Chronicle Online e-News
New courses teach food science and business majors leadership and
team-building skills
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/March08/Leade
rship.class.jm.sl.html
March 4, 2008
By Jill McCoy and Susan Lang
cunews@cornell.edu
Walking into Professor Bob Gravani's Leadership and Career Skills in
Food Science (FS 102) class Feb. 29, students found ropes and furry
objects on the ground. It was clear that this class again would be no
ordinary lecture.
This newly revised one-credit required course is intended to get
students thinking early on about enhancing their leadership and team
skills, the importance of diversity and ethics, and their own career
development. Like its counterpart, Applied Economics and Management
(AEM) 102: Personal Evaluation and Development, a new required course
for all first-year undergraduate business majors, it is a hands-on
approach to developing teamwork and leadership, vital skills in
today's work world. Both courses work closely with the Team and
Leadership Center of the Cornell Outdoor Education program to help
teach the skills.
For the Feb. 29 food science class, for example, instructor Paul
Louis of the Team and Leadership Center challenged the class to
transfer about 40 small objects from one end of a roped-off rectangle
to the other in 90 seconds or less, but the objects had to first
touch each person lined up on the perimeter of the rectangle. The
objects could not be passed to the very next person, nor could anyone
leave his or her side of the rectangle.
Carolyn Junior '11 stepped in to read the directions and suggest a
few strategies. Soon, the room was a whirlwind of brainstorming.
With 10 minutes to spare, the team tried a plan, but two objects got
stuck in the middle of the rectangle amid the furor of the trial. The
team tried again and succeeded.
But in the discussion afterward, Louis showered little praise. He
said that at one point he heard three students trying to voice
potential plans, but they were drowned out. Why had communication
been messy during the brainstorming process? He said that as
individuals we all tend to think our own agenda is the right one.
Instead, our own ideas should be only a starting point, he said, to
use to expand to a richer, more global perspective. The key, he said,
is to listen, pointing out that there are three types of listening --
passive, active and "third-eye" listening, where the listener is
detached from the self. All three types are important, but the third
may be the most valuable.
Upon reflection, Junior said that "as a leader you need to balance
what you have to say with what everyone else has to say."
Although the food science and applied economics courses are similar,
they were developed independently, said Andrew Novakovic, the E.V.
Baker Professor of Agricultural Economics who teaches AEM 102.
"This is a first for both our departments," said Novakovic. "It's a
very different course for both our departments, but I think it will
be the kind of course that students appreciate more and more after it
is over." Although such courses are fairly common among MBA programs,
he added, none of the top 10 undergraduate business programs "offer
anything like it, at least that we could see when we benchmarked it."
The objective of AEM 102, he said, "is to get students to think about
who they are and their personal assets or strengths and weaknesses. I
want them to better understand that their individual characteristics
and assets will be different, not worse or better, than for other
folks. One aspect of this is learning how to function better in team
settings and/or as a leader. In addition, we are weaving in topics of
ethics, cooperation, trust and diversity as issues that are part of
working with other people."
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Jill McCoy '09 is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.
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