Building the Right Curriculum Advisory Board and recruiters

[Former Member]

What are the best ideas for building the right curriculum advisory board and connecting with more recruiters that are looking for SAP educated students?

[Former Member]

Hello Simha,

Excellent points - I'd agree with everything you said. In fact I think virtually every one of my members has an advisory board though I've had to dial back my involvement because at one point a few years ago I was on ten - now I'm on two! There are so many partners and so many customers that are interested in obtaining students and in forming links with potential advisors that you'll never have a problem identifying people to serve on an advisory board.

The question is who do you invite and what can they bring to the university. One example I can give which worked semi-well is a university which had myself, Microsoft, Royal Bank of Scotland, IBM, Unilever and people from research bodies. However there were no representatives from small businesses and the reps from research bodies were invited to meetings on how to improve teaching which of course they weren't qualified in or interested in advising on. To its' credit the university then had two advisory boards - one for research and one for teaching / the student experience / course and curricula content. This worked better.

What was great was that employers had a direct input into curricula content. However you have to be a wee bit careful in the selection of the people - the company name isn't enough. You also have to have people that are genuinely interested in the topic and offer advice that is thought out and valuable rather than whatever they could think of at the time. I think often it would be better to have a smaller and more commited group who are able to play a role long term and who are involved in course teaching themselves, rather than bringing together boards that meet once a year. This is particularly the case if the board members aren't allowed to see minutes of other meetings or review university plans ahead of the meeting - in which case the responses will never be as considered as they should be and may even be detrimental.

Martin

Martin Gollogly

Director, University Alliances

United Kingdom and Ireland

[SMagal]

An advisory board is very helpful for a number of reasons

1. It can help provide direction for the program. It helps identify the needs of the businesses, identify the desired skills for graduates of the program, and eventually identify the needed curriculum.

2. Members serve as ambassidors of the program in the business community. This helps promote the program so that more people know about it. It helps attract recruiters.

3. It can help obtain needed resources. Exterally from local companies (grants, scholarships, etc.). And internally by letting university administrators know that they find the program (and it's graduates) extermely valuable.

I have attached a document that describes the Seidman ERP advisory board at Grand Valley.

When we created the board, we hosted an ERP roundable and invited executives from all known SAP customers in the area. This was a forum for discussion on ERP related skills and curriculum issues. The most interested participants were invited to join the advisory board.

In addition, we use several mechanisms to promote our program and to attract recruiters.

- we continue to host roundtables and workshops for area businesses. These are used to discuss key issues and are venues for professionals to interact with our facutly and students.

- we actively engage professionals in our teaching - speakers, project mentors, etc. This gives them a very close view of our program and student capabilities

- we have worked with ASUG to inform thier members about our program

- we work with our career services office to get more companies to recruit

- we advertise the TERP10 certification academy - this is very popular with recruiters and has attracted companies who have not recruited at Grand Valley before.

- use our interns and recent graduates - these are our best mouthpieces!

Hope this helps....

[Former Member]

Thanks Simha,

This is very helpful and similar to the experience we had a Chico. Our advisory board became so involved that they asked to meet twice a year. In the Fall we'd always meet in Chico and overview the program and changes we were thinking about -- more internal focus to the meeting. The spring meeting was always hosted at a member site, included a highlight of the company that was hosting, and we focused more on external issues to the program, job market trends, new things on the horizon that we should know about, etc. It was a very positive part of the Chico program (still is as far as I know.)

Gail