Exploring Interdisciplinary Learning and Personal Growth with Dr. Ana Rosado Feger

Welcome to another captivating episode of The Leader Lounge, where Dr. Amy Taylor Bianco engages in a fascinating discussion with special guest Dr. Ana Rosado Feger. Together, they delve into the realm of interdisciplinary education and individual development. Dr. Feger, a distinguished figure in her field, shares her insights on the value of collaboration across disciplines and the transformative potential of a holistic learning journey.  

Join us for an insightful exploration of the unique academic environment at Ohio University's College of Business, where both faculty and students are empowered to cultivate their passions and shape personalized educational experiences. From innovative certificate programs to fostering meaningful connections, discover how Dr. Feger's perspectives contribute to Ohio University's commitment to pioneering education. 

For more information about the Ohio University MSM Program, click this link!

Check out the Robert D. Walter Center for Strategic Leadership program here.

OnBrand Podcast Studios produced this episode. Special thanks to Audio Engineer Alex Winnenberg, Producer Nick Winnenberg, and Marketing Specialist Cori Stokes.

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Transcript

UNKNOWN: 0:00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 0:14

Welcome to the Leader Lounge. We're here at the Robert D. Walter Center for Strategic Leadership in the College of Business at Ohio University. And I'm here with co-host Nick Winnenberg. And I'm Dr. Amy Taylor Bianco. Thank you. And we are here with Dr. Ana Rosado-Fager, who chairs our management department here in the College of Business.

SPEAKER_03: 0:37

That's fantastic. And just to kind of go into your background a little bit, what got you here? What was the past experience?

SPEAKER_01: 0:42

Honestly, I can say I had never heard of Ohio University until I signed up to do an interview, at which point I looked it up. But I will also say that when I stepped on campus, because I was invited here, It felt like home immediately.

SPEAKER_03: 1:00

It's crazy. It's something

SPEAKER_01: 1:01

about it. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is. And it was Martin Luther King Day, so nobody was here. It was winter and it was snowing. And you still came? And I was coming from South Carolina. Oh my gosh. Yeah, and grew up in Puerto Rico, so this is not... The school was technically closed because it was Martin Luther King Day, but somebody messed up when they were doing the arrangements. But I said, I have my plane ticket. I have everything already. all set, and they said, well, come anyway. And people came in on their day off to do the interview and pull off the campus visit. It was cold. Oh, wait, the OU Inn had no water.

SPEAKER_03: 1:40

That cold?

SPEAKER_01: 1:41

So it was cold. No, it wasn't cold. We were

SPEAKER_00: 1:46

so excited to have

SPEAKER_01: 1:47

you. We used to have a lot of instances of boil orders because we are an older, small city with lots of infrastructure.

SPEAKER_03: 1:58

That was such a nice way to

SPEAKER_01: 1:59

say it. So, yeah, that's all been fixed. That was a lot of the reinvestment money went into that. But they were on a boil order and they were just handling it so well and I was so surprised that they just rolled with it. I would later find out that's because they did it just about once every couple of weeks.

SPEAKER_03: 2:19

I just want to clarify. This could be on or off record depending on when we start the podcast episode. You came to Ohio University in the middle of winter. No one was here when you got here. Faculty had to come in to speak with you and the water wasn't And you're like, yeah, I should work

SPEAKER_01: 2:35

here. This is where I need to be, yeah. Why? Because it's home. Because everybody I spoke to, even though they were here on their day off, this was where they wanted to be. Because everybody that I interacted with, it was just that kind of place. I was looking for a place to stay. I was not looking for a place to be for a year or two and move on. I had small children at the time. I wasn't going to be moving them around. I did not have to leave South Carolina. I had a job offer from a school 20 miles from my house. But this was it. I came here and this was it. Immediately. I accepted. My husband had never stepped foot in the place.

SPEAKER_03: 3:21

I thought your husband was like, this seems great.

