BusinessWest

JA Takes a Different Approach to Teaching Financial Literacy

The large, gilded frame holding the picture of an imposing, yet gentle-faced, elderly man doesn’t quite fit the modern office design of Junior Achievement of Western Massachusetts (JAWM).
However, the impressive painting is just where it belongs in the central Tower Square location of the nonprofit that Horace Moses, president of Strathmore Paper, created almost a century ago. “Horace is staying right where he is,” said Jennifer Connelly, president of JAWM.  “JA USA in Colorado wants the painting, which is an original, but they’re not getting it!”
The painting was donated by a woman in Springfield who had the artifact in her attic for years. Her father was a friend of Moses, and she felt the painting belonged with the organization that Moses and the two other well-to-do gentlemen, Theodore Vail, president of American Telegraph and Telephone (AT&T), and U.S. Sen. Winthrop Murray Crane, formed in 1919. As the Industrial Revolution changed the American business landscape from agricultural to the business of manufacturing, the three men knew that the younger generation would need the additional education to learn new skills and be able to handle new money.
A humble JA started as a collection of small, after-school business clubs for students in Springfield.  From that early vision, JA of Western Mass., a member of JA Worldwide, is now a part of a global organization that operates in 123 countries and reaches 9.7 million students around the globe, according to its Web site, jawm.org. Locally, JA serves the young people of Western Mass. and Vermont.
Today, JA is facing a new challenge: the same technology revolution that has changed the way we all communicate, learn, and promote products and services. The purpose of JA remains basically the same — to educate and inspire youth to value free enterprise, business, and economics to improve the quality of their lives — but different avenues of technology are enabling the small office staff and a very dedicated board and volunteer team to connect to teachers, students, and donors in the area.
One of the key elements of all JA programs — which are presented at no cost to area schools regardless of the age of the student — is an understanding of real-life decisions and what one more step in the thinking process can mean. Connelly talks of a high-school boy who, when asked what he would spend his first few meaty paychecks on, said a down payment on a new red sports car. When Connelly asked where he lived, he said with his mom.
“I then asked him what he would feel like when a cute girl saw his new car and thought it was really cool but then he would have to take her back to his place … to see mom,” laughs Connelly. “That’s the next step that many kids just don’t think about at first, and something as simple as pushing the real-life questions can really make them review their decisions ahead of time.”
Today, the process of reaching out to those kids who want cool new sports cars before they even have a garage to put them in is a bit different than in Moses’ time. In this issue, BusinessWest examines what else has changed within JA and, perhaps more important, what has not.

Drop Head
Since BusinessWest last visited JA, Facebook, Twitter, and a slew of online programs that volunteers can use directly from the Internet in the classroom and at events have become a part of everyday education and outreach. JA is active not only with advertising events and linking financial stories of interest on social networks, but collaborating with other JA chapters on best practices and recent successes.
But JA’s main mission is to be in the schools with talented volunteers and offer a different approach to financial literacy for students in all grades. For the younger students, the programs involve games and role playing to provide their first glimpse of economic education and financial literacy. In middle school, the programs involve more historical references to how business has grown in America, how money circulates in the global economy, and how personal interests, skills, and values can shape career aspirations.
According to Connelly, middle-school teachers are the hardest to convince. Because of the tough Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) guidelines and the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework, the teachers fear losing so-called ‘blackboard time.’ But Connelly points out that JA programs mirror the state’s requirements, and building relationships with those teachers is vital because JA has to be invited into the classrooms.
And a ‘cool factor’ online program helps.
Take, for instance, the Web-based business-simulation program for high-school students called JA Titan. Set in the year 2035, JA Titan creates a world in which players are CEOs of their own companies, complete with their own avatars. During game play, students must run a manufacturing company and master six key business decisions: price of product, production levels, marketing expenses, research and development costs, capital-investment level, and charitable giving. Various corporate assistants help the player through each phase.
Last May, at Berkshire Community College, Springfield and Pittsfield high-school students participated in the first JA Titan Challenge in the Commonwealth, and Springfield won. This was significant, said Connelly, because Pittsfield at that point had more experience with the program.
In order to keep the nonprofit organization financially healthy, educational foundation grants, corporate underwriting, fund-raising events, and requests via social networking and Web for individual donations are in constant practice. This past April, JA launched its first-ever Horace A. Moses Legacy Breakfast and introduced a public-awareness campaign, It All Starts Here. The goal was to educate new friends about JA’s mission and successes, to raise $50,000, and to convert some of those donations into three-year pledges.
“We are extremely pleased to have had more than 150 in attendance, many of whom are totally new relationships for JA, and we raised more than $65,000,” said William Kowlek, development officer. “The fact that we were able to convert more than 50% of those donations to three-year pledges is an amazing feat our first time out.”
JA has deep relationships with many large companies in the area and a dedicated board that reads like a directory to the most successful businesses in the area. Other annual fund-raising events keep JA busy throughout the year, including the Bowl-A-Thon, the Readiness 5K Run, the JA Golf Tournament, and the extremely popular Stock Investing Competition.
The annual fall stock-market event is an exciting simulation in which teams of four receive $1 million in fictitious dollars to invest in 50 different stocks. Every 60 seconds is a fast-paced new trading day, and the competition determines which team can amass the largest net-worth portfolio in the teamwork-building challenge. A video of the event can be found on YouTube via jawm.org.
While the event centers on the technology of a stock-market program, technology almost killed the event in October 2010. The company that JA had used for years, Fun-Raising, had major technical issues with the computer program that simulated the stock market ticker, and all those fictitious dollars got lost on the big screen.
“It was a mess,” says Connelly. “One of our long-time volunteers, Jon Toner, took a look at the screen and said he thought he could reproduce the program, and he did.” Toner, who at the time was in the information technology department of a large local corporation, created a new and improved program, and, after testing with more than 200 students buying and selling at high volume, the program was slated to be used in the next stock-market event.
The new Stock Investing Competition, formerly the Stock Market Challenge, launched the first public use of Toner’s new program last October, and it was deemed a complete success. Connelly saw an opportunity for Toner with all the other JA chapters around the country, with which the now-for-sale Fun-Raising company had contracts for their own stock-market events.
“And it was great timing because he separated from his corporate job, and this new career was already in motion,” says Connelly.
By this past January, Toner had jumped from a job-loss situation and was instantly in the process of securing various JAs for their stock-market events; his new company, Future Financiers, and a sweet deal were born. For every event that Toner books with other JAs, the JA of Western Mass. receives a $1,000 donation, and the computer program for their October stock-market event is free.
“The stock-market program is also designed to be available to the students that actually were at the October 2011 event so that they can go back at any time, 24/7, log in, and review, turn-by-turn, their decision-making process,” said Toner. “This is just another way that JA has made the learning process for students an online experience that fits their personality.”

