Beyond the Syllabus: Pedagogy and Purpose
Beyond the Syllabus: Pedagogy and Purpose explores how teaching transforms identity, confidence, and purpose, not just content. Hosted by Dr. Tiffanie Turner-Henderson, each episode features authentic conversations with educators, students, and changemakers on self-efficacy, belonging, AI in learning, service-learning, mentoring, transferable skills, and persistence in higher education.
Join us as we explore what happens when learning goes beyond the syllabus.
Beyond the Syllabus: Pedagogy and Purpose
From C-Suite to Syllabus: Bridging the Corporate-Classroom Divide
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What happens when experienced industry executives trade boardrooms and budgets for lecture halls and syllabi? In this episode of Beyond the Syllabus, I sit down with Dr. Morgan Bryant and Dr. Pamela Richardson-Greenfield to explore the pipeline of corporate leaders transitioning into higher education.
Learn how real-world experience is reshaping modern business pedagogy and what it takes to make the leap from industry to academia.
Explore episode extras and more at Behind the Mic: www.gobeyondthesyllabus.com.
On this episode of Beyond the Syllabus, Pedagogy and Purpose. I think it became not performing at teaching. I needed to get into the groove of who am I and how do I want to show up in the classroom and what does my brand of teaching look like? And realizing that it looked very different than some of my colleagues in the in the teaching that I had observed. I have to be me.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to Beyond the Syllabus, Pedagogy and Purpose. I'm your host, Dr. Tiffany Turner Henderson. And today we are exploring that vital pipeline in higher education when corporate leaders step out of the C-suite into that classroom. And today's guests they spent years in brand management and marketing and budgets and working with teams, and they're bringing that real world experience into academia. So let's welcome our guest. We have Dr. Morgan Bryant, Associate Professor of Marketing at Howard University. And we have Dr. Pam Richardson, assistant professor of marketing at Clark Atlanta University. And welcome to the conversation. I always say I cannot do justice on what you have accomplished in your careers. So I'll start with Morgan and then on to Pam. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
SPEAKER_03Fantastic. So I like to say that I'm a recovering finance professional. So much of the beginning of my corporate career was spent on the financial side and corporate. So I've done capital markets and then a decent amount of corporate finance, primarily in the pharmaceutical industry. While I was doing that, working on lots of cross-functional teams, it became very clear that marketing was moving in a space that required the ability to analyze a lot of data as things were moving more and more digital. We were kicking off more and more consumer data, and it needed that analytical skill set, which is a very different skill set than some of the other areas of marketing. So I saw that as my opportunity to broaden my perspective. And so I defected from finance and transitioned to the other side of the building from more of a back office marketing perspective. So doing a lot of the consumer market research and marketing analytics that would help inform some of the other more consumer-facing areas of marketing, like the branding and the advertising and the promotions and even on the sales side. And, you know, was able to parlay that experience from consumer market research into management consulting around analytics, marketing analytics, and consumer market research, and then took a small detour before going to higher education into the public sector. And so the last corporate role that I that I held, uh I was over policy and strategy for the Atlanta Housing Authority on that on that public side.
SPEAKER_01What do you say? Recovering and defecting overhead. Recovering finance professionals, yes. And defecting overhead. Yes, absolutely. All right, Pam.
SPEAKER_00So my background is primarily in brand management. I spent some time in financial services when I first graduated from undergrad, but I did not like it. But it did introduce me into the field of marketing because as a financial services marketer slash salesperson, I really saw how the marketing, the product development team really loved their job. They would create these products. We would have meetings for them to walk us through the benefits of them, you know, sales technique, well, not sales techniques, but just sales information for us to uh share with the clients. And I looked at my job and I was like, I'm not excited about that, my job. They are so. What do I have to do to get into marketing? And one of my colleagues indicated that you have to go back to get your MBA. So I did. Prior to going to MBA, I researched what marketing was because I didn't know what it was. And it was so very broad. And then I took advantage of being here in Atlanta and I talked to various alum from my alma mater about the different branches of marketing that they were in. And one person in particular told me he he worked for Coke and Darden. He said, start your marketing career in brand management, brand marketing, because wherever you decide to go in whatever industry, if you start your career in brand, it'll be an easier transition for you. If you go work in some, I don't know, automotive type of company and marketing, it's going to be really difficult for you to get into those brand type of jobs if you become interested in them later on. So I took that to heart because I wanted to set, you know, put my you know foot in the right place coming out of grad school. And I, that information did not lead me wrong. After I graduated, I will say I had a lot of different jobs. And it was more me when I look back on it. It wasn't the job itself, it was just me. I just had to, you know, learn to take that accountability. But I did learn a lot about marketing from a conglomerate, a global conglomerate standpoint with companies like Unilever and PlayTex and Phillip Morris to more smaller entrepreneurial type companies like Glory Foods and Luster Products. And I was able to be a one-person show at the smaller companies because of my experience at those larger companies. And I don't think that it, if it had been reversed, that I could have done marketing as well as I did. At a certain point in my career, I was, I don't like to say older, I like to say I was maturing and I wanted to become a mom. And I was commuting an hour and a half every each way at my job. And you can't be a mom, in my opinion, leaving at 6 a.m., getting back at 7 p.m. So I'm like, what can I do? And I was like, you know what? I could teach because my professors were mature when I was in the program. But I wasn't interested in K through 12, and I had to build up the confidence to go back to school at 40 with a two-month-old. And so I did that. And so now I've enjoyed, you know, bringing my expertise from general market to African-American consumers, having money for budgets, having no money for budgets, being able to see how marketing has evolved from everybody thinking the world was going to end when 99 switched over to 00. Now with the AI coming about, it'll be an interesting time frame to see how marketing is well continuing to evolve while I'm still in it.
