Outstanding Teachers at the University

Continuing the series on outstanding instructors at Wichita State University, we'd like to continue today with Dr. Gerald Graham. I'd like to welcome you to University in your Community. Well, thank you David. Pleased to be here. Well, why don't you begin by telling us how you see teaching as a hobby or professional situation? Well, I, teaching to me is it's a very important part of my life and something that I enjoy doing. I suppose that's the basic adjective I would use. I enjoy it. I like to teach, and it's like, I feel very fortunate in the fact that I get paid for doing something that I really like to do. And those sorts of things sustain you within it. In other words, the thing that sustains you in teaching is the enjoyment you get out of it? Yes, the enjoyment, satisfaction, fulfillment, and of course there are frustrations and there are times of boredom, surely. But those are usually- don't last very long or are not very severe. Now, the classes that you teach involve what sorts of things? Well I teach in the business school, and within the business school, in the management department. Most

of my teaching involves managing, leading, organizational behavior, and help to supervise a group of people. However, I do teach an introductory business class, which covers a little bit about most of the business topics. When a student comes into your class, do they know what's expected of them. I hope they do, because I spend the better part of the first period outlining as detailed as I possibly can, what the expectations are. Present this to them in the form of an outline or syllabus, and then we discuss it thoroughly. I think it's extremely important for the students to know, you know, from day one what's expected of them throughout the semester. That includes when papers are due and what we're going to be doing on certain days. So from the first day, they should know what the 45th day of class is going to be. Do you have like specific objectives written out like in behavioral terms like 'you will be expected to do this'? Yes, I do write the objectives. I used, There was a time when I would write them according to the behavioral formula, but I am not as particular about

that as it once was, but I do state, oh 8 to 12 objectives of what I hope the students will be able to do or will be able to know after having completed the class. When a student comes into the class, and you're talking about objectives and that sort of thing, it almost seems like it's inflexible. Is there- are there areas for modification within that structure? Yes, I do like and encourage the students input and the student feedback. And I do a lot of activities in class that are involving, that is to get the student involved into a process. However, I also have my own time table, more or less, and targets and uh I'm probably less flexible than I was 5 or 6 years ago. And the reason that I am, as we did some research several years ago in the business school on the degree of flexibility, we found that the students want to perform better and were more comfortable with uh some structure than they were with a lack of structure. More structured environment for

them makes them feel secure and able to perform then? Exactly, there's a certainty and security and the knowledge and that doesn't mean that you have to spoon feed them as they were robots. But it means 'here are the policies, here are the guidelines' everyone knows what they are. Do you find that within that talking about not spoon feeding them, are you teaching them a thinking process or are you teaching them facts, figures, those sorts of things that they can incorporate? Yes, to all the above. [laughter] Hopefully. What I try to do, I try to take sort of a three pronged approach. Uh Part of the uh teaching will be reading, uh discussion, lectures, combination of for facts, theories, information, data, whatever we wish to call it. So that's a part of it. Another part of it will be what we call a case analysis that will be the utilization of these facts to make decisions uh and we take cases from the real world. The third part is what I call the

experiential learning where we will create an environment within the class. Really like an organization itself? Surely, that's a simulated environment. It's not official environment but they get to experience, hopefully, the feeling of whatever the concept is that we're talking about. So, we try to approach it on the factual level, the decision making level [inaudible]. Sounds like it's a difficult class to approach because you're teaching them to be professional, at least in terms of management, and it sounds like you're teaching something that's almost and intuitive thing that you're trying to expose. What sort of difficulties do you find within that? Okay, I agree. The teaching, uh teaching, teaching as you well know, teaching communication or teaching management or teaching leadership, these topics are much more of an art probably than a science uh and it really is difficult to teach that. What we try to do is to provide them with the theory and the framework. That you can do pretty well, but the application of that is the hard part. We try to do this through the

utilization of cases and uh instructor opinion, instructor research on the case. What I may do is, if we have a case, for example a manager dealing with a nonmotivated employee, we'll describe the employee, describe the manager, describe the manager's efforts. Have the students select an effort, and then I'll provide them with what research has shown to be effective, okay, and that way they get some idea of whether or not they are in the right direction. Okay so, they are able to see whether what they're doing is the right process. It's not like looking the answer up in the back of the book, but it's as close as we get to that. Okay, what sorts of uh things do you do to keep you or keep the students motivated? In other words, do you find yourself having to re-wmotivate students periodically, or is there something you do within the class that just automatically keeps the motivation? Well, a couple of things that we try to do is to have cold, rainy days during class and hot, sunny days that will of course be distracting. You close the windows, close the shades. Right [laughter]

But, um I found that students are more motivated, and I certainly more motivated, our research shows that workers are more motivated, when they are involved in the process. I think that learning is an active uh rather than a passive. To me, sitting in a classroom, taking notes is probably a dysfunctional, in fact it's neutral. But I would much rather see a give and take discussion and elaboration of points of view on a concept or a theory. Then have the students do something. They want to do something and when they are doing things, the classroom passes- they report to me, that the period passes very fast passes very fast for me. When you uh look back on your teaching career, and we might talk a little bit about background and those sorts of things, but for right now, would you recommend to someone that they become Gerald Graham or in other words what I'm asking is, if somebody came in and said 'I would like to teach management at Wichita State University,' would you recommend that they do that?