The Next Step
The JA mission is to inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy, and with enthusiastic volunteers and the consistent, multi-level use of technology, Connelly says the JA of Western Mass. is definitely succeeding.
“We teach innovation, and if we can continue to evolve in today’s business community and show students the connection between what they are learning and reality, then we are a success.”
Added Connelly, “if the one thing a student decides is that they don’t want to be in a certain career because of the huge cost after college, then that means they really are taking that next step to ask important financial questions and make wise decisions based on what they’ve learned through our programs.”
And making that next step part of someone’s thought process is what JA is really all about.

Unique Partnership Gives College Students Inside Look at TV Sales

Monika Rutana used to have a negative image of salespeople.
“I thought they were invasive,” said the 22-year-old Western New England University student, noting that her opinion changed when she — a marketing major in the College of Business — applied for and was selected to take a new course called “Media Sales Field Experience.”
It matched five high-achieving students who will graduate this spring with the three local TV stations — abc40/Fox 6, WWLP-22, and WSHM-3 — where they took part in a junior-account-executive training program with staff members in their advertising departments.
As a result of the experience, Rutana’s view of salespeople has undergone a dramatic change. “I was really excited to be able to solve clients’ dilemmas and match them with the proper advertising solutions,” she told BusinessWest. “And it was really rewarding to see clients agree to advertise as a result of my ideas, then watch the commercial afterwards.”
Jessica Marchie, another participant in the program, agreed.
“I’m much more interested in sales than I was before, and realized it’s very rewarding,” said the 24-year-old, adding that she discovered that this career track suits people with energetic personalities.
Mary DeLiso, vice president of sales for abc 40/Fox 6 in Springfield, said the students were exposed to every facet of the business. “You never know exactly what the job is like until you follow in the footsteps of an account executive.”
Nicole Mondor, local sales manager for Channel 22, concurred. “People have a preconceived notion about sales, and the two interns we had were very hesitant about the idea of a career in sales and what it means. So, we wanted these young people to see that what we do is so much more than selling. It’s solution-oriented for clients.”
Paul Costanza, chairman of the Marketing department at the WNEU College of Business, said this is a multi-faceted program, and that the three-credit course involves a partnership between the college and the TV stations, provides the students with a unique opportunity to obtain experience in media sales, helps them prepare for careers, and may give them a decided advantage and make them more marketable when they apply for jobs.
“It’s also perfect timing for us,” he said, adding that the feedback the students provide will help the school hone its curriculum during a program review conducted once every five years. Department leaders are at the point where they are incorporating new ideas into the classes.
Gerry Fitzgerald, who came up with the idea, is thrilled with its success. “It’s great for students to be able get some real-life experience,” said the WNEU adjunct professor and president of Fitzgerald and Mastroianni Advertising Inc. “When I contacted the stations about this, they all thought it was a great idea, and it has turned out to be a really good program. The students are getting a great education and great practical experience in advertising. It’s also great for the school to be able to establish a relationship with the TV stations.”

Action Plan
Although the stations readily agreed to the idea, it wasn’t easy to implement. The original plan was to have the program qualify as an internship toward graduation. However, there are two majors within the College of Business: marketing and marketing/communications/advertising. Students with a marketing major don’t need to complete an internship to graduate, while the second major requires one, and Costanza didn’t want those students to be excluded from the program because internships are limited.
After several meetings with the TV sales executives on campus, the college decided to turn it into a three-credit college course. “But this experience is not for everyone, so we had students apply for it,” said Costanza, adding the hope is that the on-the-job training might eventually result in jobs. “They had to be accepted, because we wanted to acknowledge and celebrate our high-performing students and wanted them to treat it as if it was an employment opportunity.”
The stations conducted interviews in the same way they would if they were actually hiring someone for a new sales position. When that step was complete, the students told Costanza which stations they would prefer to work for. And although the stations originally agreed to take on only one student, Channel 40 and Channel 22 each accepted two, with the understanding that they would each spend 120 hours with them over the course of the 15-week semester.
“The experience is unique because these TV stations are all competitors. They deserve kudos, and a lot has to be said about them as a result,” Costanzo said. “It’s a valuable lesson for students to become well-versed in a field, especially when the focus is on training.”
Another reason the experience was so meaningful is that it changed the students’ perceptions about marketing. When students think about the topic, they think about price, product, place, and promotion, Costanza said. “They identify advertising with promotional strategy, but it’s really six things: advertising, direct marketing, interactive Internet marketing, sales promotion, publicity and public relations, and personal selling.”
Students have the option of taking a sales class during their schooling, but it is not mandatory for graduation. However, that may change as a result of this program.
“We’ll do our best to get helpful feedback from the students; it’s an additional measure that will help to show us what students need to learn from our curriculum, and it will benefit future students,” Costanza said. “The intent is to help them become better-prepared for careers. These students were guinea pigs, and there is a definite learning curve as we continue to develop relationships with the TV stations.”
He noted that the opportunity to meet people in a variety of businesses was an additional bonus, and also provided the students with networking opportunities.