SPEAKER_01So, Pam, you actually touched on my my next question. Like, what was that light bulb moment that said, I want to move from corporate into higher education? And I think we were kind of on that same path. Having those bags packed and traveling consistently and saying, Hey, but I want to be at home with a family, wasn't going to work the way I thought it would be. So that was kind of my motivation to look at how can I continue my career, but in a different way that works with every facet of my life. But if you want to add to it, like what was that light bulb moment that said, I want to do this higher education space?
SPEAKER_00Well, when I was in my roles in brand management, Morgan touched on this. When you work with the your cross-functionals and you deal with them a lot, and on every project, I really found it intriguing and exciting when my market research colleagues would come to the brand team and they would tell us the work that they had done, whether it was, you know, talking to consumers in focus groups or doing ethnography studies. I really enjoyed understanding the why as to why our customers were purchasing our product. But the thing of it was that was their job. My job was to find one insight where I could then build a complete marketing plan. So I had to do my job. But when I started thinking about what else I can do in marketing, with marketing research, I was like, I don't, I don't have those skill sets. Like, do I have the skills to go back to school to get an MS in market research and then try to you know get into corporate? And this is going to sound so egotistical, but I'm gonna say it. When you're in brand, especially working for brand companies such as the ones that I work with, brand the marketing is the center of the wheel. We run the show, at least on the brands and the companies that I work for. We ran the show. So anything around us in terms of cross-functional, I don't like to use the word beneath, but you know you rarely saw someone from marketing trying to get into a cross-functional role. You always saw someone from a cross-functional role trying to get into marketing. I said I in my I feel seen here, Pam.
SPEAKER_03I feel seen in this conversation.
SPEAKER_00So, you know, I even though I love market research, personally, I didn't think that I would be able to go into market research at the companies that I was with, or have kind of like a fighting chance to go to get a degree and then apply to those types of consumer packaged goods companies. So I was like, well, again, what could I do in research, in marketing, at my age? Okay, I could teach and share my knowledge. And so that's where, and I had heard about the PhD project from when I was in my MBA program, Dr. Kimberly Grantham. She had just graduated from Duke University. She's now at UGA. She was teaching us marketing in our first year, and she was talking about the PhD project. And I will I will never forget this thought. I was sitting in the back, and when she was talking about it, she said that she took six years to complete her PhD. And I was thinking, it took you six years. I will never go back to school again because I am broke as a joke. This two-year program, and you talking about six years? How what did you do? How did you make it? So, no, thank you for sharing that, but never. But life has a funny way of showing you what you're going to do. So the life stage changed. I would have never dreamed of this particular profession because I was an introvert in undergrad. When I my first job out of undergrad, I used to break out in hives because I didn't want to talk in front of people. My hair broke off because I didn't want to talk in front of people. But I just got out of it. I started seeing how when you speak up and you voice your opinion, you get invited to different meetings and you get different opportunities. And I knew that I wasn't making that much money. If I wanted to make more, I had to change myself. So that's when I started, you know, the job hopping and looking for better opportunities. And that's what led me to academia, is where I can, you know, basically teach the younger generation about marketing with the layer of evolve AI involvement and social media evolvement. So that's what led me to academia.
SPEAKER_03So my route was a little different. I also was sort of eyes opened to the profession of faculty while in my MBA program. But I did, I did my MBA in a five-year program at Florida AM. And at the time that I was there, I can tell you there were at least three faculty who were brand new faculty who had been part of the very first class of the PhD project. And they were taking their first jobs, having gone through their PhD programs. And so, you know, my eyes were open to it then. That was the first time that I heard about it. I graduated, went into corporate, but applied to the PhD project and attended their conference in the fall of 2003. And it was everything. And I knew that it was what I wanted to do, but also as a business professor, right? Even I wanted to be a business professor, I needed more actual industry experience to be able to bring that expertise into the classroom. Right. On faculty at medical schools, your physicians are have actually been practicing, right? They bring that real world experience into the classroom. And so I wanted a similar experience. And so I decided, you know, this is absolutely what I want to do, but I want to work a little more. Well, life has a way of lifing, and the couple of years of extra work experience that I thought I was going to get turned into 12 years of additional work experience. I ended up the ultimate catalyst was a layoff. I had two layoffs in succession. Like I got laid off from a pharmaceutical company from Merck. I was working for Merck in Philadelphia, relocated to Atlanta, went to work for Cox Automotive, Auto Trader, got laid off from that job. And I was like, huh, it's time to start looking. Like this might be a sign that it that it's time. So went back to the PhD project for a refresher and ended up in a large conference room seated next to Pam. We actually were there together in the fall of 2012 at the at the PhD project, kind of, you know, both on our journeys, like, all right, it's time to kind of figure out that approach. I ended up leaving that conference. I did end up working for a few more years uh at the uh housing authority, but my boss was a policy PhD. And one day he saw something in my office about the PhD project, and he said, Is this something that you want to do? I said, Yes. And he said, Well, I'm preparing to retire and I want to make sure that my people are taken care of. And if what you want to do is go into academia, you let me know what I can do to support you in making that transition before I'm no longer here. So he actually wrote my recommendation letters for my application packet for when I applied to PhD programs and started. And he found a grant, gave me money to take the GMAT prep because I found out the GMAT scores expire. I was very offended by that. Like, what do you mean they expire? Like, what are you trying to say? And they were like, ma'am, the version you took don't even exist anymore. Like, what do you mean? Um and so he, you know, helped me do that prep to get fresh scores and be able to apply. And so that was sort of my transition. It was a long game, something in the back that finally there were enough things placed in my path where I was like, oh, the universe is telling me it's time to go and make this transition. Let me make this transition.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. So, question for you what was that cultural shock going from corporate structure? This is operation, this is the policy, this is how we do things into this realm of learning and higher education. What was uh the biggest cultural shock for you?
