Real world and classroom meet through outstanding business professor

11/02/2001 BOZEMAN --       In a flurry of activity and with a babble of voices, student teams assemble structures made of drinking straws and straight pins until time is called and the exercise is complete. Senior students in professor Bill Brown's management class at Montana State University are getting real world exposure to leadership and working in teams.

      This real world application is a hallmark of Brown's teaching style and one of the many reasons he was one of the recipients this year of MSU's Cox Family Award for Creative Scholarship and Teaching.

      "I took his leadership class," said former student Katie Barber, now a law student in Missoula. "It's the most practical and valuable class I have ever taken. He shows you how to apply the concepts he teaches to real life, and it really works."

      Brown says he's providing a context for students in his teaching.

       "Students don't yet know the dynamics of big business, so they need help to establish a context," he said.

      "He demonstrates a unique combination of excellence in teaching and research in the field of organizational leadership," said Richard Semenik, dean of the College of Business.

      "Leadership exists throughout an organization," Brown said. "Whenever you want to influence someone you're leading."

      Brown notes that about 10 years ago the business community started to look for more leadership skills in its management candidates so business schools responded. 

      One of the means to that end has Brown's students maintaining a journal where they reflect on their own personal experiences of where they've attempted leadership.

      It's part of a many-faceted approach to learning that Brown employs that includes reading ideas in a book, discussing them in class, thinking about the concepts in a journal.

       "If you've handled the idea in a variety of ways, then it starts to make sense," Brown said. "We tend to know the things we discover for ourselves."

      Brown is an innovator in the field of management and leadership. He is a co-author of the textbook, "Interpersonal Skills for Leadership," published by Prentice Hall and the editor of the book, "Management Perspectives."

      Brown, well over six feet tall with salt and pepper gray hair and a hint of a southern accent is a commanding figure. But it's his geniality and affability that make him highly approachable as an instructor. Barber says that when her advisor left MSU, Brown stepped right in and took her under his wing.

      "Students are wonderful, they bring a lot to the classroom," Brown said. "Teaching is a thing that gives, rather than takes energy. Most days I come out of class with more energy then when I went in."

      That energy is noted by students again and again from glowing evaluations to his twice receiving the Chamber of Commerce/MSU Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award.

      Barber nominated Brown for the award in 2000.

      "He pushes you as a teacher and wants you to do well," Barber said. "He says, 'You need to do this for yourself, to learn it for yourself.'''

      While at MSU Brown has also received the College of Business Thomas Nopper Award for Teaching Excellence, Bill and Rita Haynes Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Teaching and the President's Excellence in Teaching Award.

      Coming to MSU in 1997 from Nebraska, Brown brought with him a wealth of experience from his work in human resources development during his career as a military officer.

      "I joined the army in 1970 as a draftee and was planning to do my duty and get out. But the army gave me a tremendous opportunity to develop myself educationally. Also I was very impressed with the individuals I worked with so I stuck around from one assignment to another. It was interesting and valuable work," he said.

      During his military service he was able to earn his master's and doctorate degrees in business administration. He retired in 1991 as a lieutenant colonel. His military career had also given him the opportunity to teach.

       "I saw what teaching could be when it's done right," he said. "I saw that it could be incredibly personally satisfying."

      So Brown embarked on his second career and spent five years teaching at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.

      Even though Brown was raised in Texas and Louisiana, he always had a love for the mountains. He and his wife would spend their summers in Montana.

       "I was knocked out by the mountains and I'm a fly fisherman, so I always kept my eye open for a position out here," he said.

      Brown is not only deeply committed to his students but to the process of learning as well. Brown brought an element of peer review to teaching when he helped to introduce a teaching circle to the College of Business management faculty.

      "He played a pivotal role in a three-year effort to improve teaching effectiveness across all management related courses through the application of transformational leadership principles in the classroom," Semenik said.

      All management professors meet together every other week in the learning circle to talk about teaching. "We give each other feedback, we talk about how to stimulate students, we talk about what works in the classroom," Brown said. He says that teachers know immediately by the reaction of their students whether what they're doing in the classroom is working.

       "All of us really enjoy the dialog with each other, and it makes a difference," Brown said. "We share a commitment to teaching excellence. For me, its been enormously satisfying in what I learn from my colleagues. I love to talk about teaching."

Send questions or comments to Brenda McDonald: bmcdonal@montana.edu. Or you can send letters to Brenda McDonald, MSU Communications Services, 416 Culbertson Hall, Bozeman, MT 59717.

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