A focus on teaching has been an important part of my life for over 11 years. Although I spent some time in the corporate world after graduating from Bowdoin College, I have continually felt myself pulled back to teaching. After two years as a management consultant, I returned to education as a high school math teacher. Next, I worked with high school students at an entrepreneurship-focused summer program and with Babson College undergraduate students while pursuing my MBA. Most recently, as a doctoral student, I have served as a teaching assistant for Yale MBA courses. My education interests are also apparent in my research; I use an educational technology company as the research context for my dissertation work.

Paradoxically, as I gain experience across a diverse range of educational contexts and experiences, my teaching philosophy becomes increasingly unified. My overarching goal might be summarized as helping students become “master carpenters.” There are two components to this goal. The first is giving students the tools and raw materials to do the work. This requires carefully choosing content that teaches students current, rigorous, and well-tested frameworks, theories, and analytical techniques. This is the easier part. More difficult is helping students develop the ability to wield these tools effectively. This requires students to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of different ideas, as well as the importance of context in organizational settings. Further, it requires students to develop a comfort with ambiguity and an ability to confront resource constraints with ingenuity. Building on the carpentry metaphor, sometimes you need a hammer, but only have a screwdriver. In my view, successful students will leave the class asking, “What are the useful things I can do with this screwdriver?”

I believe my two goals are best achieved with a classroom that emulates an experimental workshop, as opposed to a factory where students learn to build widgets by following blueprints. My teaching reflects this belief. As an instructor, my primary role is to support students as they analyze and develop solutions to difficult organizational problems. Yet, I have found that students often do not realize that the majority of learning is derived not from acquiring the tools (i.e., internalizing the content), but from struggling to use them. I try to clearly articulate this reality to students, while also trying to help them recognize it through experiential learning. I try to give students opportunities to grapple with real world organizational problems. This might be accomplished in a number of ways, depending on class size and course topic. Ideally, I might assign semester-long, team-based learning projects that connect students to actual organizations. For example, in a Human Capital Strategy course for which I served as TA at Yale, we asked students to act as consultants for organizations facing human capital challenges. Students gained invaluable experience with stakes that were relatively low (i.e., their paychecks did not depend on the outcome). This encouraged them to think big and take risks. The projects also helped students recognize the messiness of the real world. They quickly found that frameworks and theories could not be applied in a straightforward manner, but were simply starting points to help structure their thinking about complicated, multifaceted problems.

As an MBA student, I supervised Babson undergraduates completing a similar consulting project. The undergraduates’ lack of experience meant they required more guidance, but I believe they gained even more from the experience than the MBAs at Yale. For example, in addition to the sort of learning discussed above, interacting with clients quickly highlighted the importance of “soft skills” (e.g., appropriate email etiquette). Employers consistently complain that recent graduates lack such skills, yet students often fail to recognize their own deficiencies. The consulting project brought these shortcomings to the fore, and some initial student-client exchanges were rocky. Ultimately, I was able to help the students address these issues, for example, by providing feedback on email drafts. In the end, the students’ final presentation was one of my proudest teaching moments to date. Seeing the students’ professionalism as they presented their findings was its own reward, and the clients’ surprise and gratitude at the insightful sophistication of their analysis made me feel truly accomplished as a teacher.

Of course, extended, semester-long consulting projects may not be possible in all cases. For example, large introductory courses make coordinating such projects logistically impossible. Nevertheless, I have found many of the same benefits can be achieved with less intensive methods. For example, a guest speaker may be brought in to present students with a problem connected to that day’s topic. Together, the class can then draw on the frameworks, theories, and readings to grapple with the challenge presented by the guest. In other cases, I might present a mini-case and have students discuss the issues with classmates seated around them. A few groups can then be asked to report out on what they discussed. Such approaches are particularly valuable in cases – arguably true of most organizational challenges – where the “best” course of action is not clear. In such situations, different recommendations can be used as a jumping off point for broader discussion and analysis. The class can walk through alternative approaches, how they might arrive at a decision, and how they might mitigate any potentially negative implications of that decision.

Such experiential, problem-focused teaching requires diverse perspectives, risk-taking, and respectful debate. In the classroom, I view it as my job to create an environment where these things are valued. This is done, in part, by example. I strive to encourage participation and demonstrate respect for each student’s contribution. I also willingly open myself to questions and debate. Indeed, if I am being honest, perhaps what I enjoy most about teaching is what I learn myself. Classroom debates provide faculty with opportunities to rethink their own preconceptions and revise accordingly. Of all the aspects of teaching I find appealing, it may be this opportunity for continual growth – of my students and myself – that excites me most.