SPEAKER_03So, you know that's a whole different podcast, right? I'm trying to squeeze it in here. Right, there are many. So I would say the biggest one, one, things move at a very different pace in academia, but it's a much slower pace than the turnaround times uh for corporate. And so when you are used to having clearly articulated processes and procedures, and you follow them and the the things produce quickly, that's not the same case in academia. Sometimes that is actually to your benefit. Like sometimes you're able to slide into programs, opportunities, grants, a little pot of money that the deadline said it was a month ago, but the reality is they'll still process your stuff if you send it through, right? So sometimes there are those gems, but having to get used to a very different turnaround time and just sense of urgency on things. For me as a student, the very first time I had to write a lit review, like the very first time I had to produce writing, right? I had been a management consultant, I had been, you know, an on an executive level. We write for brevity. You know, I submitted my thing and they were like, ma'am, where's the rest? And I said, Well, what don't you get? Right? You got it, you got all that you needed. You understand all the salient points, you know, and they were like, oh no, like you've turned in a page, and we need nine more. And I was like, Oh, oh, right. So it was having to learn a very different way of writing and communication. And the trick for me was leveraging the parts that I that I was good at to get me through the parts that I had a steeper learning, uh learning curve. So because I had come from an analytical background, the one thing that I did not have issues with was a lot of the statistical analysis. I knew how to run statistical analysis, I knew how to run analytics, I knew how to interpret results, I knew how to do write-ups because that's what I did doing analytics and consumer market research. So I found friends who had gone through, and my cohort who had gone through a traditional like MA program, who had learned how to, you know, the art of lit reviews and this longer sort of expounded upon writing style. And so they would help me learn the art of this type of academic writing, and I would help them with spreadsheets and analysis and you know, statistical interpretation.
SPEAKER_00Similar to Morgan, the the pace, I couldn't believe how slow they were and how just dragging the feet on making decisions. The readings were so boring and long and dense because these were topics that I've never heard of before. I I had to have a dictionary beside me at all times because some of the words, again, I've never heard before because we just don't use those in marketing. And like Morgan said, brevity is, you know, less is more. So we had to get to the point and you know, write for everyone to read, especially, you know, executive management and using like big words were not a part of that vocabulary. I would also say that, you know, that was that was a those were the things that surprised me. But because I had a two-month-old, I had to treat it like a job. So I worked from nine to five, Monday through Friday. In the evenings were mom time, and on the weekends is where I got most of my work done. But occasionally she had to go with me to group meetings and team meetings. And so I was able to, you know, work alone, get some things done. I like that aspect of it because in corporate, you're always on a team. Everything is team-based. Every, you have to have an agenda, you have to have follow-up nodes, assign everyone duties. But when you're in academia, it's you. And I like that because I'm like, if I know that something's going to get done, I know I can count on myself versus following up with my colleagues or trying to get my manager involved to get somebody to do some work. So I like that aspect of it. But in academia, also, we're in marketing, especially, we're we're we're trained to think big, think, you know, very strategic. Three to five years, very broad. In academia, it's very minute, very detailed. Because I would, I would have different ideas about research topics, and I would go, you know, per semester, you had to do a paper on something. I would go talk to my professor about this idea, and they're like, that is way too broad. You're never going to, you would never be able to finish that. And I would, I would get offended and kind of upset because they were saying that my idea was bad. But you know, the longer that I was in academia, I could I understood like there's no way you could research this in a you know a two-year time frame. It's way too much work. And if you want to get something published, you got to do something different. But I finally, it took me about a year to be able to understand the academic juice because it's you know, during the I was fighting it and like, well, you know, why do they have to do it like this? And what's wrong with my writing? But there is there, you know, it's it's an industry because it it exists, like just as corporate is an industry, and there's things that are done in corporate that are not done in other industries, but I couldn't fight it. I just had to drink the juice because I needed to be in and out in four years. In and out in four years.