SPEAKER_01: 3:22

Oh, that's a whole other story. Is that a different podcast? We could do a

SPEAKER_03: 3:25

different one on that

SPEAKER_01: 3:26

one. Because we came house hunting... in spring and I had already accepted the job I wanted him to be here and see it but we could never make it work because he was working full time and Christopher was in school and We came on a weekend, and I have no idea. OU has all the special weekends, parents weekend, fathers weekend, moms weekend. I don't know what weekend it was, but it was one of them. There were no hotels. We ended up at a hotel just out of town in not a great area. We saw... 27 houses in three days. And we had the seven year old with us. So the first two days, it was cold, it was raining. We had given, it was 2008, the real estate market was all over the place. We knew we had a house that we had to sell, so our price range was really broad. And... It was crazy. The first night, we got here the first night because Christopher was in school, so we waited until he was done, drove up. And my husband looked at me like I was insane. Yeah. What have you done? Saturday, we looked at a whole bunch of houses. There was one house that we kind of liked, and they were having an open house the next day. And that's the house we live in right now. We put in an offer. But Sunday was hilarious because the clouds broke. The sun was out. It was pleasant all of a sudden. We had avalanche pizza, and that was it.

SPEAKER_03: 5:10

So when you were a little girl, did you always dream of being in academia?

SPEAKER_01: 5:13

So I am originally an engineer. I have an engineering degree. I worked in manufacturing and one of the things that I wanted to do was move from engineering to plant manager. So that was my original career path trajectory. I had zero business knowledge at the time. I had my engineering degree but no business knowledge. So I applied to a master's program and got through that, the timing was interesting. I graduated right after 9-11. Literally 9-11 was September. I graduated in December. It was not a great time to try to find a job when you were in manufacturing. There was a lot of uncertainty. I had had the chance to do a doctoral seminar with the professor who would eventually become my dissertation chair. And I interviewed a couple of places. We had an infant at the time. There was nothing that was really calling to me except going back and getting to be in the doctoral program, get to that higher level. I come from a family of teachers. My grandmother was a teacher. My mother's still a professor, even though she's 86.

SPEAKER_03: 6:36

Oh my gosh, shout out to your mom.

SPEAKER_01: 6:39

I keep telling her she needs to retire, and she says she's going to, and then she says, after I teach this class.

SPEAKER_03: 6:46

And that was 16 classes ago.

SPEAKER_01: 6:47

That was a lot of classes ago. But it called me. The teaching calls to me. I enjoy teaching. I enjoy interacting with students. I enjoy working with people to get them to what they want to be doing. So I ended my doctoral program, had a connection to the state of Ohio. My husband is a graduate of that school that's up the road that we don't talk about.

SPEAKER_03: 7:15

Which one? There's three.

SPEAKER_01: 7:16

So, you know, the big red and gray one. Oh, no,

SPEAKER_03: 7:18

I don't like that

SPEAKER_01: 7:19

one. Keep going.

UNKNOWN: 7:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 7:22

So there was an opportunity to do a conference interview with this place called Ohio University that I had not heard of, but we clicked. There were three faculty members there, and we clicked. It was like talking to your old friends and I just met them five minutes ago. So

SPEAKER_03: 7:40

I

SPEAKER_01: 7:41

was very excited to get a campus visit, and that was it.

SPEAKER_03: 7:45

And then we can fill

SPEAKER_01: 7:46

in

SPEAKER_03: 7:47

the rest. Right, and the entire conversation is that. So I do want to clarify too, because I'm picking up an interesting trend, or at least this could be a coincidence. Were you there when, were you one of the people that she originally talked to? No. No? Oh, okay. Not at

SPEAKER_01: 7:59

all. The three people that I spoke to have actually retired since.

SPEAKER_00: 8:03

Oh, okay. So it

SPEAKER_01: 8:04

was Faisal, Ken, and Red. Okay. They were the ops group.

SPEAKER_03: 8:10

Oh, okay,

SPEAKER_01: 8:10

gotcha.

SPEAKER_00: 8:10

So Anna's also our first female faculty in operations and supply chain.

SPEAKER_03: 8:16

That's fantastic. Go me. And that's what you do now then, right? So what's your major programming perspective? That's the worst way to say it. Let me ask that question again. So what's your day-to-day with OU then? No, why can't I ask that question? The Benadryl's kicking in, man. All right, so what's your typical day-to-day look like in this program?

SPEAKER_01: 8:35

So I do a number of things. The Department of Management is really interesting in that we have five different disciplines that are in it. So a lot of what I'm doing is actually operations management for our department. I do scheduling. I do load balancing. I do forecasting of students and how many sections we're going to need and manage a department that currently has 42 people. Oh my gosh. Including me. So it's 41 people worth of schedules. We call it fun. Excitement. I work with students. I Mostly teach at the MBA level right now because I do so many other things on the side. So I teach some undergrads mostly and I teach the operations and supply chain class and work with faculty on curriculum, work with them on their programs, work with the university on personnel and projections and students and facilities and any number of things.

