ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, November 19, 1996 TAG: 9611190070
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LITTLE ROCK, ARK.
SOURCE: EDITH PAAL ASSOCIATED PRESS
Graduate business students in Fred Talbott's advanced presentations course are expected to go out with a laugh. Their final assignment is to give a stand-up comedy routine in front of their classmates.
Sound tough? That's the whole idea, said Talbott, a professor of communications at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.
``If you can do that, you can master any form of speaking,'' he said.
Comedy is one tool business schools use to teach their master's degree students communication skills. Educators say they recognize the growing importance of communication in the information age and are adjusting their course offerings accordingly.
But teachers and business people disagree on whether schools are placing enough emphasis on communication training.
Survey after survey shows employers rank communication skills high on the list of things they look for in new hires, said Paul Argenti, a professor at the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth.
Yet a recent study found that schools aren't moving fast enough in adding communication training to their course work, said David Pincus, director of the MBA program at the University of Arkansas.
Communication training includes basic skills such as writing memos and other correspondence and giving presentations. It also can cover strategy topics such as persuasion and how to deal with the media.
About half the 215 MBA programs that responded to a survey sent out by Pincus and others require students to take a management communication course, the study found. Three out of 10 recommend students take an elective communication-related course.
While a few schools have had communication training for decades, many have added it just in the last five years or so, Pincus said.
``The very best of this country's schools have both required and elective curricula in management communication and highly competent people to teach in them,'' said James O'Rourke, an associate professor and director of the Eugene B. Fanning Center for Business Communication at Notre Dame. ``The story is mixed elsewhere.''
Business people say good communication skills may not win that first job, but they'll help an employee get that first promotion.
Entry-level accountants with good technical skills may get hired even if they don't communicate well, because other people they work with can handle presentations, said Jim Verney, former chief operating officer of Creative Culinary Concepts, which owns restaurants.
``But if they don't get better in communication skills, then I think their upward ability is limited,'' Verney said. ``The ability to communicate your ideas clearly and succinctly is crucial the higher up you go in a corporation.''
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. David Pincus, director of the MBA program at theby CNBUniversity of Arkansas, speaks to his students on crisis management
recently. color.