SPEAKER_01We've all had that same story. Okay, so let's fast forward a little bit. So you've gone through your program, and now you're working on a team with colleagues in your school of business or marketing or finance or what have you, and you step in front of those students. What was that experience like working with these young adults and molding them into that next generation?
SPEAKER_03So it's interesting. My first teaching opportunity came while I was still in my PhD program. My original advisor uh got poached, went to the University of Georgia, and he had a great opportunity at University of Alabama. And so to lead a department and shape and all that kind of stuff. And so he ended up leaving. But he also was the only person who taught all of our consumer analytics courses in our department. And so I was the only other person left with the skill set to and desire to teach the consumer analytics courses at that time. So there was like a gap before they could backfill that position. So my first teaching experience, I was still a PhD student teaching a grad class on on consumer analytics. It was Special. It was different. I couldn't be lying if I said there wasn't, you know, a level of imposter syndrome, particularly because I had not finished my program and I was teaching people who were in the same college as me. They were master's students, but they were, you know, graduate students in the same program. So that was God bless those students. That academic year, they definitely got a a raw version of my approach to teaching. But I think it was great because there were smaller classes because it was graduate level. And so it allowed me to really kind of ease into the classroom. When I graduated and took my first, you know, full-time teaching opportunity and had undergraduate students, that was really different. The undergraduate the first time I had to walk in front of a classroom full of undergraduate students, and it was just like, oh, this is gonna be a whole experience. Like we can re yeah. And you've I had to find I think it became not performing at teaching. I needed to get into the groove of who am I and how do I want to show up in the classroom and what does my brand of teaching look like? And realizing that it looked very different than some of my colleagues in the in the teaching that I had observed. And to just, you know, I think the first couple of weeks and then finally I was like, I have to, I have to be me. And I made some adjustments that were my personality, my approach. I teach my classes like I was teaching my employees, you know, like how would I onboard recent hires? How would I train analysts when they were coming onto my team? And I started to build my classroom assessments, projects, and interactions around y'all are all on the crossbone to the team. We have staff meetings, we have deliverables, we have readouts, we have all those sorts of things, and that began to work for me. But it was definitely a it was definitely an iterative process. We tried quite a few different things and just being willing to be open to student feedback, and I think being honest about being open to student feedback, like, hey, if this isn't working, let me know. Right? So that we can course correct. I can make adjustments in the middle of the semester. It's nothing I can do if you tell me a week before the the semester is over that this wasn't working for you. So I had to be willing to take feedback from the students, but also create an environment that encouraged them to give it to.
SPEAKER_01We're gonna we're gonna come back. So put a pen in that. We're gonna come back to that in a little later. Okay, Pam. First experience in front of that classroom.
SPEAKER_00Okay, my first experience also happened when I was in my doctoral program. And it was it was a good experience. It was an undergrad class, but it was for working professionals. So they had jobs and it was a night class. And the thing that shocked me, well, I don't know if shock was the right word, but they showed me or helped me realize how much I really do know about marketing. Because as I was going through the book, it was some things that I just didn't agree with. Because I'm like, you know, I and I tell them all the time that when you're in driver's ed, they teach you to drive with the 10 and 2 or 9 and 3. But as soon as you get that license, you're driving with your two fingers and one hand and all that kind of stuff. So I said, that's how we're gonna go with this class, is because yeah, there's the book, but you know, because of my experience, I can say, well, I don't know if I agree with that or what have you. And so I took that approach to say everyone has an opinion about different things. My experiences may be different than the people writing this book. So when I saw things in the book that I just it wasn't the fact that I didn't like, it was just that I just never had that experience. And I it was hard for me to understand that. I brought in one of my real world experiences and provided examples such as that. And so I will say that I spent a lot of time prepping for that particular class because it was my first class. And so I would, you know, prep with examples from my personal experience. I would prep from examples in the world, real world because it was just one class, and you know, you have more time to do that. And one, I remember one student, I made a comment about something being easy, and he stopped me after class and he wanted some additional help on something. And he said, Well, you say that you know, marketing is easy, but look at all the experience you have. This is our first class in marketing, and I had to put on a different lens to say, that's right, I do know marketing, and I've been doing this for 10 or so years, and this is their first introduction to it. I got to bring it down because I'm not talking to my CPG cross-functional team members. I'm talking to students who don't know what the four Ps are. Because in most, you know, in most programs, you know, marketing is any required course for business graduates. So they may or may not be interested in marketing, but they still have to take the class. So they kind of brought me down a little bit to say, hey, we're not on your level. You need to come teach us, you know, meet us where we are. And so going forward from that, that experience has helped me throughout my time at my previous university and at Clark Atlanta to bring it down to the student level. What do they need at this point in time? What do they need to learn about marketing? And the book may not be as relevant as the news. And I can I can show them how to apply what we're learning in class to either the real world news or you know, something that's going on in Atlanta or a brand or something along those lines, and show them that they can use it for those types of examples and the fact that they're going to use this same foundational knowledge, whether they're five years into marketing, 10 or even 20 years into marketing, regardless of the revolutions that come. The internet revolution came, the a the social media, then AI. You're still going to go back to the basics and knowing the basics helps you kind of build the house of marketing.
