Education: A Safe Investment in Troubled Economic Times

By Meg Barone

The U.S. and world economies have taken more hits than a lightweight fighter in a heavyweight match, more dives than an Olympic swimmer in training.

Even after the downward spiral stops, the course is corrected, and confidence is restored in the world financial system, the effects of the plunging stock market and credit crisis will linger and take their toll. But businesses cannot grind to a halt and wait for better bullish times. As the value of companies’ assets drop, there is one investment managers can continue to make that will maximize their companies’ overall worth.

Investing in their employees can help business leaders navigate through this challenging time and set themselves up to hit the ground running when the world’s economies stabilize and again become engines for growth.

Education, and in particular online learning, provides a mechanism to continuously improve the most important aspect of any business – human capital,” said Cynthia Gallatin, associate vice president for Quinnipiac University’s Online Programs. “Your most important asset is your people. In order to remain competitive and rise above economic challenges, businesses need to have an educated and talented workforce.”

As a nonprofit, higher education institution for more than 75 years, Quinnipiac strives to prepare the next generation of leaders for a very competitive global market. Online learning provides businesses with the ability to retain employees and develop them in order to compete, Gallatin said. Companies can still maintain the productivity of their workforce while simultaneously educating them, she said.

The online degree programs have the same academic rigor as the on-campus courses, Gallatin said. Programs include a BS and MS in Organizational Leadership, master’s-level programs in Occupational Therapy and Interactive Communications, and, beginning in the 2009 Fall semester, an MBA (pending state approval).

The MS in Organizational Leadership degree program has several tracks, or professional focus areas, that build on leadership foundation courses and provide expertise for those seeking to enhance their leadership skills in four disciplines, including human resources and information technology. The program provides students with key leadership skill sets that are required by organizations seeking to succeed in today’s ever-changing, economically volatile and competitive global environment, said Maxine Lentz, dean of Quinnipiac’s College of Professional Studies.

The courses in Quinnipiac University’s traditional and online degree programs are not just theoretical. They include authentic workplace examples and offer real-world learning that focuses on the educational competencies individuals need in their professions.

“We develop leaders; we develop talent. The whole curriculum is project based and application based, and that’s why we require completion of a capstone project for each degree program because it is an application of their skills that they have accumulated throughout the entire program,” Lentz said.

Students participate in a 14-week capstone project in which teams of about six students serve, with faculty supervision, as consultants to Connecticut businesses and nonprofit organizations. They are charged with analyzing a challenge facing a company – as identified by company officials, creating a solution and presenting their conclusions to company representatives.

“It’s a typical corporate stakeholder meeting. You’re presenting to upper management,” said Pamela Camire, a technical business executive adviser for Blue Cross Blue Shield who graduated from the CPS program in May 2007 with a MS in Organizational Leadership.

“Frequently, the projects that are undertaken in the capstone course reveal the need for effective talent development. Quite often, in the needs analysis stage, students will uncover underlying talent management/development issues. This gives them an opportunity to not only work on a growing concern for today’s organizations but learn from their experience and apply it to their work environments,” said Cheryl Harrison, executive director of the program.

The capstone serves as an example of how Quinnipiac University incorporates consulting and project-based learning into the curriculum, Gallatin said.

Harrison, who initiated the capstones in 2005, said students leave the program with a sense of accomplishment they could not attain by writing a master’s thesis or taking a final exam.

Projects have students addressing issues associated with leadership including organizational culture, human performance management, business process, communications, strategic planning and effective project management.

Recent capstone teams developed a plan to enhance the human resources function for the Clifford Beers Clinic, the oldest outpatient behavioral health clinic in the United States; created a manual outlining responsibilities of board members for Tower One, a senior housing complex in New Haven, Conn.; and for Kaman Aerospace in Middletown, Conn., they developed an Enterprise Risk Management template for the division that manufactures fuses for missiles.

The Kaman task was rigorous, though, ultimately, not out of the range of students’ abilities.

“We weren’t experts in manufacturing, but with what we learned in our program, we were able to pull together and accomplish the goal. The scope of the project was definitely more challenging than what we originally expected in that it required us to gain a greater knowledge of a process that very few of us had any knowledge of doing, and then trying to understand the context in which we were going to use that knowledge in order to fulfill the scope of the clients’ project,” said Kurtis M. Peterson, who received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Quinnipiac University, including an MS in Organizational Leadership in 2007.

Jack Berquist, Kaman’s vice president of procurement, said the students came together as a team as will be required of them in the work place when facing difficult and unexpected tasks.

“Through the use of the capstone courses, students are able to bring several heads around a table that have expertise in different areas, whether it’s financial, human resources, operational, management. All of these people are coming in the classroom with their own professional background and experience that allows them to look at problems through different lenses,” said Ken Boutelle, director of admissions for online programs.

When people look from all these different angles and perspectives, it allows them to flesh out the issues and detect problems that can impact the company operationally and financially, and before implementing anything. “It’s always harder to go back after you’ve implemented something across a large organization and try to fix it than doing it right the first time,” Boutelle said.

The current global economic crisis is a prime example of a problem that was allowed to fester unchecked until it necessitated emergency measures.

Had financial institutions and governments analyzed the economy as students analyze a company in a capstone project, financial experts could have caught the problem sooner, said Boutelle.

Quinnipiac University’s traditional and online programs provide flexible scheduling, convenient seven-week academic terms and courses that are either completely online or in a “blended” format, combining online learning with three half-day Saturday on-campus meetings per term.

“We cater to adult learners by offering flexible formats for individuals that can’t physically come to campus and can’t drop their current work and family responsibilities,” Gallatin said.