SPEAKER_00: 9:55

Recruitment, you're just on the presidential search committee. Recruitment, yes. I do a lot of

SPEAKER_01: 10:00

hiring. I was part of our presidential search committee. It was the most well-functioning committee that I've been on. 16 people who are all on task and aligned.

SPEAKER_03: 10:14

It

SPEAKER_01: 10:16

was a sight to see. It was a really great experience. We are really happy with our new president and looking forward to what she does with OU.

SPEAKER_03: 10:29

So you do a lot is my major takeaway. I do a lot. And what I love too is it really showcases how wide of a breadth there is the management department. Because coming from your perspective with the supply chain, the operations, and coming to you from the people side, and then tying in the different programs that are offered at the university, there's so much potential for students that want to get into the management field here. Was that by design when that was being developed, or was that something you kind of fell into when we started picking up the faculty members in your department?

SPEAKER_01: 10:58

That somewhat preceded me. We have grown since. It was interesting because... it's not the norm. Usually we have departments that are single disciplines, but it was actually similar to where I came from. So my graduate program in the Department of Management, there were also several disciplines in there. So for me, this was normal. We have distinct but complementary disciplines in the department so we have business law and we have international business and we have strategy and we have organizational behavior and hr and ops and we all work off each other. And so it allows us to create, for example, in HR, it allows us to create a certificate in a program that has the legal aspects, and we have people with decades of experience in the legal field who teach those classes. We also have people who teach the, The motivation and the organizational behavior, we have people to cover that. We come at it with solid expertise from every direction, but we also work very well together.

SPEAKER_03: 12:13

And I think that's what makes it so rare is you have the collaboration. Because typically when you see programs like this, there's some competition and there's some... tearing each other down to build yourselves up. And I've never noticed that at all from working in the department. So that takes a lot of oversight from you, right? Because you are the one who's setting that culture. Has it always been like that?

SPEAKER_01: 12:33

Since I have been here, it's very collaborative. And I think it is a hallmark of the college itself that a lot of the things that I liked and that drew me here were you can walk around the halls and there is no... finance hall or accounting hall or management hall. Everybody's all blended in together. We're all interacting and we are all here because we choose to be here. And that's really important. We choose to be here. We choose to be in the institution that we are. We are here because we like teaching. Teaching is a huge part of what we do. And so there's a lot of collaboration for our teaching because our focus is on the students. So I came from a research university at the grad and the undergrad level. And at my undergrad level, we barely saw the faculty because their focus was heavily on research, and that is what they did. Our focus is on students, and our focus is on the undergrads and the master students. And it's a different type of engagement on that level. That's a different type of engagement with curriculum. It's a different type of engagement when you're building programs. It's a different type of engagement when you're thinking about not just what are the classes that are in the program, but what is the other What's the rest of the experiences? We have it on the outside of our wall. Experience is required. It's really big. I mean, that thing is like 40 feet. Can't miss that thing is 40 feet tall. But that's who we are. We are about figuring out what you need as a student and what you want to do. I was director of the MBA program for a bit and people would ask me, well, what companies do our alumni I go to. And what I would say is we don't, that is not a goal.

SPEAKER_03: 14:30

All of them?

SPEAKER_01: 14:31

What kind of questions? Well, we don't, my goal is not to put you on a path to get somewhere. My goal is to talk to you to say, what do you want to do, Nick? And what are the things that are going to help you? What experiences, what classes, what programs, what certificates are going to help you get to where you want to go? So they're all very individual paths. You get support all along the way, but the goal is not to funnel people into anything. The goal is, What do you want to do and how do we help you get there?

SPEAKER_03: 15:03

And I think from a student perspective, that's what made this so attractive. And I've talked about this in past episodes too, but with the MSM program, having the ability to have stackable certificates and kind of tailoring what I want my education to be focused on as a theme versus as a functional role, like I'm going to be an accountant, instead allows you to explore so many different facets of yourself and really follow that passion, that drive. So in my mind, I have never found another program like that. That's unique. But it also says exactly what you're saying. It's not about I'm going to help you go work as a CFO at a company or I'm going to go help you get in the door at P&G. It's I'm going to develop you as a professional so you can be what you want to be. So when you were designing the framework for this thing, because obviously you were involved in the BA, you were involved in the SM, you were involved in the management side, what was the aha moment for you? Or has that always been a part of the culture here?

