THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 19, 1994 TAG: 9409150346
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BUSINESS WEEKLY STAFF
LENGTH: Long : 245 lines
J. Taylor Sims has come to Norfolk with a mission.
The new dean of the College of Business and Public Administration at Old Dominion University, he has a clear goal: Stabilize the business school and make it work more closely with Virginia companies and organizations.
It's a tall order.
Hard times have diminished the business school budget and enrollment. And there's a notion afoot that the B-school is a step behind the changes on the front lines confronted by corporate managers and executives.
While it sounds like the business school's affairs are an internal matter, what happens on the campus of Old Dominion will bear on all of Hampton Roads.
If money, energy and ideas are the fuel necessary to expand and diversify the region's economy, industrial analysts say, so are education and leadership.
And that's where Old Dominion appears to play a large role. Said Sims:
``Because of what's happened so rapidly in the international economy, and the dynamic nature of the U.S. economy in terms of downsizing, it's necessary for us to reach out to the business community and find a way for them to react immediately with the business school. We have to ask, `What skills do we need to equip our students with?' ''
Sims said he intends to fine-tune the various programs within the business school. He foresees more internships, pairing students with companies.
And classwork in some courses would correspond more closely with what's happening inside companies. For example, marketing students would work more closely with the entertainment and hospitality industries to increase tourism in Hampton Roads.
Moreover, Sims wants to raise cash among companies to finance further improvements in the school.
``I bring a lot of experience in terms of dealing with the kinds of changes we're talking about,'' he said.
Sims has traveled like a military man. Indeed, as a Marine artillery captain in the early 1960s, he served a short stint in Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base.
Born in Texas in 1939 and raised in Lubbock, he received graduate and undergraduate degrees from Texas Tech, went into the service and wound up in 1964 in Chicago working for Market Research Corp. of America.
With a doctorate from the University of Illinois in hand in 1970, he started teaching at the University of South Carolina. After three years in the classrooms, he became associate business school dean at Wright State University near Dayton, Ohio, and then business school dean at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill.
In 1985, he went to Memphis State University as business school dean and in 1990 returned to Ohio, becoming the Cleveland State University provost, an administrative position dealing with the faculty and the curriculum. For a year he was the acting president.
Upon coming to Hampton Roads this summer with his wife, JoAnn, a music professor, Sims said he noticed the different edge in the area's economy.
Cleveland had developed a high-tech profile to go with its manufacturing base, while Memphis was a medical and freight distribution hub. The Norfolk area appeared to be a shipping and service center and a gateway for international trade.
What bound the three cities and the universities in them together was a common thread.
In each city what's called an urban university was emerging. Just as the land grant colleges improved the rural reaches of the farm states, bringing science and the arts to the plains decades ago, downtown colleges were honing their own mission in the late century. They were trying to improve the cities. It was a mission that Sims readily accepts.
``What I mean when I talk about an urban university and an urban mission is outreach, outreach into the community,'' Sims said.
Recently, Sims discussed his ideas for the business school with Business Weekly staff members. Here's the interview, edited for brevity.
Business Weekly: What's the future for business schools?
Sims: Business schools have suffered the same type of downsizing over the past five years that corporations have. When the shakeout is complete, the schools will be leaner, meaner and able to do more with less.
Over the past five years, and this is nationwide, business schools have lost over 35 percent of their enrollment. There are many reasons.
Corporations are hiring fewer people. They want more generalists. But the big reason is demographics.
The student pool has been declining. Luckily in Virginia it's supposed to go up by the year 2000.
The task ahead for business schools is to revamp curriculum, to meet the needs of industries, both nonprofit and profit, and to become more involved with the real world.
We need to be more interactive than we have been. So ODU is developing an internship requirement. We have a big job ahead of us. It's not just this business school. It's everywhere.
Business Weekly: How do you bring real-world experience into the school?
Sims: One method is the team concept. I see our students being organized into small teams to solve corporate problems. We want to install it on the undergraduate level.
We're already doing it at the master's degree level. Students in one class are organized into teams of MBAs to solve an actual marketing problem for corporations.
Business Weekly: How does the school actually bring students and corporations together?
Sims: My predecessor, Bill Wallace, built relationships with the community. We have an advisory council of top executives. They make a lot of things happen.
I'm busy developing relationships with people from throughout those organizations from the bottom to the top. That will take some time.
The philosophy I have for the business school is no different from that of any professional school. I want to make us more like other professional schools.
Take the medical school model. You have the people doing theoretical research and teaching, and you have the people involved in hands-on activities.
For example, doctors and students work hands-on with patients. Law schools and schools of education have done a good job with that hands-on approach, too.
But I don't think business schools have done a very good job of it. We've backed off.
The model we will develop will involve a lot of interaction with executives.
Business Weekly: Why have business schools been reluctant to adopt the hands-on model?