New Experiences
DeLiso said she felt it was important to expose the students to all aspects of the career field. “I wanted them to see the reality of the job day-to-day,” she said. “It can be chaotic at times.”
As a result, her interns were taught to prospect leads and make appointments. They went on sales calls with representatives and researched companies, including how and where they were spending their advertising dollars, and also went on cold calls.
DeLiso was happy to be a mentor and introduce students to the field, because a career in this field was something she never imagined doing 32 years ago when she became an administrative assistant in a sales department. “But it’s a great field to be in, and my clients have become my friends,” she said.
Marchie said she and Rutana accompanied DeLiso on visits to some of her most prominent clients. “We got to see the interaction between them,” she said. “I like to work with people and get to know them, and realized I could have really personal relationships in this business. I could tell Mary really cares about getting their message out in a way that will bring results to their company. She would ask them about their business before she discussed her proposal and innovative ideas.”
Before taking part in the program, Marchie had no idea it was important or necessary for sales professionals to form relationships with clients. “I thought you would just go in and sell,” she said.
Rutana found that she really liked the field. “I was unfamiliar with sales and was looking for a new experience in marketing. This gave me the opportunity to see how sales really works,” she said, adding that she also enjoys forming relationships with people and likes the idea of working with a variety of clients and entrepreneurs. “It’s a different experience every time.”
Other lessons learned included how challenging it is to reach decision makers, as well as the importance of calling them at the right time of day. Meanwhile, the students learned that the reason many people don’t advertise on TV is because they don’t know how to go about it.
“If you walk in with ideas for the customer, they know you did your research and are concerned about targeting their customers and understand their needs,” Marchie said.
Rutana came up with a script for a TV commercial for a dental office that had previously advertised only in print publications. She also created a sample Web ad for the company.  She was excited about the commercial and felt very disappointed when they chose to sign up for the station’s Web advertising.
DeLiso explained that, although TV might not be within every client’s budget, the station has many other products, including space on its Web site. “They also had to learn that you don’t close every sale, and it can be hurtful as you may see a company’s advertising dollars go to someone else.”
Marchie said she was shocked by the number of businesses that didn’t respond to her e-mails. “I contacted at least 200 potential clients,” she said. However, she had success in another endeavor when she created a 15-second commercial script for a paintball facility and researched the best time for them to air it, based on their demographics.
“It was fascinating that the owner liked the idea immediately and went with it,” she said.
Rutana also impressed DeLiso by landing an appointment with the president of a credit union. “It was exciting,” Rutana said. “Part of going on a call is seeing how everything is done, from the first meeting to talking to them about creative ideas to filming and seeing a commercial on TV.”
DeLiso said they learned that the job is similar to running a business and offers both rewards and challenges. “They saw the good, the bad, and the ugly,”she told BusinessWest.
The seniors enjoyed their time at the TV station and have a new view of what it takes to be successful in the business. “I used to switch channels when a commercial came on the radio. Now I listen carefully,” Rutana said, adding that she has also become more aware of advertising on billboards and in print publications.

Beneficial Relationship
The course will not be offered again until next spring, but all those involved said it has been a real success and a true win-win scenario.
“We definitely benefited,” DeLiso said. “It was a great opportunity to mentor students; they were instrumental in bringing new business to the station and helped us close some sales.”
Mondor agreed, and said the students that worked at Channel 22 helped them conduct research and complete other tasks. “They helped a lot in the whole sales-pipeline process, and one even modeled for a fashion show,” she said.
The students also expressed appreciation. “I am glad these businesses gave us this opportunity; we never would have gotten this experience without them,” said Rutana.
They also wouldn’t have discovered the gratification that comes from working in the industry. “This has taught me to be creative and innovative with ideas,” Marchie said.

Springfield College to Launch New Degree Program This Fall

Richard Wood remembers talking to a number of Springfield College graduates while he was building a case for creating a Nutritional Sciences degree program at the college a few years ago.
Such discussions inevitably featured a question — something along the lines of “do you think we should have such a program?” said Wood, associate professor of Exercise Science at the college, adding that, while the responses varied, they were generally very slight variations on two themes.
“Invariably, people either said to me, ‘wait, you don’t already have one,’ or ‘it’s a perfect fit’ — those are basically the only responses I received,” Wood told BusinessWest, noting that such commentary, along with some decidedly more scientific analysis and research within this market, led college administrators to move forward with the proposal; the program is slated to start in the fall.
Those who enroll — and 15 to 20 students are expected to start — will be taking courses such as Human Anatomy and Physiology (I and II, as well as labs), Advanced Nutrition and Metabolism, and Principles of Food Science, while earning a bachelor’s degree that could lead to pursuit of graduate programs in nutritional sciences or one of a growing number of employment opportunities in the broad realm of nutrition.
This includes jobs in both the public and private sectors, said Wood, and such areas as public (or community) health, the massive food industry, marketing and product design, patient advocacy, education, research, sales, government, and sport performance.
“We all eat,” he said while attempting to quantify and qualify the extent of the job market in this field. “And any time you have something that every single person has to do, there are a lot of opportunities.”
Beyond this simple fact, there are other reasons why the timing is appropriate for creation of this program, said Wood, especially a growing awareness of the importance of proper nutrition, as well as a real need for what he called “nutritional problem solvers.”
“People in American recognize that nutrition is more at the forefront than it’s ever been, yet there’s probably more confusion about nutrition than there’s ever been,” he explained. “We probably have more nutrition resources than ever, and more focus on healthy eating, but we need something more.
“There is a disconnect between these ideas and this information, and practically helping people lead healthier lives,” he continued. “And that’s where we need these creative problem solvers.”
For this issue, BusinessWest looks at how Springfield College’s new program will attempt to put more of these specialists to work.

