Dive Brief:
- The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business recently recognized 35 programs for their creativity in teaching and learning approaches.
- Schools like Virginia Commonwealth University were honored for its artist-in-residence program designed to expose business students to creative problem-solving strategies, and Sakarya University which will develop analytical systems to match job posting websites with institutional strengths to encourage post-graduate employment.
- The initiatives aim to create engagement between disciplines, with established businesses, and for diverse communities through using the arts, lecture series and other non-traditional methods of promoting business education. Winners were selected from business schools from 33 countries worldwide.
Dive Insight:
Community colleges have pioneered this kind of collaboration for workforce development, but asking faculty and students to visualize ways in which business education directly translates into marketability and professional development is something four-year institutions can explore in greater depth, and charge deans and chairpersons to find grants and private support which can sustain the programming over extended periods of time.
The model of encouraging innovation among faculty and students is not something that is new to higher education, but the concept of interdisciplinary connections with private industry is something towards which all institution types can work. By spurring creative ways in which colleges can help students to create or find jobs, and forcing conversations about how liberal arts can improve STEM industrial outcomes, colleges are better positioned to promote and to find funding for research that is new and more likely to attract support.