SPEAKER_01So you both kind of hit on kind of this next little segment of looking at, you know, how are we transforming or helping to guide students into their own professional identity? And you've both hit on it. So I think I might skip a couple of areas in there and dive into examples. So you talked about both of you talked about bringing your real world experience, bringing that portfolio, I call my windshield stories. This is what it says in the book. This is what it looks like in real life. You may not hear this terminology, but this is what it means when you see this in action and bringing that to them where they can understand it and then relate it back to some concepts and theories. And they're like, oh, okay, now I get it, because you give them the real world examples. So this is where I'm gonna ask. Can you give some examples of how you have taken your experience, like some of those behind the scenes networking with colleagues in corporate, and changed that into or not change, but modified that for actual classroom instruction?
SPEAKER_03I would like to go first.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So Pam said something, she said a keyword, applied. I'm a very applied instructor for the all the points that Pam has already pointed out, that the textbooks are great, but once you've written them and it's gone through the publication process, like things are continuing to evolve in the marketplace. And so the application of those kinds of things looks very differently. The way that the market responds to those things looks very differently than what's printed on the textbook page or on the screen now with all the digital resources. So, and sometimes for students, um, you have a variety of different learning types, right? So some students can read that and you can, you know, and they can uh immediately think through how to apply that to different situations. And others need to see it. They need to see it, they need to touch it, they need to turn around, they need to be able to interrogate it. So, to the extent that I can, as Pam mentioned, I brought a lot of materials from my professional career from both the pharmaceutical industry, the auto trader, which is not automotive but is online advertising, digital advertising industry, and then even things from my time in management consulting in the pharmaceutical industry. And, you know, I've synthesized and sort of anonymized a lot of the like actual data, but giving students examples, when we start looking at a strategic planning, I take them through materials that I've used to facilitate strategic plans. When we talk about, you know, how to do different types of consumer market research, I bring in real examples of here's how, here was the uh issue that was handed down from the chief marketing officer. Here's how I distilled that into a series of questions. These are the questions that I asked in the, you know, in our organization. Here are sources of information. Here's what the communication. Yeah, I ran the analysis, but no one cares about that spreadsheet but me. Here's how I had to communicate that back out to the business partners. To here's what a focus group uh packet of interview preparation looks like. Here's what it looks like, what you get back from consumers who are participating in those kinds of things. Like you have to give them examples of what that looks like. Otherwise, everything feels really esoteric. It's just words, right? And so giving them real examples of that, I take them through like actual like individual documents. This is what it looked like at the beginning of this exercise. These were some of the materials that we were using when we were knee deep in the exercise. Hey, here was the first set of output management hated it. Here's how we had to circle back and refresh and start over, and here's what the finished product looked like, right? And so a lot of that just giving them context for the content that we have to teach them. And so, and then I bring in different folks from my, you know, my Rolodeck, so to speak, from my LinkedIn, right? I bring in different people to come in and just do it's like classroom-based informational interviews. Now that everybody's really proficient with Zoom, I can do even more than I used to. So I still like to bring actual people into the classroom physically, but I can also schedule a Zoom meeting during class time, and I can bring in professionals from a variety of different industries because the thing about principles in a business school, every student has to take principles of marketing, not just your marketing majors. So I try to bring in professionals that aren't just marketers, right? Accountants, finance folks, management, HR, you know, all sorts of different folks so that students can ask questions, that they can hear about a variety of different experiences and applications of these concepts so that you know they get something tangible. Now, Pam is the queen at that, so I know she's going to take this and kill it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm going to go all of that. You know what? What really made me really think about the application of what they're learning in class is when I was a TA for a class in my doctoral program. And this particular professor did not have a marketing background. And in the marketing class, they obviously had to do a marketing plan for the semester project. And when the students got up to present the ideas that they were talking about, you would have to have budgets of like $50 million to do. And that is not realistic. And I said, that is a little bit not setting them up for failure, but they are going to be highly disappointed when they get into these marketing fields and they realize that they're not sitting at the table spending $50 million. They're in the back room somewhere looking at a share report or, you know, some type of analysis that they're doing. And so I said, when I become a professor, I'm not going to have them do that smoke in mirrors type of plan that makes no sense because you would never have that much money. I'm going to have them start from the beginning as if they were an entry-level marketing person. And with any entry-level marketing person, you have to understand who your target is, who are your competitors, what is the industry, you know, those insights there. That way you can begin to realize what you need to do from a marketing plan perspective. But if you don't have that foundation, it's just going to be a $50 million waste of money. And so over the years, it started, I started just doing having them do brand analyses for their semester project, whether it could be, and I chose different industries. So it could be, you know, fashion, it could be, you know, apparel or something along those lines. I never allowed them to choose their own brand because you're never going to choose your own team in corporate. So I gave them a list that they could choose from. They don't like that, but get used to it. I have since progressed over the years to bringing in or working with companies that will allow us to do marketing plans or marketing analysis with them. This last fall, I partnered with GoDaddy and the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau here in Atlanta. And, you know, if I have an idea, I'm reaching out. I reached out to GoDaddy and, you know, talked to them about working together to give us like, you know, like building a website for the World Cup, like consumers that are coming from other countries to the World Cup, to Atlanta for the World Cup, building these websites based on consumer research. And that's what my second year MBA students did. And so that project right there, that is an internship project, something that they would get paid six to seventy thousand dollars to do. And I'm like, if you do this in school, you can talk to me to get feedback on it that you won't get penalized for. You can, you know, talk to other people to get ideas, and you're working on a team, you're not doing this by yourself. And so that was a huge success because Atlanta Convention and Vitals Bureau actually volunteered to continue working with the students after the semester was over to help them, you know, finalize and improve the website to a certain degree, because it was it was a live website, and a couple of students took them up on their offer. And so that is a wonderful example to talk about in your interview, wherever, whatever industry you're going into. If you're going into creative or website development or social media, perfect fit because then you can say this is what I did, and these are the challenges that I encountered. And so I try to challenge myself to come up with a great project every semester because I'm thinking, how can they demonstrate their skills in the classroom and what can they talk about in the interviews? Because, you know, this is a tough job market now, and a lot of students may not get an internship. So I designed my projects where it is just as thorough and long-lasting as a six-week, 10-week, 12-week type of internship doing it during the semester. And I continue to do that, just reaching out to people on LinkedIn, as Morgan indicated, going through your Rolodex and putting some thought to a project. And most often, companies are receptive to it because they want to give back to the community. It's free, you know, work that they're getting. And then they've, if they're in a higher position, they've been to college. They understand what it's like to be in college and to have this type of exposure at such, you know, an integral time in their educational journey is beneficial to all. So it's a win-win for both sides.