Sims: Look at history. Business schools started with the hands-on model. And then they felt it didn't have legitimacy in the academic community.
People in arts and letters and humanities called us trade schools. So we backed away and developed the quantitative methods for running business organizations.
But we went too far in that direction. Now we need more balance. The professional-school model is the approach we can take.
In some areas in the business school, we're already on that course. Our accounting faculty already interact with accounting firms. Our finance faculty is doing a very good job of that, too. But I think that very few people know what we are doing.
Business Weekly: How does the faculty feel about the hands-on approach?
Sims: They think it's a great idea, but they don't know how to implement it. And they don't want to swing too far the other way.
Business Weekly: Will you swing the school, to use your phrase, too far the other way?
Sims: I want to build on the faculty's strengths. If you were on the faculty, I wouldn't try to change what you do. I would tell you to take what you do and build around it.
That means we would bring in some practitioners to work with us. We already do that in some areas.
Now, if you're a purely theoretical professor, say a computer scientist working on a top theory or an econometric model, fine, you do that. But over here, Professor X might be working on purely applied econometric stuff that ties into the community. We'll try to get some interaction with the community there.
Business Weekly: Let's say a company learns its sales to its top customer will shrink. The company has a real problem. They have to find new markets. How can the Throughout the business school, we've got to become more service-oriented. Teaching, research, service - that's the holy triad. J. Taylor Sims business school help them?
Sims: We're easy to access, but we need to publicize what we're doing.
We have a group of centers, whose operations already interact with the business community. These centers include global studies, real estate, maritime industries, the bureau of business and economic research.
And the MBA program already is tied into state economic development.
Business Weekly: What do you actually do when a company comes to you with a problem?
Sims: I would be the first point of access. I'd make sure they found what they needed.
I'd meet them, bring in professors or the directors of our centers directly involved in their field.
We'd talk about what would fit. Then they'd contact the students.
In the MBA program as I mentioned, we have an organized class once a year that takes on specific projects.
But throughout the business school, we've got to become more service-oriented. Teaching, research, service - that's the holy triad.
The theoretical approach which the schools have used in the past several years has really kept things in the teaching, research modes. I want to balance that out. I'll call it the urban university model, or the metropolitan university model.
You can look at it as the vision for what the total university in an urban setting should do - it's total involvement in the community, and in terms of the various programs you should have.
We used to have a saying that whatever your program is, if it's not involved in the community in some way, it's not a necessary program for the university.
Business Weekly: While business has become more innovative, there's a sense that business schools are behind the curve. Can the urban-university model help the school catch up?
Sims: The only way we can catch up is to give the customer or the company what they need. We have to bring them in and let them tell us what they really need.
The urban model is talking about developing a true marriage between both profit and nonprofit organizations and the business schools and the other schools at the university.
I'd like to see us do what engineering schools have done. They have true co-op internships. Most of their students are involved in the real workplace as quickly as possible.
Business Weekly: Is there one program, one niche, you want the business school to be known for?
Sims: First, we have to move back to very strong undergraduate education. The niche we would like to be known for is that we prepare our undergraduates to make an immediate contribution to the business community.
That's a simple statement, but it involves a good knowledge of international affairs, a good background of all the basics of business and that includes all the communication skills.
We still hear that graduates can't write; they can't speak. The theme at ODU is that we prepare people to contribute to the global marketplace.
I think we start to do that by developing relationships with the regional business firms and nonprofit organizations. We find out what their needs are and what they're doing in the international marketplace.
And then we need to have a very good MBA program. We'll probably maintain a small doctoral program. We plan to open the doctoral program to more part-time students, including military personnel.
Business Weekly: There's a sense that ODU students graduate without a solid knowledge of computers. Is the school doing anything about this?
Sims: We require every student to become really immersed in computers. We're developing a state-of-the-art computer lab with our management information systems department. That's certainly one of the areas I'll focus on. ILLUSTRATION: On the cover: Photo by PAUL AIKEN
[Color Photo by] BILL TIERNAN
ABOVE: J. Taylor Sims on the Old Dominion campus. Sims must contend
with a declining enrollment and budget in the business school as
well as hard times universitywide.
ODU instructor Cheryl Hinds, left, helps accounting student Agnes
Goodrich. Hinds was teaching a lab class for Introduction to
Programming and Computer-based Information Systems.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
The staff of Hampton Roads Business Weekly would like to hear
your opinion about the changes proposed for the business school at
Old Dominion University. We'll publish comments in an upcoming
edition. Please dial INFOLINE at 640-5555 and press HRBW (4729).
Tell us your name, city and telephone number and then tell us your
opinion.
BUSINESS SCHOOL BLUES
Graphic
JANET SHAUGHNESSY/Staff
SOURCE: Old Dominion University
[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]
KEYWORDS: OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY PROFILE J. TAYLOR SIMS INTERVIEW
by CNB