An Interview with Dean Alison Davis-Blake
Article written for 
www.annarborbusinessmagazine.com
On July 1 of this year, Alison Davis-Blake became the new Edward J. Frey Dean of U-M Ross School of Business. Prior to her appointment, Davis-Blake was the dean of the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, where she was the Investors in Leadership Distinguished Chair in Organizational Behavior. We recently had the chance to talk to Dean Davis-Blake about Ross and its unique approach to action-based learning.
Ross is clearly an excellent school. Year after year it continues to rank among the top ten business schools in the country, regardless of poll or category. Talk a little bit about what makes Ross so unique and remarkable.
I think there are some bedrock things that Ross shares with all the top ten schools, so let’s talk about those and then answer specifically your question about what makes Ross unique and remarkable.
There are a number of bedrock factors that we share with other top schools. We have amazing faculty who are at the top of their game in research and are thought leaders. You don’t get anywhere in any ranking without that. We also have first-rate students who come to us from around the world; a truly global student body. These faculty and students, along with our great staff, together have designed a great curriculum. Of course, we also sit in an amazing facility with great technology and instructional facilities that help deliver that curriculum and provide space for clubs and events. This is all bedrock for a great school.
What makes Ross unique is our approach to education. We take what’s called an action-based approach. A traditional approach to business education is a lecture and discussion approach, supplemented or replaced with a case-based approach. The case approach is the I’m-telling-you-about-something-that-happened-to-somebody-else-so-we-can-discuss-it approach.
We use lectures and cases, of course, but we have supplemented that heavily with an action-based approach. This means that students have direct experience with a real business situation, both good and bad, over an intense period of time. First-year MBA students, for example, spend a quarter of their first year in a Multidisciplinary Action Project working through a live business problem. Students address that business situation and then debrief on what they learned in addressing the situation. Unlike the case method, where you’re trying to get inside somebody else’s head through the written word, students are now living the situation and having to address it. And that’s what makes us truly unique with the action-based approach.
You have spoken before on some of the key changes that are shaping business education today, such as increased globalization, an influx of technology, and new students who bring social responsibility and a team orientation to business. How does action-based learning serve students well for the new challenges we face in the world?
First of all, a lot of our Multidisciplinary Action Projects and the other action-based learning opportunities at Ross happen in the field around the world. There’s really no substitute in global education for experience in the global business environment. Action-based learning allows direct experience with the global business environment, so that’s a primary reason why that is helpful.
Second, because action-based learning is distributed learning—in other words we’re not all in the classroom together at the same time—advanced technology is a necessary part of learning. And since action-based learning is typically done in a team or done in support of a team, it is fundamentally a group experience or group-supported experience.
So, all of those pieces of where we’re headed are touched by action-based learning.
Ross has certainly been a pioneer with the action-based learning approach. You’ve also said that now is the time for a renaissance or innovation with action-based learning. What would you say is the next level or new horizon for action-based learning in business education?
I think that’s something that our faculty are going to have to delve deeply into, but there seem to be a couple of things that point the way forward.
Action-based learning is essentially a cycle of instruction, action, and reflection, with the action being the experience and reflection affecting subsequent instruction. Of the three pieces involved in this cycle, reflection—really taking the time to reflect on what we’re learning— has probably received the least attention. One of the things we know is that if there isn’t adequate reflection, learning isn’t permanent. So, I think better understanding what it really means to reflect on the action and building that into our curriculum is important.
How we enable everyone to have a truly global action-based learning experience is also part of the next step in developing action-based learning. Everyone needs to have some direct global experience and we don’t have that full coverage right now.
These are a couple of items that will be involved in the renaissance of action-based learning, but there will be more as our faculty works on this issue.
The multidisciplinary resources available at the University of Michigan are clearly a significant advantage for Ross. Please talk about the importance of U-M’s departments, institutes, and resources as a learning context for Ross and the role they can play in business education at Ross.
Whether you are going to be excellent personally or excellent institutionally, it’s quite helpful to surround yourself with others who are excellent. There are over 90 departments at the University of Michigan that are ranked in the top ten in their field. These departments can be a tremendous resource for supporting business education.
For example, if someone is interested in entrepreneurial business and how the changing legal landscape might affect opportunities for entrepreneurship, it’s really helpful to have a top-ten law school (U-M Law School) right across the street. If you’re interested in biotechnology and how that might affect bold entrepreneurship and opportunities for mature groups to enter markets, it’s helpful to have a top-ten medical school right here (U-M Medical School). A lot of entrepreneurship stems from science and technology, so it’s helpful to have a top-ten engineering program (U-M College of Engineering).
Business is fundamentally connected to other disciplines, so it’s helpful to have people who are get great training in those fields. There are a number of students from those fields who come to take classes at Ross and be involved in projects. These schools open up their doors to our students as well.
In considering how Ross relates to local businesses and the local Ann Arbor area economy, how do you see this relationship and the benefits that local businesses experience from the presence of Ross being located in our community?
Ross operates, as does the University of Michigan, on two levels. We are, of course, a global business school operating in a global university with a global faculty and student body. With that said, as a business school, just as a medical school needs a teaching hospital to be truly great, a business school needs an experiential laboratory to be truly great. Some of this laboratory we find around the globe, but some of that laboratory we find right at home with local businesses.
And just as with a teaching hospital, it’s not just experimentation for experimentation’s sake. A teaching hospital really hopes and believes—and should measure itself against this—that it is really doing good for the patients. So also, in a business school, part of interacting with our local laboratory is doing good for the local economy. This may be in providing consultative services or projects of various kinds. Or it may be in a pure service learning sense where you’re actually providing service projects, particularly in the nonprofit space.
It certainly is an employment sense. Human capital is the most critical capital for most firms today, so having access to great employees who are familiar with the local region is helpful. Or it may be in an idea, since being close to great faculty or robust thought leaders is helpful for local businesses.
So, even though the medical school is on the frontier in some domains of discovery and research, just as we are, it has a local impact in a teaching hospital. At Ross, we think of the business community in the same way, as being a local laboratory for mutual benefits.
Many companies in this region may not be aware of the breadth and depth of resources available to them through Ross. If a business wants to better understand how they might be able to collaborate with Ross, how do they take that first step?
Contacting the Business Engagement Center (BEC) is a good first step. The BEC exists to help facilitate interaction between U-M and local companies. If a company has a general desire to connect but doesn’t know what resources are available, the BEC can help them sort that through. The BEC is a useful front door to help companies articulate their needs and desires and to connect them to the U-M in the right way.
Once a company is connected with Ross, continuing with these channels for collaboration is appropriate. If, for example, a company is involved in improving its operational processes and they get connected to our Tauber Center (the Tauber Institute for Global Operations is a joint program between the College of Engineering and Ross) and our students do a project with them, the company certainly can reconnect with the Tauber Center.
Thank you for your time, and welcome to the Ann Arbor area.
Thank you. I’m delighted to be here. This is an amazing community on every level; amazing students, amazing faculty, amazing staff. Ross is truly a great resource with great human capital right here in the home town.
———————————————–
U-M Business Engagement Center
Phone: (734) 647-1000
Email: www.bec.umich.edu
Website: um-bec@umich.edu
———————————————–
by David Baker and Margaret Baker
www.bakerstrategy.com
Tags: frontpage