SPEAKER_01I I I'm the amen section of the choir on this one because it's the same thing, same thing that I do in the classroom, is how can I bring some real experiences and put them in the driver's seat and see how they navigate and help them, like when they kind of make that left turn or right turn, how they bring them back on course. And like we're saying, we're pulling in industry, bringing our network into the classroom because the reality is some students will not have that opportunity to intern or to shadow. But they can also say during those interviews, they can articulate, well, this is a project that I did in the classroom that worked with a real company, and here was, and they can talk through this critical thinking and decision-making and problem-solving process, although it wasn't a line item on you know, my internship, but they can speak to, and that helps them so much in connecting the dots in the classroom to whatever their career path will be. And then they have that evidence on the back end.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I agree with that.
SPEAKER_03I think in some of my classes, I have them do a portfolio component and I specifically teach them how to leverage that in interviews. Exactly. When you're doing interviews, how do you use these as examples to speak to experience, like you know, having experiential examples? And then also, depending on the institution. So my previous institution, I would be able to, if I partnered with businesses like what Pam described, we actually got to count that as a service learning course because they are providing a service to an organization. It is extra good if that is a small business, um, particularly if it is women or minority-led, if it is a nonprofit business. And so, you know, there are times where be able to do that. So students could also check the box of having done service learning and those kinds of things while getting like this really good applied experience.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Exactly. Switch gears a little further. So we've talked about your journey into higher education, and we've talked about the experience of working with the students and what you're doing, what your phenomenal work that you're doing in the classroom to apply this learning into real-world settings for the students to take with them. So let's talk about that other portion of being in higher education and that transition from corporate and into academia, the whole thing of research and research topics. And kind of if you could maybe share your research agenda, is it more toward, you know, theory? Is it more toward concepts? Is it more toward practitioner use of of your work? If you could share a little bit about that and and why you prefer one over the other or indifference? And uh, Pam, I'll start with you if you want to go first.
SPEAKER_00So, most of my research, if I had to put one word or an industry on my research, it's been about communication. So that can fall under advertising, that can fall under branding, it can fall under entrepreneurship, some of the things that I've published on, but it really comes down to communication. Because one thing that I saw when I was in brand was that different different messages can be interpreted different ways by different people. And it's all about how how much you learn about your consumer to understand how you need to tailor your communication. And so that has been my my driving force. And I come up with my ideas more or less based on my previous experiences and then conversations that I've had with other people, my students, as my, you know, as we learn in doctoral programs, ideas can come from anywhere. It's just a matter of how are you going to test it. And so if I can think of an idea and put together some thoughts, I'll go for it. I have found qualitative better than quantitative just because I enjoy talking to people. And that's based on my background in terms of working on brand, where you go to the focus groups, you go to the ethnography studies, you see the one-on-one interviews, and I enjoy hearing directly from the consumer. And so I think that I like I like that path and I'll continue on it. And I try to bring in those learnings to my students as well to help them understand that, you know, from a faculty perspective, this I teach you guys marketing, but then this is also what I do like on the side, and I have to do it in order to get tenure. But this is what I'm questioning and I'm figuring it out myself. And I say I always challenge you guys if you can start asking those types of questions about why this and what happened here, you know, being inquisitive can be a great blessing and it could be a great opportunity for others to get to know you because of the type of questions that you ask. I learned that on the job, being around market research colleagues, and it helped me get into my doctoral program, it helped me spur ideas. But I say, even as an entry-level marketing person, finance person, the ability to ask questions will take you far. But I say it all the time. I said at the end of the semester, everybody in here will have asked at least one question because you have to have a voice. You, in order to be at the table, you have to have a voice to voice your your accomplishment, your your praise, voice your discontent, voice your support. You have to have that voice no matter what it is. And that old saying, even if your voice quivers and shakes, get it out. Go ahead and say it.