Food for Thought
Wood said preliminary discussions concerning creation of a nutritional science program were initiated several years ago.
They centered on that disconnect that he described, and also on simple laws of supply and demand as they relate to the business of higher education. In short, those discussions revealed both a need for such a program and an opportunity for Springfield College to meet that need and, in the process, further broaden its focus, or Humanics philosophy, as the school calls it, which calls for the “education of the whole person — in spirit, mind, and body — for leadership in service to humanity.”
And this brings Wood back to those comments from alumni that a nutritional science program would be a perfect fit at the 127-year-old college.
“Because of the nature of Springfield College being so focused, with our Humanics philosophy, on service-oriented careers, this really is a good fit,” he explained. “We have a lot of allied health programs, and this can certainly fall into that realm.”
Beyond that basic symmetry, there is also requisite demand for such a program, he continued, adding that there have been many inquiries at the school’s admission office as to whether a course of study exists.
The volume of such queries was enough to convince Wood and others to proceed with a comprehensive feasibility analysis, which eventually determined that, given the seemingly rising demand and the fact there are only a few degree programs in this field in New England — UMass Amherst, UConn, Boston University, and Framingham State offer them, for example — it would be prudent for the school to proceed.
And as he talked about what the program is all about, Wood started by explaining what it isn’t about. Specifically, it is designed as a non-dietetic track, he noted, meaning that this will not lead students to careers as dietitians.
But it can, and will, lead to both graduate programs in nutritional sciences and careers in a host of fields.
“We’re not planning to prepare people to become dietitians — that’s not our goal,” he explained. “But there are a lot of things people do in the world of nutrition. Graduates could work for a food company and help it design products and market products. They could also work in the public-health area on nutrition-related topics.”
Elaborating, Wood said the Springfield College program would be focused on what he called the bigger picture in this broad field, or “critical thinking in nutrition and problem-solving in nutrition,” both of which he would classify as recent developments in both higher education and career development.
And while he admits that it is difficult to effectively track the number of jobs in the realms he discussed, Wood said he believes they will exist in numbers sufficient to generate high placement rates for graduates of the new program. “I know that the demand for the nutrition professional is very high.”

Something to Chew On
Wood told BusinessWest that he probably didn’t coin the phrase ‘nutritional problem solver’ — although he quickly noted that he hasn’t heard anyone else use it to date.
He likes it, because he can put it to use to describe both the need for the program he played a lead role in creating, and also the individual who has that diploma on his or her wall.
“We need educated, motivated, creative thinkers to meet America’s nutritional needs,” he said, noting that, in this case, ‘need’ means someone who can help people make sense of the information now available and, more importantly, put it to good use.
Starting this fall, Springfield College will go about training people so that they can earn that distinction, and commence solving problems.

George O’Brien can be reached at obrien@businesswest.com

Bay Path Initiative Is Designed to Position Graduates for Success

It’s called WELL, short for Women as Empowered Learners and Leaders, a new program at Bay Path College in Longmeadow designed to test and enhance leadership skills. It’s part of a bold initiative to reposition the school as ‘the new American women’s college for the 21st century,’ an endeavor launched with the goal of enabling women to seize the opportunities that await them in what Bay Path’s president calls “the New America.”

Carol Leary wants to plant a stake in the ground that will distinguish Bay Path College as a learning environment where graduates can master the skills and rounded education necessary for success in what she calls “the new America.”
That stake is grounded in ethical behavior, good citizenship, financial literacy, a solid academic education, and the knowledge that volunteerism and health and fitness play a vital role in a woman’s well-being. “We want to become known as ‘the new American women’s college for the 21st century,’” Leary said.
To that end, faculty, staff, and college officials at the Longmeadow campus spent 10 months taking a thoughtful look at their course offerings as well as the skills graduates will need to transcend barriers in the future.
“We began looking at our evolution, and realized our history included some very interesting and bold initiatives that changed the status quo in many ways,” Leary said. “We have been educating and advocating for women since 1897, and the DNA of Bay Path is very entrepreneurial, so we had to take a close look at our environment to figure out how to best serve our population. The America of tomorrow will be a very different place, so we also had to determine what it will be like, as well as what we could do to promote the advancement of women to meet the demands of the workforce in the future.”
Although women have made many gains in recent years, there are still arenas where tremendous opportunity exists, Leary told BusinessWest.
“Women have so much potential to go further in business, science, law, and heath-related fields, and will play a critical role in the future of this country,” she explained, citing statistics to back up her statement. “About 50% of all professional and management positions in this country are held by women, yet women hold very, very few of the top leadership positions. There are eight women CEO’s in Fortune 500 companies, but that only accounts for 3.6% of the positions. And although 60% of college students are female, only 26% of college presidents are women. The glass is half-full, so women will have the opportunity to achieve these positions in the future.”
Transforming this vision into reality is an involved process, but everyone at Bay Path is excited about it. Their new program, known as WELL (Women as Empowered Learners and Leaders), contains a revamped curriculum and speaks to the broad goals the school has outlined.

