CONNECTION WITH CORPORATIONS: STRATEGIES FOR HBCUs
By Alicia Jackson,1 Isaac McCoy,2 Anthony Nelson,3 Joe Ricks,4 Van Sapp,5 Fatemeh Zakery6
Conversations at the HBCU Business Deans Roundtable and subsequent in-depth interviews with deans have identified concrete ways that HBCU business schools can elevate relationships with corporations for the sake of their graduates’ success. They must promote the specific benefits of the relationship for the corporation, identify the specific needs to be addressed, and create easy-access structures for meaningful impact on the institution and its students. An all-of-the-above approach will include each school’s highlighting its particular advantages (e.g., closer faculty-student relationships at smaller institutions); a unified message about the benefits of hiring HBCU graduates in general; and partnerships with each other, Traditional White Institutions (TWIs), and corporations to secure necessary expertise and resources. The partnerships with corporations can include hands-on student and faculty experiences in the business; executive visits, talks, and in-residence terms on campus; advisory boards for curriculum and other issues; shared programs and infrastructure; and participation in industry meetings and academic conferences (see white paper for corporations).
The message elevates the high-value returns that corporations can expect from partnering with HBCUs. The approach to corporations, unlike the approach to philanthropists, can be framed as an attractive business investment rather than charity. It should highlight the institute’s assets first, rather than its needs.
“We think in terms of a charity state of mind,” says Dean Isaac McCoy of the Stillman College School of Business. “The assets of a HBCU and its graduates, not their deficits or gaps, must prevail when communicating return on investment (ROI) to corporate partners.”
Those assets include the diversity that HBCU graduates can bring to corporations, both generally and specific to each institution. (They also include the institution’s faculty, staff, and facilities such as meeting space.) This message, however, must highlight not only the social, cultural, economic, and racial diversity of graduates but also the rigorous training, depth of knowledge, and high-value expertise in the field that they have acquired through their HBCU education. Success depends not on soft skills alone. Graduates must have demonstrable hard skills ready for the workforce today – and partnerships with corporations can help guarantee those skills through faculty and curriculum development as well as experiential learning and networking opportunities for students.
Leading-edge faculty expertise is vital. Academic knowledge is necessary but not sufficient for the professor as well as for the student. Students must see that their teachers understand and engage in modern business practices, including social media. Keeping faculty, and therefore curriculum, up-to-date is a natural access point for engaging corporations. Programs such as faculty internships in partners’ businesses are a win-win, with the corporation gaining the professor’s wisdom and the professor gaining the practical experience of today’s workforce. Executive-in-residence programs give both students and faculty access to the business leader’s insights and mentoring. The traditional divide between academics and practitioners must be replaced by mutual understanding, respect, and commitment to the good of the students and the greater society. Breaking down those barriers and participating in creating the broader experience that modern students expect from college should be part of the metrics that can help a professor’s career advance.
“It allows corporations to use different muscles for some of their executives,” says Dean Van Sapp of the School of Business, Management & Technology at St. Augustine’s College. “It’s like a workout. Doing the same thing all the time is not going to be effective. This environment helps them not only flex those muscles, but it shows the business schools what’s really key. The employee gets a big benefit at reasonable cost.”
Experiential learning for students is indispensable. Internships empower students to see the impact of their learning applied to real-time problems, making them more eager to master concepts in the classroom – they already have the answer to “what am I going to do with this?” Internships provide an opportunity to test abstract career goals in the real world, sometimes confirming a path and sometimes revealing the wisdom of changing course. At the same time, HBCUs should elevate awareness of the multiple leadership experiences that their students experience on campus and in their personal lives, especially those at small colleges where everyone manages several roles. Those instill a sought-after entrepreneurial mindset more valuable than a GPA.
“We need to prepare students with soft skills, technical skills, experiential learning, cultural awareness of what they’re going to be faced with when they leave academia and go into a corporation,” says Dean Anthony Nelson of the Business School at North Carolina Central University. “It can’t start in the junior or senior year. It has to start with the freshmen. It could even happen as early as high school, developing those relationships. I think industry and academia can join together in preparing those high school students for college and preparing those college students for the corporate world.”
A partnership between Harris-Stowe State University and neighboring Wells Fargo Advisors created a successful academia-corporate partnership model that could be replicated with the school’s other business partners. The partnership entails many collaborative projects to achieve a common goal of graduating students as potential applicants, including bank officials on the advisory board and engaging with students, a bank-sponsored Trading Room, and a semester-long internship that ends with students presenting their consulting projects for feedback. “I do not miss any of those presentations because it is so rewarding to watch how we and corporations join forces in growing, grooming and graduating interns that can smoothly transition into work ace,” says Dean Fatemeh Zakery of the Anheuser-Busch School of Business at Harris-Stowe State University, adding that many of these interns get hired by Wells Fargo. Students use skills to succeed in landing careers and thrive in a diverse corporate environment.
HBCUs must create corporate partnerships and encourage their faculty and students to engage those partnerships when they arise, for their own sake and for the institution’s long-term relationships.
“It’s up to us to motivate our faculty,” says Dean Alicia Jackson of the Albany State University College of Business. “They have to disrupt their lives and go someplace out of town. Motivating our faculty and our students to take advantage of these opportunities when they come along is something we have got to do – ‘Faculty, you have things you need to learn, and this is going to beneficial to you.’”
For HBCUs, success at student placement is necessary but not sufficient. Many HBCU graduates get sought-after jobs only to leave them after less than two years, often to start their own business, join a smaller company, or change fields. Retention of minority employees is a significant problem for corporations. To generate evidence of their benefit – and alerts for needed changes – HBCUs must develop thorough and meaningful ways to track students’ careers after graduation.
Six years ago, a business communications class at Xavier University in Louisiana started requiring students to create a LinkedIn profile. Most students updated their profiles, says Dean Joe Ricks of the Division of Business, adding that the site reveals 90 percent have gotten jobs over the past two years. Eighty-eight percent of those got jobs in their major or a business-related field, and almost all of the others were athletes who had gone into coaching. One student got a job after Microsoft contacted her through the profile.
About the HBCU Business Deans Roundtable
HBCU Business Deans represent 83 campuses in 22 states and the Virgin Islands with more than 250,000 students enrolled.
Mission: The purpose of this organization is to provide a forum for deans of HBCU business schools to address opportunities and challenges associated with enhancing business programs and initiatives. The organization also seeks to strengthen and develop strategic partnerships and alliances with corporations, government, and national organizations to provide the essential tools and resources for student success.
1 Dean, Albany State University College of Business.
2 Dean, Stillman College School of Business.
3 Dean, Business School, N.C. Central University.
4 Dean, Xavier University in Louisiana Division of Business.
5 Dean, St. Augustine’s College School of Business, Management & Technology.
6 Dean, Harris-Stowe State University Anheuser-Busch School of Business.