SPEAKER_03I like that. I like that as well. So my research is a little different. I tend to look at online consumer behavior. I am very much interested in how online interactions, digital, and social media impact what we buy, where we buy, if we buy, how we buy, when we buy, and who we buy it from. And so much of my work will can answer some of those questions, mostly because I am intrigued by that. And I tend to look at that often in entertainment spaces and products, but also in with Black consumers or women consumers or products geared towards Black or women consumers. Are my areas of focus. I bring a lot of my research into the classroom. So I will use things that I've researched as examples, not so much as finding it as a reading per se in the undergraduate classes, but using some of the methodology and techniques. Because I teach more methodological courses, I'm able to use methodology in my the method sections of my work in the classroom as examples. And so I do that. I do a lot to integrate my research agenda and the coursework that I teach and back and forth. And so I do a lot of bringing those two together for that very reason. Because I came from analytics side and corporate, you know, I'm definitely a quantitative person, but because I focus specifically on social media and online, I do a decent bit of qualitative as well. So I'm much more of a mixed methods practitioner because I can, in much of my research, I will have both components, a qualitative piece on the social media side, and then the quantitative analysis that underpins that qualitative piece, or just a qualitative side.
SPEAKER_01So as we start to wrap, I always want to ask what advice would you give? So in this case, we've talked about this transition that you've gone through and then the work that goes along with moving into this realm of higher education. So if we have some corporate leaders that are considering this leap into higher education, or you talked about a lot of the experiential learning activities. We have some of our quote unquote traditional instructors that are looking for for ideas to bring industry into the classroom. I want you to kind of give some advice on what it what we should start doing. What's step one when we decide we want to move from corporate to maybe higher education and teaching? And then what can we do to prepare for that process? So that's going to be question one. Then I'll come back with this question two. Morgan, you want to take that one first? Sure, happy to do that.
SPEAKER_03I think the first thing that you have to decide is are you interested in the research aspect or not? Because I think often people don't realize how much research is required of faculty, both to get through a PhD program, but also to, you know, as Pam alluded to, to gain tenure and promotion. It is the currency which we transact in. And so you have to decide if that's what you want. There are options for different kinds of institutions, different types of doctorate degrees. Do you want a DBA, more of a doctorate in business administration to support EU, which is much more of a practitioner's approach? You do some research, but not the same type of research that you would do in a PhD. If you want a regular or traditional PhD and knowing that you truly do want to pursue more of a research perspective, are you interested in teaching at a heavily research-oriented institution like an R1? Are you interested in something more balanced or are you really in it for the teaching? You're much more interested in a teaching institution. Or maybe what you want is something more of an adjunct opportunity because you're going to continue having some sort of small business or consulting practice. Different schools have what they call executives and residents, where you come in on a, you know, one, two, or three-year contract where you're teaching specifically around your area of expertise in industry. So there's lots of different ways to go about it. And I think it's about thinking about where you really want to be and talking to people, ask questions, because it can feel a little black boxy around the different types of ways to get into academia. And you want to go in with your eyes wide open and make a really good choice because it can be hard to switch paths once you get started. And so you really want to have an understanding of what is it that you truly want, which aspect of academia you're really interested in, and what's the proper path to get you to the aspect that you actually are interested in.
SPEAKER_00I have a lot of friends who have been in corporate, let's say 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 years now. And so they're at that age where they're what ready to slow down and want to go into teaching and have come to me for advice in terms of how do I make that transition. And so I totally agree with what Morgan is saying, like understand what at what level you want to come in at, whether it's a tenure track or just as an adjunct. And then you also have to learn the lingo because when I say adjunct versus tenure track, you may not know what that means. Learn the lingo, just as if any corporate person knows their consumer like the back of their hand, they know their competitors consumer like the back of their hand. You need to understand the lingo within academia. Also understand that your salary from a corporate position is going to be way higher than it is in an academic position. Most of the time. Now, when you consider if you are going to an R1 research, I mean or R1 doctoral program, you may go to an R1 as your first position out of undergrad, or you may be at those schools. Now, those schools pay a little different, but if you know you should not believe that you're going to continue to get bonuses every year as you do in corporate, the travel, the corporate perks that you're used to from the past 20 years, understand that that may be going away. And if you are where if you're ready and willing to give that up, then you know take a look at the world of academia and talk to as many people as you can. Talk to local professional professors at schools in your area. If you have any professors that you know you went to undergrad with, just talk to as many people as you can because the more people that you talk to in the current profession, the more that you'll learn. And this is not, it's not a decision as if I'm in corporate and I'm bouncing from one CPG job to another. I'm going from one brand manager job to another brand manager job. I can get that job in a month, relocate, be relocated in two to three months. It's not as simple. Going from corporate to academic is not simple because you have to plan for everything, especially if you're going to a traditional program and a four-year program where you're in class for the first two years. How are how are you and or your family going to survive? So this is not a if you're single, then yes, single, no kids, that's a great, it's a single decision. But if you're a married, you have family, you have kids, you really have to think about the well-being of the entire family and how this move is going to affect the entire family. Understand that you may have to go an additional year. If that happens, again, how