Building Confidence
WELL, launched in September, includes mandated courses, or ‘destinations,’ for each year of study. However, the focus of the program is rooted in liberal arts. “We believe that studying liberal arts gives students a depth, breadth, and appreciation of the world,” said Leary.
The first WELL course, which all students take during their first semester, teaches them about leadership styles. They figure out their own style and identify their passions as they learn to work in collaboration with others. Leary said understanding leadership styles, which range from authoritarian to laissez-faire, can go a long way when employees work on projects with people whose styles differ from their own.
“We want to create a learning environment with many opportunities where students can test and enhance their leadership skills,” said Leary. “They need to learn how to hone these skills in a way that helps them achieve their dreams; we want women to dream boldly about what they want to do with their lives.”
She explained that this does not mean every woman needs to become a CEO. “But when they see a problem, we want them to step out of their comfort zone and say, ‘I will make a difference in this person’s life or change the way things are being done.’ The whole environment we are trying to create is so much broader than what students can learn inside a classroom.”
Leary has an open-door policy and often invites students into her office to talk about how they can facilitate change on campus. If they want to start a new club, she urges them to create a business plan to “solve the problem” and bring it back it back to her.
About six months ago, she gave an international student the title of ‘presidential ambassador’ and had her put together a plan detailing how the college could attract and recruit more international students.
In addition, a freshman was paid an hourly fee to interview students and find out what they thought when they heard the words “new American women’s college.” The student was given a deadline for the project, which included research to determine the number of students she would need to interview from each class to get a fair representation.
“We’re creating an environment with expectations. During our open house, we tell the young women that each one of them has incredible potential,” Leary said, adding that adult learners in their One Day a Week Saturday program say Bay Path has given them a second chance at success.
“The WELL program helps students find their voice as women so their inner spirit can be translated into leadership and they can take the initiative and solve problems,” she continued. “We want them to be willing to volunteer and be part of a team. If we create an environment where their potential is valued and we show them that we believe in them, they will soar to incredible heights.”
Kathleen Bourque, vice president for Institutional Advancement, agreed.  “A lot of women have never stopped to take stock of their own value. We want to give them that opportunity and also give them experiences that will allow them to grow.”

Practical Matters
During their sophomore year, students will take a course in financial literacy, which is especially important since the majority of women in the undergraduate program are first-generation college students. “We want to make sure they know how to invest for retirement and do so immediately after they get their first paycheck,” Leary said.
The course will also teach students how to read the fine print in contracts, whether they are purchasing an automobile or signing a rental agreement or home mortgage. “Some of our students don’t know how to balance a checkbook. They need to have these skills to become financially independent and be able to support themselves and their families,” she explained.
Health and fitness is another area WELL addresses. “If you model fitness to young people, they will incorporate it into their lifestyle and continue it when they have families,” Leary said. Their program includes education about nutrition, so the calorie count and salt content is listed on the menu of foods served in the cafeteria. Fitness instructor Rob Panetti also creates a daily list of ‘Rob’s picks,’ or food choices he recommends, and often sits with students while they eat to discuss their diets.
In addition, “when we introduced a boxing class, 90 students signed up,” Leary said, attesting to the enthusiasm the program is generating.
The college has also added a number of new offerings designed to provide more life skills. They include a Toastmaster’s group to enhance communication skills, and new fields of study, including majors in neuroscience and biochemistry, which will be introduced next fall. Bay Path is also in the process of getting the accreditation needed to offer a master’s degree for physician assistants, and a new online completer program was launched in January that allows women to transfer up to 60 credits (which can include credits for life experience) towards a bachelor’s degree.
“Women will play a greater role in the new America, and these programs will respond to the needs of the future of this country as well as the region,” Leary said. “The new America will be diverse and a place where people will need to think globally every day and understand how we fit into the global economy.”
Ethics is another area incorporated into the WELL program. In the past, students signed an honor code on their first day of classes agreeing to behave in an ethical manner. But the new program will take things a step further by introducing ethical dilemmas graduates may face in their chosen professions. “Ethical behavior is one of the most critical things we can teach,” Leary said.
The plan is to rotate the chair in ethics between academic departments so students in different disciplines can be exposed to situations they may face in the workplace. Faculty members will also be available to speak about the topic in public schools, which reflects Bay Path’s focus on community service.
“That value is introduced the day students arrive on campus,” Leary said, explaining that every new student must take part in a community-service project. Endeavors have ranged from working at Goodwill Industries to reading to children at Square One in Springfield, to cleaning up embankments along the Connecticut River.

Enhanced Tradition
On the first day of classes each year, the school holds an ‘awakening’ ceremony that begins at about 5:30 a.m. Students and staff members gather in a circle after walking around campus with lit candles, and speeches are given about the alpha and the omega — beginning and end — of their life on campus. “We use the circle as a symbol of community,” Leary said. “It’s a very moving experience, and one that is very spiritual.”
The ceremony is also an introduction and segue into ‘the new American women’s college for the 21st century,’ a place where dreams are born, and also where education encompasses the critical values, knowledge, and skills students will need to fulfill their potential on a rapidly changing planet.

