In our monthly Faculty Spotlight, CfT Faculty Fellow, Elizabeth Johnson-Young, goes out to find colleagues who are bringing energy and new ideas into their teaching, often turning that work into research in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL).
This month, we’d like you to meet two COB colleagues:
Alex Dunn, Associate Professor of Management
Samira Fallah, Assistant Professor/Strategy
You two have a SoTL article that was recently published. Can you tell us a little about what this project investigated and what you found?
We took a common executive strategic planning tool, called scenario planning, and translated the tool into a process that students can use when planning for various parts of their career and job search process. The activity walks students through evaluating external forces, developing possible future situations, and analyzing the implications of each of the situations. The activity can be completed in face-to-face classes, outside of class, and in online classes.
Our article, titled “The Future Is Scary!: A Job Search Scenario Planning Exercise to Encourage Student Resilience Capacity and Reduce Stress,” has been published in the Journal of Management Education.
What are the implications of the research?
Based on pretest-posttest data, students (N = 71) report that the exercise significantly reduced stress about their own job searches and increased positive mood. Most students also agreed that scenario planning can help with understanding how to prepare and approach different job search situations and can be a useful tool for dealing with future unknowns.
How was the project valuable to you as a teacher and as a researcher?
From a teaching perspective, we now have a great activity that we can use in a variety of classes and can cater it to the specific topic we are teaching. Alex teaches human resources and can use this while she teaches about recruitment. Samira teaches strategic management and can use this while she teaches about scenario planning as a planning tool.
From a research perspective, this project is part of a special issue called “Teaching about Contemporary Careers”. We hope it reaches other management educators who can adopt the exercise and use it in their classes to help students better prepare for their own job searches.
What does your research agenda look like right now? Has it changed in unanticipated ways?
We both have two streams of research: discipline-related discovery research and SoTL research. We have found a great organization called the Management and Organizational Behavior Teaching Society (MOBTS) that supports SoTL research in our discipline. We have plans to continue SoTL research and are working on our next project together that we plan to submit to the MOBTS conference this year, get feedback on, and then turn into another publication.
What is your favorite UMW class to teach?
Alex: Human Resources or Management & Films
Samira: Principles of Management and Strategic Leadership
What is your favorite way to start a class?
Alex: Hearing about student’s lives outside of class – their weekend plans, sports team updates, travels, etc.
Samira: Capturing students’ attention right from start! I prefer starting class with a question, an engaging video, or a relevant news article that gets students thinking about the session’s topic.
8 a.m. class or 4:00 p.m. class?
Alex: Despite being a morning person (like Samira), my speaking voice is not ready at 8am. So, 4pm all the way!
Samira: I am definitely a morning person but 8 am is a bit too early for me! Make it 9, and I am all in!
What is your dream class to teach?
Alex: an advanced OB/leadership class where students solve real-world leadership problems for companies and learn about themselves as leaders.
Samira: a class all about Chief Executive Officers (CEOs)!
What podcast would you currently recommend? (or book/show/etc.—you pick!)
Alex: I don’t want to embarrass myself too much here, but I listen to a daily pop culture podcast called The Toast. I also keep up with Adam Grant’s WorkLife podcast and anything Brene Brown.
Samira: A Podcast, in Persian, called Channel B which introduces interesting books. I am also a fan of “Wisdom From The Top with Guy Raz” and “Inside the Strategy Room podcasts” by McKinsey & Company