Inside the Classroom

Connections count in business, especially when you work in real estate. Jason White and Troy Carpenter, instructors for BYU Marriott’s Real Estate Capital Markets and Investments class, aim to help their students make connections—not just with people but also with ideas. Now in its fourth semester, this upper-level elective has proven so beneficial that the finance department is in the process of making it a permanent class with its own course number. Students who take the class “already understand a lot of great concepts,” says White, “but they don’t necessarily know how they tie together. Our goal is to help them put those pieces together.”

When most people hear the phrase scientific method, they think of physics or biology, not starting a company. Professors at BYU Marriott are changing that perception in Entrepreneurship 113: Startup Bootcamp, a course that Taylor Halverson, associate teaching professor of entrepreneurship, describes as “learning the scientific method for how to launch a business.”

In many of his fictitious adventures, Sherlock Holmes chides his partner, Dr. Watson, by saying, "You see, but you do not observe." With its emphasis on teaching students to discover solutions to seemingly impossible problems, BYU Marriott's course Strategy 421: Strategy Implementation is one that Arthur Conan Doyle's character would have approved of.

Doing good even better is a tall order, but it’s one that BYU Marriott’s MSB 375 course, Social Innovation: Do Good Better, has successfully taken on since its inception in 2011.

Many nineteenth-century members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints trekked more than a thousand miles across North America, pulling handcarts loaded with supplies and other precious possessions for the journey. Out of necessity, they “had to be good logisticians,” says Scott Webb, associate teaching professor of global supply chain at BYU Marriott. “They were moving out west from city to city and founding cities. Those are all things that you have to plan for.”

The course description for Accounting 550, Fraud Prevention and Detection, is pretty straightforward: the course covers fraud prevention, detection, investigation, issues, and methodology, and it includes an examination of past frauds with hands-on cases and computer exercises to identify increased fraud risk, interrogate data, and design prevention and detection controls.

Excitement was high and adrenaline was pumping as a four-member team of BYU Marriott information systems students worked together to hack into a Furby, pick a lockbox, shoot targets with Nerf guns, dive into piles of (clean) trash, and slide under string “laser beams,” all with the end goal of identifying—and then fixing—vulnerabilities in a wireless computer security system.

Walking timidly into the Tanner Building for her first class of her freshman year, Melissa Trautman didn’t know what to expect from the class or from her future BYU experience. She hoped the course title, Creating a Good Life, would come to literal fruition, but she had no idea the significant impact the class would have on her life. Two years later, Trautman is the head teaching assistant for the class and encourages every student to take ExDM 300 their first semester.

When the BYU Marriott Inclusion Committee gathered data about students’ experiences in the business school, the committee discovered a common theme. While the school had done well with preparing students to meet job qualifications, many individuals desired further guidelines on developing inclusive behavior that they could carry with them into the workplace.

As Grant McQueen, director of the MBA program, spoke with MBA students during their exit interviews, he perceived a common thread: many students wanted to develop stronger tech product management (PM) skills. Meanwhile, McQueen also noticed that companies wanted to hire graduates with PM talent and experience. He knew BYU Marriott was up to the challenge.

Corina Slene Cuevas-Pahl has spoken Spanish her entire life, but when she found out that BYU Marriott offered a business language course in Spanish, she signed up.

At some point during their education, every BYU Marriott undergrad takes the M COM 320 class, an advanced writing course required for graduation. And every semester, as adjunct professor Lisa Thomas prepared to teach her sections of the class, she ended up using the assigned textbook less and less and providing alternative resources to her students more and more.

Reducing the compensation of a CEO by half is not an easy decision. But for board members with shareholders to consider, tough decisions like these are sometimes necessary.

It’s the new adage of the marketing world: the secret to happiness is spending money on experiences, not things. While the desire for the latest gizmo has long fueled a culture of consumption, lasting memories can make a business a winning one.

Gandhi has a story. Winston Churchill has a story. Martin Luther King Jr. has a story. Great leadership is interwoven with great stories, and often this leadership comes when leaders perceive the power of their own stories.