Sport-management Graduates Are Covering Their Bases

Sport management is a broad term, Lisa Masteralexis said, but one way to narrow it down is to focus on the games people watch, not just play.
“Our students can go work anywhere in the industry, combining business and sports, but what they don’t do is recreation, health, fitness, those types of sports,” said Masteralexis, head of the Mark H. McCormack Department of Sport Management at UMass Amherst.
“We focus on spectator sports — imagine anything someone goes to see, then all of the support industries around that,” she added. “Think of the teams, the leagues, facilities, media, college athletics, Olympic sports, even high-school sports … really, anything a fan might go see, then all the sports businesses that go along with that.”
Sport-management students at Springfield College are taught the ins and outs of the industry through four lenses, said Matthew Pantera, professor and chair of the school’s Sport Management & Recreation Department. “There are four major areas: administration and management; event management and planning; maintenance, upkeep, and design of facilities; and problem solving. Those are highly transferable to quite a few degrees.”
In other words, he said, these are typically students with an interest in sports, but especially in what goes on behind the scenes; they are the individuals the fans aren’t watching when they click on the TV or file into the bleachers.
“We have kids working for ESPN, the Red Sox, the Miami Dolphins, doing sports marketing for the Basketball Hall of Fame, these types of organizations,” said Mei-Lin Yeh-Lane, professor of Sport Management at American International College. “Some are kids who like to work in the college or university arena.”
With a sport-management degree, “they can work as a sports agent; they can do event management, organizing a basketball, golf, or tennis tournament; they can join a marketing team to promote services or products; those types of things.”
In fact, the list is much longer, and while dreams of becoming the next Theo Epstein or Scott Boras might fall short, the spectator-sport industry in the U.S. — and internationally — has proven to be diverse, fast-growing, and relatively hardy even during recessions.
At the same time, however, college programs that teach students the business and behind-the-scenes aspects of sports have proliferated as well.
“There has been a lot of growth in the field, an incredible number of programs that have been developed over the past 20 years, and to be frank, I don’t think there are enough jobs out there for the number of students coming out of these programs,” Masteralexis told BusinessWest. “I feel like we’re in a position of luxury, having 40 years of alumni going out and making their way in the field; it’s more challenging for newer programs.”
The reason, she said, is all about connections.

Record Books
In those four decades the UMass program, part of the Isenberg School of Management, has been in existence, the school has cultivated an extensive alumni network, which is a great benefit to students seeking internships and eventual employment.
“As you can imagine, these positions are very competitive, and you have to connect with someone inside to get in; these teams and other organizations get thousands of unsolicited résumés,” said Masteralexis, meaning that it helps to tap into the influence of an alumnus or professor.
“We have alumni who really support our program by supporting internships, special projects, experiential learning … they really support our students in a mentoring capacity,” she explained. “We have an internship director and an internship database, hundreds of organizations where we place students, and some find internships on their own. In a nutshell, there are more internships than we have students to fill them.”
The same isn’t necessarily true for paying jobs upon graduation, which is why those internships are so crucial. In fact, many students are persuaded to take on multiple internships, both during the school year and over the summer, to set themselves apart from their competition and also broaden those networking opportunities that have become so valuable.
“With the growth in the industry, there are so many more internship opportunities, and I think the industry is recognizing the value of interns,” Masteralexis said. “However, one of the challenges is that many of these organizations do not pay students. It can be a difficult venture for a student who doesn’t come from means to live in New York City for the summer unpaid. How many of us could do that? So that’s very challenging.”
Pantera also recognizes the value of networking while in school, adding that Springfield College, which has operated its sport-management program for 30 years, has long cultivated invaluable relationships.
“We’re one of the few schools that visit every single one of these sites,” he told BusinessWest. “The fact that we go visit the Celtics and the Red Sox and the Indianapolis Colts with a professor helps us stay differentiated because not many schools are nurturing those contacts by visiting.”
Those efforts pay off when job openings arise, he added. “We just had a woman, in the middle of her master’s degree, get recruited by the Celtics in corporate luxury-box sales.”
In all, Springfield College is affiliated with approximately 900 organizations, large and small, throughout the U.S. and abroad, and around their junior year, students take on an internship, putting in 480 hours over a 12- to 15-week period. “Faculty members actually do visit them and see how they’re doing,” Pantera said. “It also gives us an opportunity to keep current with what’s going on, to stay on the cutting edge.”
As at UMass, the AIC program is part of the School of Business Administration, peppered with courses in sports marketing, finances and economics, communications, and the international aspects of the industry, in addition to those ubiquitous internships and experiential-learning opportunities
“As we know, sports are an important part of our lives,” Yeh-Lane said, noting that AIC’s program is relatively new compared to other disciplines, but growing, taking in about 25 freshmen per year.
“Sport management is a multi-billion-dollar industry, and it’s definitely more than professional sports teams. There’s event organizing, handling players’ contracts, budgeting and resource allocating. From a management perspective, there’s a really wide range of options, depending on what a student wants to do.”

Hire Ground
Although it’s been around since 1982, Pantera said, the Springfield College program has remained small, recruiting about 40 sport-management students and another 20 recreation-management students per year, as opposed to, say, UMass, which boasts between 400 and 450 undergraduates and 30 to 35 graduate students at any given time. One reason is to maximize opportunities, both on campus and in the field, for each student.
“Sixty is not that big a number, and we’re looking for leaders,” he told BusinessWest. “They’re getting face-to-face work with our professors. We don’t have graduate students teaching courses; we’re the ones in the classroom, and on the front lines with the students, and that’s an advantage of a Springfield degree.”
The sport-management industry, in all its diversity and vibrancy, “is a lot of fun, and a lot of work,” he added. “And it’s fun for us to work with the students and see them set goals for themselves. And it’s neat when they say, ‘I just graduated, and I got hired.’”
Getting there isn’t easy, Masteralexis reiterated, but “if you make a commitment to this industry, you can move up. We have alumni at the highest level — presidents, CEOs, and general managers, Division I conference directors, heads of Olympic programs, and some of the heads of ESPN and other organizations have come through the program. It’s a challenging road, often with long hours and low pay at the beginning, but once you get on track, you can advance.”
The types of students attracted to sport management tend to be personable and team-oriented, as much of the industry is very collaborative. “They’re people who want to be part of a team. And it’s constantly exciting.
“Our students have a passion for the business side of sports,” Masteralexis added. “I had a former student tell me, ‘the alarm goes off in the morning, and I want to go to work because it’s so much fun.’ I think that plays a role in the attraction. It’s like working in music or entertainment — it’s not the same thing every single day. Every day, there’s a new plan or new product to sell. One day, you might have a hidden gem like Jeremy Lin or Tim Tebow, and another day, you may have some disaster to deal with, but every day is a unique opportunity and a unique challenge.”
One thing it’s not (unless you’re Epstein or Boras, anyway) is a chance to be in the spotlight — that’s reserved for the players on the field — or to relax and cheer, like the spectators in the stands. “We tell students, ‘when everyone else is having fun, you’re working, creating fun for them.’”
For those who succeed in this competitive, fast-moving field, that’s reward enough.