UNKNOWN: 15:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 15:58

So the MSM is a new beast. It's not only a new beast for us, it's a new beast all the way through. We were pioneers. We had to explain it at every approval level along the way because nobody had ever seen this type of program. Really what we were doing is to say there are some people who want a traditional MBA experience and there are some people who need something different. So I take myself as an example. I had all of the quantitative skills that I really needed or wanted. I have an engineering

SPEAKER_05: 16:36

degree.

SPEAKER_01: 16:38

But what I did not get from my engineering experience or really even a whole heck of a lot from my master's experience was the people side. And how do you motivate, work with people, be able to bring out What is it they want and how do you connect them with it? So I see my role a lot as a manager as a connector. I connect people with experiences and opportunities, which means I also need to be a communicator because I need to know what is it that you want to do so that then when something floats past my desk, I can say, oh, I know exactly who can do that better. that side is not as easy to get.

SPEAKER_03: 17:25

Right. Oh, it's because it takes individual attention. It's not a process, right?

SPEAKER_01: 17:30

And it's really a skill that's going to help people in every walk of life. Sure.

SPEAKER_00: 17:38

And it's very deliberate, right? You just presented about this at DSI. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 17:44

So we're talking about how our program is about you learn skills, you take classes, but it's also about relationships and how do you build relationships, professional relationships across disciplines, across programs. So we see, it's really cool to see that on an online program, you actually build relationships and friendships in a cohort that never sees each other except virtually once a year or, you know, in.

SPEAKER_03: 18:17

Well, I think it all comes down to the extracurriculars are offered the program. The fact that we have Fireside with MSM, the fact that you do LDC for both the MBAs and the MSM and bring them all together into one collaborative space, that's unique, right? And I think that leveraging that is going to get us to the next step for both those programs.

SPEAKER_01: 18:34

And I think that we have some fantastic students because they are students who are looking for that Right.

SPEAKER_03: 18:43

Well, it's a cart and a horse, right? If you build it, they will come. So, I mean, I think it goes full circle. But looking at your experience with the management department, what's it look like different? Because you've had different experience, too, both in the professional world. When you came here, did you notice those trends that we were just talking about?

SPEAKER_00: 18:56

Oh, absolutely. I came here kind of, you know, I'm much like Ana from, you know, a great background experience, R1 school, which this is now an R1 school, but really wanting to teach as well as research. Right. That's not always the case in places, and some of my mentors did not necessarily think that was a good idea, but I came here. I had

SPEAKER_01: 19:22

a really cool experience when I was interviewing because somebody heard where I was interviewing and going, and they were very excited because they were like, oh, Harvard on the Hawking. I'm like, I went to MIT, so hmm. For

SPEAKER_03: 19:36

first off, right.

SPEAKER_01: 19:37

But yeah, I really enjoy it here, and it is a place. that the name is recognizable, people know who it is, but it's not about... The name only.

SPEAKER_03: 19:48

It's the grit. There's something different about Bobcats.

SPEAKER_01: 19:52

There really is. There really is. They are so much fun to work with because they're willing to work hard.

SPEAKER_03: 19:59

Right. We should bottle it and sell it to other schools.

SPEAKER_01: 20:01

No, no, no. We really should keep it and hang on. We hand that out on orientation day. It's like, here's your bottle of Bobcat grit. Go ahead. Just drink it. Just throw it back. It doesn't taste great, but let me tell you. It's great Kool-Aid. Yes, it's green. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00: 20:14

Just ignore that side of it. It's

SPEAKER_03: 20:15

kind of toxic green, too. It's bright green, but it's fine.

SPEAKER_00: 20:17

But people who know Bobcats, like you're saying, want to hire Bobcats. So once they know that brand, it seems like they really want to hire. And I think a lot of it, I mean, look at Dr. Rosado-Fager, moved here in 2008, has been here since. Same story for me, but 2002. And the thing is, we, you know, like many faculty, we could have gone anywhere. We can be competitive other places. We travel a lot. We're trained up in a way that allows us to leave, which I think always makes you feel good that you could go wherever, but we don't want to. And we have, I mean,

SPEAKER_01: 20:56

I highlight the teaching because it is why a lot of us are here, because that is a big interest and a big passion for us, but that doesn't mean that we don't have world-class researchers. It is It's a place that you can do both as a faculty member. It's a place that you can do both as a leader, which is also kind of cool. So you can lead in the teaching side. You can lead on the research side. We have, again, world-class, recognized international experts in our department and in other departments at our university and our college.

