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33 BizEd September/October 2014 DOORWAY: PESH KOVA/TH I N KSTOCK; WOMAN: 4X6/TH I N KSTOCK W hether they're con- ducting workshops for practitioners, serving on boards, or consulting on commercializa- tion projects, business professors find many ways to interact with business leaders in the community. In fact, faculty engagement is so important to schools that AACSB International has launched an ini- tiative to explore the many ways it's accomplished. Earlier this year, AACSB's new Business Practices Council surveyed a handful of member schools to ask how fac- ulty engagement is encouraged on their campuses, and many of their responses were shared at AACSB's Deans Conference in February. While the 11 responding schools detailed many different ways that their faculty engaged with the com- munity, two major beneficiaries quickly emerged: students and soci- ety. Here, we take a closer look at how faculty engagement can reap rich rewards on both levels. Enhancing the Student Experience When professors interact with stakeholders outside the campus, they connect with businesses, non- profits, governmental agencies, and specialty organizations. Not only do they enrich their own research, but they often bring their findings into the classroom—or bring their students with them into the real world. Schools shared some of the following examples of how their faculty are achieving these goals: ■ At Washington State Univer- sity in Pullman, College of Business faculty collaborate with executives from a senior living company on a course that deals with a growing sector of business: seniors living outside of nursing homes. Execu- tives from senior care companies within the state serve as instruc- tors, teaching students the business of running a retirement community. The class also includes a three-day field trip to Seattle that gives stu- dents an up-close view of senior housing operations. Each of the sponsoring companies provides a US$2,500 scholarship to an excep- tional student; the companies also offer paid summer internships. ■ At McCoy College of Business Administration at Texas State Uni- versity-San Marcos, an HR faculty member was a founding member and president of the local chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management. The professor's involvement with the organization allows faculty to invite select HR professionals to speak in class- rooms or to student clubs. ■ At American University's Kogod School of Business in Washington, D.C., executive- in-residence Jill Klein annually oversees the Women on Corporate Boards research study for the non- profit Women in Technology, also based in D.C. This initiative has allowed her to expose students to the value of research: For the past three years, Klein has guided MBA students through the process of researching the gender makeup of public corporate boards in Vir- ginia, Maryland, and D.C., then compiling the results into a formal report for the nonprofit. ■ At the University of Baltimore's Merrick School of Business in Maryland, the Social Enterprise and Entrepreneurship course is led by senior lecturer and business leader John C. Weiss; it's composed of UB students and representatives from local nonprofits. After students spend a semester learning innova- tive ways to generate both financial and social returns, they end the class by making a final presentation intended to create a new nonprofit. ■ The Merrick School also has developed a partnership with the NASA Goddard Space Center that allows University of Baltimore students to analyze the commercial viability of new Goddard technolo- gies. Students gain real-world expe- rience in commercialization as they identify potential applications and markets for technologies that are raw, patented, or patent-pending. ■ Similarly, faculty at the Uni- versity of Connecticut's School of Business in Storrs have partnered with IBM on a program in which students devise ways to commer- cialize the vast amounts of data collected by the Watson computing system. One team focused on the pharmaceutical industry, specifi- cally examining how drugs meant to treat one condition might be repurposed to treat other condi- When faculty engage with the community, two major beneficiaries emerge: students and society.