Joseph Bednar can be reached at bednar@businesswest.com

WMA Students Witness the Conflict Between Progress, Conservation

For most 17- and 18-year-olds, Amazon is a Web site for buying books and other items. But in recent years, for handfuls of students at Wilbraham Monson Academy, the Amazon has become a unique laboratory for learning about the enduring conflict between economic expansion and rainforest conservation. The nine students who ventured to Brazil this past summer said their excursion provided lessons that simply couldn’t be captured by a book or lecture.

Teresa Kennedy says she and other classmates at Wilbraham Monson Academy who ventured to the Amazon rainforest recently for a unique learning experience were prepped for their excursion in a number of ways.
They took a trimester-long class called History of Brazil, and, as part of that multidiscplinary elective, read the book Voices from the Amazon. Written by activist  Binka LeBreton, this is a series of stories told by indigenous peoples of the Amazon, including Indians, rubber tappers, miners, loggers, and ranchers. They also read John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath — the classic set in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression — because in many ways, the story of the ‘Okies’ closely approximates the dire situations, and choices, facing many tribes in the Amazon region today.
And while all of that, plus plenty of discussion, was certainly helpful, there really wasn’t anything that could have properly prepared the nine students for what they were going to see, hear, and experience, said Kennedy, a senior who’s thinking seriously about becoming a doctor.

“It seemed like we were pretty well-prepared going in, but then, when we got there, it didn’t even compare,” she said, referring to many aspects of this two-week-long trip, but especially the destruction of the rainforest, which they witnessed in many ways, both from ground level and while flying overhead. “When you see everything in person that’s going on down there, like driving through the deforested areas, it was nothing you could have read in a book. It was unbelievable, like nothing you can imagine.”
Austin Little, another senior who wants to study economics and Mandarin Chinese, agreed. “I knew going down that there would be forest destruction,” he told BusinessWest. “But the scale of the destruction was unimaginable. I also remember where the asphalt met the dirt road; that was the line of where progress was, and it really made an impact on me. That represented the clash between progress and this once-untouched forest.”
Such commentary has become the norm since trips to the Amazon became part of the curriculum, if you will, for Wilbraham Monson’s Center for Entrepreneurial and Global Studies (CEGS), said Brian Easler, associate head of school, dean of students, and chief architect of the excursions to Brazil.
They came about through his friendship with John Cain Carter, with whom he served in the Gulf War two decades ago. Carter, originally from San Antonio, Texas, is a cattle rancher and environmentalist who started the Brazilian rainforest-conservation organization known as Alianca da Terra (Alliance of the Earth), which was created to provide economic incentives for farmers and ranchers to preserve forested land.
Called the “Texas Chainsaw Stopper” in a headline for a profile article in Outside magazine, Carter is essentially making a career out of proving that ranching and conservation really can coexist. The students from WMA spent considerable time with him learning how he tries to achieve a balance between economic progress and rainforest preservation.
“Deforested land is worth four times as much as forested land — that’s the engine that drives the deforestation of the Amazon,” said Easler. “We bring the students to the southern Amazon basin, where they get to see unbridled, widespread human progress, and we also bring them to Manaus, in the middle of the Amazon, where the Brazilian environmental laws are strictly enforced, where they see the opposite.
“Brazil, in general, has the most strict environmental laws in the world,” he continued, “but the issue in the southern Amazon is that there’s no government to enforce them; it’s the wild west, it’s the frontier. There are laws; but they’re not enforced.”
The students we spoke with made a number of comparisons to the American Old West, but with some intriguing caveats and expressions of concern about what they witnessed.
Indeed, while the ranchers in the Amazon wore cowboy hats, said Chris Lewis, another senior, they had cars, huge soybean combines, satellite dishes, and cell phones.
“It was the Old West, but many things were ultra-modern, and it was an awkward combination of the two,” he said, referring to the mixture of runaway progress in an era where modern technology enables quick and easy destruction of the environment.
For this issue, BusinessWest ventures to the Amazon with the WMA students — figuratively, anyway — through interviews that captured the many lessons they simply could not have learned from a book.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road
Lewis told BusinessWest that, while he was in his first year at Wilbraham Monson, his parents told him he could go on one of the many kinds of learning opportunities through travel that the school offers.
Students wind up going to a wide range of destinations, he explained, listing China, Italy, Spain, Korea, and other countries in various stages of economic development.
“And on most of those trips you’re a tourist,” he went on, adding that he didn’t want to invest his parents’ money in a sightseeing expedition, and for that reason chose the now-annual excursion to the Amazon, which came as advertised, as evidenced by these bullet points on the always-flexible itinerary:
• Bus trip (10.5 hours) to Canarana; explore the Tanguro Research Center and the GrupoMaggio Soy facility, the largest research site in the Amazon basin; learn about current rainforest research and agricultural projects;
• Fly to Kamayurá village in the Xingu Reserve; spend day and night becoming familiar with the Kamayurá Indian tribe; spend the next day and night learning about Kamayurá customs and culture;
• Visit the Xavante Indian tribe village; present cows (as a gift);
• Bus trip (four hours) to Rancho Jatoba fishing camp on the Rio das Mortas; visit local squatter settlement and frontier farmstead, learn about local culture; portage canoes through the jungle to secluded lakes for fishing; and
• Meet with local business leaders to discuss the conflict between productivity and environmental restrictions.
There were many other similar day trips, carefully orchestrated by Easler, who has been to the Amazon eight times by his count, has become an expert on the social and ecological issues there thanks to his relationship with Carter, and has even become proficient at capturing and releasing crocodiles.
“We catch them with our bare hands — the small ones,” he explained. “The students aren’t allowed to, but John and I go in the water and catch them; you jump on their back and grab them by the throat.
“You push them into the mud and then get them out of the water as fast as you can,” he continued. “When we’re able to hold onto them, we tape their mouths shut and let the students hold them and study them and take photos with them, and then take the tape off and put them back in the river.”
Setting the tone for the students’ learning experience, Easler said much of what students would see and hear involves that aforementioned conflict between economic productivity and conservation. And nowhere is this conflict more evident than in Manaus, situated at the confluence of the Negro and Solimoes rivers.
“In comparison to the unbridled human progress in the south, you have halted human progress,” he said of that city of some 1.7 million people. “You have joblessness, homelessness; it’s just an economy that’s struggling because they can’t cut any trees down and they can’t make any money.
“So students get to see both sides of conservation,” he continued, “extreme conservation with no human progress, and unbridled human progress.”
Students also get to visit those two Indian tribes mentioned earlier, which represent both ends of the spectrum in Brazil; one, the Kamayurá, is protected by the government and enjoys a decent quality of life, while the other, the Xavante, has endured experiences like many American tribes did a century or more ago.
“In the ’70s, they were uprooted from their land, put on military transport planes and taken to missions,” he explained, noting that the story of the Xavante is told in the recently released independent film Valley of the Forgotten. “Most of them died from disease, exposure, and starvation.”
Several years ago, the Xavante obtained a government edict to take back control of their land, and eventually did so, prevailing over the squatters and ranchers that had taken it over. But the quality of life remains poor, because there is little that can be done with the land.
“It’s a completely different indigenous experience for the students,” Easler said of the two tribes, “and something they would never fully appreciate with a textbook.”