SPEAKER_03: 21:32

That just so happened to be amazing teachers.

SPEAKER_01: 21:33

That just also happened to be amazing teachers. And that is really, really rare.

SPEAKER_03: 21:37

It is.

SPEAKER_00: 21:38

And what I noticed in the way you talk about teaching, too, is you're talking about teaching as the whole experience, not just the classroom. You're talking about the conversations that you have with students about what they want to do, the trips. Your definition of teaching, I think, is a true definition for this place, for Ohio University. It's a broad definition. It's a relationship. It's inside and outside the classroom.

SPEAKER_01: 22:02

It is, and it's very much about what do you want to do and how do we help you to get there.

SPEAKER_03: 22:07

100%.

SPEAKER_00: 22:09

She does the same thing for us, for her faculty. Pretty darn amazing. I try, I try. She tries to take each of us.

SPEAKER_01: 22:15

I work with a fantastic set of humans.

SPEAKER_03: 22:19

And I bet you your retention strategy is probably pretty solid too.

SPEAKER_01: 22:23

Yeah, I threaten you if you try to quit. Oh, I like that retention strategy. Does that work? I have not had to work dreadfully hard at that.

SPEAKER_03: 22:34

Right, it's because everything else is your retention

SPEAKER_01: 22:36

strategy. It's the culture you build. Now it's not, nothing's ever perfect. Everybody has challenges, but I think that people feel committed to the place and feel committed to facing the challenges and figuring out how we're gonna get over this as opposed to, oh, it's challenging, I don't wanna engage, bye. So what you'll see is higher seniority in terms of how long people have been here because we come here and we stay.

SPEAKER_03: 23:08

Which is invaluable.

SPEAKER_01: 23:10

So it is, we have people with decades of experience that can figure, that know, what comes with experience is figuring out how things get done. And where is the flex when you need it? So we have rules, we have procedures, but we also have, okay, where can I find flexibility so that a student who wants to do something cool, we can figure out how to have them do that.

SPEAKER_03: 23:38

And just to speak to that on a personal level, and then we'll round it out because I know we're going a little bit long. To speak to that on a personal level, it's a, I went to Swansea for a year. That Dr. Luke Pitaway was like, hey, you're going to go to Swansea. My wife was like, we're going to Swansea. So we went and studied abroad for a year. And at the At the same time, because they were changing their coursework, it didn't line up exactly apples to apples. We would have been there for an extra month for it to fully count over. And College of Business, when I say they jumped through hoops, I mean, they did so much to help us make sure that credit transferred back. And we were there with other students from every other university. Every other student was having difficulty getting those credits to transfer. For College of Business, they said, you focus on classes, we'll figure it out on our end. That's unique.

SPEAKER_01: 24:19

And that's my job. That is my job, literally, is to say, okay, we have this student who is doing this. How is this going to map on? We kind of prefer that we know ahead of time. Yeah, I'm sorry about that.

SPEAKER_03: 24:34

Ten years later, I'm sorry that I put you through that. But anyway, I'm glad we got it figured out.

SPEAKER_01: 24:38

But we do that. We look to see, you know, what are you doing? How does it align? What can we match up? How can we make this something? Because all of the experiences that you build are going to help build who you are. Right. and what you're going to contribute to wherever you go. And so the more that we can figure out how that blends into your degree and your program, the better it is all around.

SPEAKER_03: 25:02

100%.

SPEAKER_01: 25:05

And that's kind of the hallmark of the MSM. It's... here are these core requirements, and then beyond that, it's

SPEAKER_04: 25:12

build

SPEAKER_01: 25:13

your own adventure.

SPEAKER_04: 25:14

So

SPEAKER_01: 25:15

do the things that you're interested in that are going to be directly relevant to what you want to do, and that's different for each person, and that's what we're here for.

SPEAKER_03: 25:26

100%. We'll close it out.

SPEAKER_00: 25:27

Absolutely. We're here with Dr. Ana Rosado-Fager, chair of our management department, longtime friend, faculty member, leader in the College of Business and at Ohio University. We're at the Leader Lounge, the Robert D. Walter Center for Strategic Leadership in the College of Business, wrapping up this episode and getting ready to see you at the next one. Take care. Thank you.