether you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to understand all these facets of things, too.

  What you want to do in the driver of it, I think in terms of….it's a professional program. Students should have some interest in those fields, but I don't think you're really going to get that experience, in the sense, in high school for whether you want to do it. I think if you find business interesting, you should facilitate that by talking with people. For a lot of students, if you're not sure, I would say that the greatest thing is just talk to people. As many people as you can about what they're doing, what your parents, what your relatives are doing, why they do what they're doing, what they like about it, what they don't like about it. That's how you're really going to learn. I don't think you need to focus so much on students, at times, taking courses and trying to take an accounting class, for example, or marketing class in high school. I think at that point, you just have to understand and figure out whether you're interested in these areas by talking with people.

  The other part I would say is when you are doing things, you're dealing with organizations, you're dealing with companies every single day of your life. Don't just do it passively. Look at the products you use, why do you use them, what do you like about it, what you do not like about it? What services do you use, what software do you use, what websites do you interact with? And look how things are done and think about who's making those decisions. What's behind that? The entrepreneur who developed the company, the person who's financing it, the product that's being delivered, the way it's being targeted toward you for good or for ill at times. I think, if those things interest you and you want to know more about that, why these companies are doing things in a certain way, why aren't they doing it this way? Why some succeed? Why they don't succeed? If you have those questions and curiosity and interest, I think that would guide toward you.

  Now, more finely, I guess, if you are more people focused and you find that aspect of it more interesting, then obviously something like management organizations in our majors would be more of an area when you lean toward. If you're more on the creative and design side, you want to start your own products and do that, you might lean more toward the markets innovation design major. If you find some of these Wall Street aspects of things, accounting, making decisions quantitatively in a broader sense, how people will do things, or data oriented, I would say, that business analytics, or finance, or accounting might be of interest. I think, part of this is that if you're interested in how organizations behave, how they're run, it's an area of interest, and you want to take that on, I would say, come to the Freeman College of Management, but keep an open mind. Once you're here, once you're taking classes and looking around, get a sense for what you want to do. You may find that changes in a lot of students do in that first year, and we offer you the opportunity and we're not making you focus right away.

  [0:20:44] BT: Knowing all that, this curious student that's thinking critically about the organizations that they interact with, can you describe who that ideal high school prospect is, what skills or experiences do they have that they might cultivate in management?

  [0:20:57] MB: I don't know that any of the skills themselves are unique in the sense of success for this. I think what we would probably look for is what any professor, or any major is looking for and for students in many ways. We want to have students who… now, obviously, curiosity is part of this and learning. I do think one thing for us is communication skills are still a key. That's more important to me than having somebody who's taking a very specific course within high school. Are you comfortable writing? Are you comfortable speaking and presentation? These can be developed, also. It doesn't have to be an innate already ability for you.

  It also depends on the area itself. I mean, you could look at some of these things that you may think that…So I work in business analytics and a lot of that is more data-oriented, computer-driven. So maybe you're thinking that I don't have to have strong communication skills, because I'm just going to be working with that in the back room. Well, in the end, if you want to have any impact upon an organization with an analysis you've done, you have to be able to explain it, you have to be able to communicate to sell to somebody who doesn't understand what you're doing. That's just as important.

  Those communication skills that way, working on writing well, comfortable with oral communication. I would still say that especially now — even if you don't think you're a math person, maybe you don't want to do accounting, or finance, or analytics, despite that — whatever area you're going to get in, with the proliferation of data and analytics and AI and everything else now, having some core mathematical skills and being able to problem solve is critically important. Those are things we like to see.

  In the end, curiosity and the generic grit. Somebody who's going to try and solve a problem, is not going to give up on it, keep working through, is not afraid to seek help out for things that are doing and likes challenges, and that's really what we're looking for.

  [0:22:32] BT: Yeah. I think all of our guests from all the different disciplines have said that exact same thing. What they're looking for is curiosity, communication skills, even writing goes into every single discipline. For those who are listening, make sure you're cultivating those skills.

  This whole episode could serve as a pitch for wide management, I think. But I'd love to close with your best pitch for why students should be exploring this field.

  [0:22:55] MB: For me, at least, it's a never-ending field. We’re a world of possibilities. You can take it where you want to go. The world is run by organizations. The more you know about them, the more about what and why the world. If your argument is, “I want to improve the world, I want to make the world better.” I would argue that to be an agent of change, you have to understand organizations.

  [0:23:15] BHA: It all starts with working hard in high school and cultivating some of those skills. Thank you so much for being here on today's episode.

  [0:23:22] MB: My pleasure.

  [0:23:23] BT: Thanks to everyone out there for listening. If you're a fan of the podcast, please take a moment to rate, subscribe, and share this episode with the students and families in your life.

  [0:23:30] BHA: We'll be back with another new episode in a few weeks. In the meantime, send your questions, comments, and episode ideas to podcast@bucknell.edu. We read every note you send.

  [0:23:40] BT: Finally, you're invited to follow Bucknell on your favorite social media apps. Just look for @Bucknell U on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok. You can also follow our student-run Instagram account, which is @iamraybucknell, where you will meet plenty of our management students.

  [0:23:54] BHA: Until next time, keep reaching for your dreams and your dream school.

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