I would first rather check the individual. Tell them to wait until you retire. Right. I, I would check their interest or have them check their interest. For me, uh there's no other career really. I've never even remotely considered it, uh except early on when I was thrashing about to find out what I wanted to do. Uh, for for me, it makes me very happy, it's a very fulfilling thing. I feel awfully lucky, so if a student were tow ask, uh you know, 'is that good, what you're doing?' I'd say 'Great!' and I'd say, 'if you are inclined to be turned on by those kind of things, it would be good for you too. But if you are interested in making worlds of money, if you're interested in power structure operation, then perhaps it wouldn't be.' What- do you think there is a personality type that is prone to teaching? Prone, sounds like a disease. One personality that would be better as a teacher than another? I'm not sure. I really don't have evidence on this. Maybe some people do, so I'll give you

my speculation. I have an idea that people who are outgoing, people who are warm, people who are open, people who are friendly uh probably are more comfortable with it. Now, that doesn't mean that the stereotyped, reserved lavatory scientist type couldn't be an effective teacher at all. They just assume that that may go along with it. I think it would be easier for a person. I think you have to like students. I started saying that you have to like people, and that doesn't mean students aren't people [laughter], but uh you have to like students, I think. And uh I think it'd be a boring job and a very hard job if you didn't. First of all, like students. I mean really like them as humans. I see them as individuals as unique, and some of my classes, unfortunately, are very large, so it's hard for me to get to know many of them personally, but I get from them, and that's important to me.a A lot of things. Yes. When you are teaching a class

or I should say just generally when you are at the university, and I'm not just talking about freedom in terms of physical movement, but are you free to do the sorts of things that you want to do within a class, or do you feel that the university controls you as an instructor and what you're trying to achieve? Yes, I have never felt in any way inhibited by university's policies, procedures, or whatever I felt that I am the master of the classroom in terms of content, knowledge, and presentation methods and so forth. That's a very positive aspect about teaching. But you are, at some point, answerable at least that the students are doing something within your class? Yes, and I think I should be. Now, and this may be answerable more in the negative than in the positive. If I've got students that are complaining for whatever reason, if I've got a substantial number, they have a right to complain and my administrator has a right to investigate me on that. I think that's appropriate. How about you're background? What sorts of things did

you do to get you to be and you talk about thrashing around, looking for things to do, sort of things did you want to do and how did you end up teaching management? Like most college students or when you graduate from high school. Well, first of all when I graduated from high school, I wanted to be a professional athlete, baseball player or basketball player or something. Well, like most boys that grew up in a small rural town that I grew up in, or when you find out that that's not going to happen, well then I thrash around. I took some to tests, visited with some of the counselors, but I really still didn't know what I waned to do. Had a brother that was in business, so I said 'well I think I'll go into business.' He said 'that's a good idea.' So I majored in business, and it It was that scientific. Then I didn't know still what I wanted to do even within business, because that's a broad area. And I had a teacher that was teaching and she said 'well, aren't you interested in teaching? I think you'd be good in that.' And I said, 'well it sounds good. I had a lot of respect for the teacher, so I got into teaching. And that's it. Then when I went to enroll in the doctoral program, the first person I met

there was the chairman of the management department. He looked at my background and said, 'We'd like to have you in management." I said 'that's great. I'll try that' And the rest is history, as they say. It's not very scientific. But, but, still, as I look back, I really don't know what I would change in the process. I did at one point, uh enter the business world and worked in the business world for a while. I liked it very much. So you have the experience. It was a learning experience for me. I'm never sorry that I did that. In fact, it would have a big gap if I had not done it. It also convinced me that teaching was were I want to be. I see, Interesting. If you have one thing you'd like to do that you've never done before with a class in teaching, what sort of thing would it be? Gosh, one thing that I've never done before, I guess- or an experiment you'd like to try in the class? You can isolate it down there. Okay, I suppose the one thing that I fantasized about a bit, would be to take a class and to create a real organization with it and work out to the

management of that and the details, money, financing, the whole thing and not have to sell a product or something. I mean if we are going to fantasize, uh what I sometimes do in class is part of an exercise. Let's suppose we are going to climb Mount Everest, you know. Let's build an organization, do that, put it all together, and I suppose that a fantasy would be to act that out. Actually do it. Interesting. Some goal or some objective like that and build the organization. Deal with all the problems of motivation, communication, financing, and so forth. Let's set it up. Right [laughter]. I see our time is just about up. I thank you very much for being here. I think it's been a very informative talk. Well thank you, I appreciate it. I've been speaking with Dr. Gerald Graham who's in the management area of the business administration department. Thank you for being here. This has been University in your Community. My name is Dave Cosley and we've had production by Dan Walker. [music] [music]

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