would that impact the family? And if you have to go six years, so you have to think about the worst-case scenarios when you go into this because you don't want it to, you know, happen at the spur of the moment and you just not be ready for it. I also would say if you're married, you have, I would encourage you to talk to people that went through the program as a married couple because it will put a lot of stress on the spouse. Because you have to read so much, you're not available as much as you would like to be, as you typically may have been in the past. And the work of as a doctoral student is just it's heavy, it's mental. It's not physical, but it's just mental, which they're you know, at a corporate level, they're probably used to determining you know what to do with this brand or things of this nature. But you're going into a whole different area. You're reading about things that you probably have never heard of before, or theories that you're like, what I don't even know what a theory is. So you have to read and reread and reread, and that is time, time, time. And you have to have that support of your spouse or caretaker for your kids to be there to help you through because it's going to get rough. It is going to get rough. And I will say, I one of the things that I thought that I would, you know, do okay by going back to a doctoral program or going to get my PhD was that I like school, I like to learn, I like to read. And during our boot camp, one of the professors said, if you came to a PhD, to PhD school, just because you like to read, you're in the wrong program. And I'm about to not want to deter me because I like to read and I'm sticking it out. But if you like to read, being in a doc program, it will make you it will make you want to take back that statement because you read so much. You read so much. I it it was an underestimation of how much you have to read in a doctoral program. And that's just for your classes. Let's not even we didn't even get to the dissertation yet, but that's just in your classes for the first two years. So, you know, it's just again, the more people you talk to about their experiences, the more you'll learn. But you have to go into this with as much knowledge as you can about the profession and what the expectations are when you graduate.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Amen. Again, to all of that. A lot of reading and a lot of sacrifice. A lot of that.
SPEAKER_02I will echo that good support system. I went through my program as a parent as well. And my support system was you know invaluable. At one point, I had a genius because I had a late night. And so I had to make the sacrifice of a crazy community. But it worked, it ended up working for my family.
SPEAKER_01So I have a question because you come into the classroom with all of this valuable industry experience and networks. What's some advice that you would give to some of your colleagues who may have limited or no experience in that corporate setting? What's what's some advice or suggestions that you would give to them to you know maybe leverage that into their instructional practices?
SPEAKER_02So I have actually given some of my colleagues at my previous institution some advice. So you would run a lot of executive education programs and executive MBA programs. I encourage them to start to engage with students who are in industry and learn more about you know what they are doing and how they are using the things that they are learning. We have a center for executive development where we do consulting engagement with individuals. And use your academic expertise to support serving corporate opportunities sometimes for computing experiences, an opportunity to go actually instead of you know, agreement to do research in the summer, an opportunity to go work with a corporate partner in the summer on short-term projects. So the same way that we encourage our students to get experience in different ways or ways that we can get it. And I think that holds true, even though we have corporate experience. Every semester that I have more academic experience, I'm a semester removed from my corporate experience. And so while we have that one, I still look for opportunities to keep it. I have no desire to run a full-on, you know, consulting business and opportunities to occasionally contribute to things where you can stay abroad of all the things that I've been teaching or evolving in the work environment with new tools and new technology and resources and business practices and just different environments. Right. And so, you know, I think all of those are ways that our that our colleagues who don't have corporate experience, but even for us who do have it can keep it fresh.
SPEAKER_00I would even encourage you know, just initial, you know, initial contacting, initial contact with deans, like schools in your area, contact the deans and offer to offer your your knowledge in a way as in terms of guest speaking, or some business schools have like lunch and learn type of programs where that you can invite them in for an hour with students to talk about your experience and or your company, especially that would be great if your company recruits at that school and then branch out into you know guest lectures and classrooms and you know the pre work with a professor to design projects and things of that nature. So it's different in addition to all of the things that Morgan said, you know, if you're if you're not, if you don't know if you want to do all of that initially, just go talk to a class, just go reach out to a dean to say, hey, I work at X Company, I mean marketing, and I would love to come to your class because then the dean will send out a note to say, Hey, you know, such and such is willing to come into your classes, let me know if you want to bring her in as a guest speaker. And I'm making my list of fall speakers as we speak now. So that would be, you know, ideal to have new people coming in. And, you know, I think that could also be a start as well.
SPEAKER_01Good advice, good advice. All right, ladies, if our audience would like to continue the conversation with you, where can they find you?
SPEAKER_00I'll start this one. I I can be located on LinkedIn. It is under Pam Richardson Greenfield, and I am at Clark Atlanta University. So those two searches will work, but that's where I am all the time. All the time.
SPEAKER_02And I can also be found on LinkedIn at Morgan M. Bryant. So the the M is required in order to find me. I am actually in transition. So I will appear at Howard University, though my faculty page is not up just yet. But that is where I will be beginning this fall. And so you can find me there shortly. You can find me at LinkedIn all the time.
SPEAKER_01All right, great. Well, again, thank you so much for this conversation on uh beyond the syllabus, pedagogy and purpose. And we look forward to uh speaking with you and seeing you soon.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. This was great.
unknownFantastic.
SPEAKER_01This brings us to the end of today's episode of Beyond the Syllabus, Pedagogy and Purpose. Thank you for listening. Until next time, keep learning, reflecting, and growing beyond the syllabus.