Seeing the Forest for the Trees
Recounting their experiences, the students who spoke with BusinessWest said no book, lecture, or movie could have provided the learning experience they enjoyed — although some of that prep work did help them put what they were witnessing into perspective.
Indeed, Kennedy remembers the dust, and it took her back to The Grapes of Wrath. “There were no trees, just red dust everywhere,” she said of former rainforest land cleared years ago. “We were traveling by bus, and the dust would just be flying up around us, everywhere we went. We would travel for hours, and that whole landscape would just be dust where there used to be rainforest.”
Kristen Klebert, meanwhile, remembers how the course work in advance of the trip provided some perspective on various constituencies, such as rubber tappers, squatters, and natives, but spending time with each group provides a much better feel for what their lives are like and just how much violence and turmoil exists in that region.

“When we visited the Xavante, we brought them a bunch of cows, and they were so grateful they painted us,” she recalled. “And then we went into town, to a bus stop that we stopped at on the way to the Indian reserve. We got a sense of all the tension that exists down there; people just have so much animosity for one another that they disagree for the sake of disagreeing.”
Many of the students recalled how there were stunningly clean lines between rainforest and cleared land — with seemingly nothing in between — and how these lines had deep meaning, both economically and environmentally. Most participants were deeply disturbed by what they saw.
“I remember when we were flying back,” said Lewis. “It was late at night and really dark, and I can remember seeing fire after fire in the distance. There was one that was really close, and you actually see where they had cut out at a 90-degree angle where their bumper fire would be. That was where they could burn up to, and it was almost scary just seeing how much they could burn off in one night.
“We saw that when we were flying into the Xingu Reserve, you could see where they had cut everything and were already farming,” he continued, referring to the area where they met and stayed with the Kamayurá. “But you could also where they had just burned; you could see trees laying down and just black land. It was almost disgusting; it was really horrible.”
Kennedy, meanwhile, drew a number of parallels between what happened to Indian tribes in this country and what’s happening in the Amazon, and concluded that, unless something dramatic happens, history will regrettably repeat itself.
“We’ve all learned about what the Bureau of Indian Affairs did to the native Americans in our own country, and we’ve seen the aftermath of that and how badly it’s affected all the groups of people who were here before,” she said. “Going down to Brazil and actually staying with Indians there, it was unsettling to think about the track they’re on unless someone intervenes.”
Max Rankin, another participant on the trip, concurred. He said he found it somewhat disturbing to see Indian children with iPhones — “how are they are going to get cell-phone service in the middle of the jungle?” — and tribes with satellite dishes.
“I’m not sure they asked for those,” said Rankin, another senior. “But they had them, and apparently someone had given them TVs. “The Indians already knew how to live, but it just seemed like the government was trying to modernize them and give them incentive to leave their ways behind.”
Beyond the sheer devastation of the land and the dichotomy of lifestyles they witnessed while visiting different tribes, several of the students recalled how the word ‘progress’ means different things to the various constituencies they met, and they have intriguing yardsticks for measuring it.
“For the conservation groups, progress means getting people to stop the deforestation,” said Little. “Then there’s the big businesses that want to clear the land — progress means something else to them — and the ranchers, who sometimes consider progress as trying to find harmony between the natural forest and the industry. Depending on who you talk to, progress can mean a lot of different things.”

Life Lessons
While the trip to the Amazon left many indelible lessons for the students who participated, perhaps the most important, and perhaps frustrating, takeaway is that there are no easy answers to the problems and challenges facing the people of that region.
“With all the hindsight we have, it’s obvious to all of us that what’s happening down in Brazil is wrong, and it will impact a lot of ancient cultures,” said Little. “At the same time, it’s a country that’s trying to progress, and I don’t have any answers for what’s the best way for them moving forward.”
One doesn’t gain such perspective from reading a book, even The Grapes of Wrath, which is why another group from WMA will head for the Amazon next July, for a trip that won’t have much sightseeing, but will make a world of difference for those who participate.

George O’Brien can be reached at obrien@businesswest.com