Walking into the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics at the University of NH is a little like stepping into the future. Students reserve workspaces by scanning doorplates with their phones. Tiny wall-mounted cameras record every class and automatically upload videos to course websites. In lecture halls, professors use touch-screen consoles to control everything from the position of the overhead screen to the lighting and blinds. An Innovation Lab houses a 3D printer and 3D image scanning system.
It’s a world removed from the business program’s old home, the cramped, dim McConnell Hall, where, as recent finance and accounting graduate Daniel Cray put it, “Professors were pushing old-fashioned projectors into the classroom because the existing technology in the classroom was broken.”
The new building, where students and professors wrapped up their first full year of classes in May, marks a turning point for the university system’s flagship business program. Once known as the Whittemore School, the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics—named for the UNH alum who donated $25 million to construct the building—now has space to grow.
The new building is double the size of McConnell, increasing enrollment capacity from 1,500 to 2,500. Space and technology has enabled the Paul College to launch new programs and research centers in recent months, including a Sales Center of Excellence. Plans are also underway for new minors in entrepreneurship and financial planning, a data analytics center and a career center for business students.
But the Paul College’s evolution is about more than just the new facility, school leaders say. There’s a new excitement around the program, driving ideas and sparking increased interest from prospective students and regional businesses. Alumni donations are up, and this fall, the Paul College will welcome its largest incoming class in the business school’s 50-year history with about 800 new students.
The new energy prompted Dean Arnold Garron to set an ambitious goal for the Paul College to be ranked among the top 50 business schools in the country within the next decade. “I know we’re going to be there. With what we’re doing, where we’re going . . . we have the technology. I can see it,” says Garron, who has been interim dean since Daniel Innis stepped down last fall to run for U.S. Congress. “The building wasn’t the end point—it was the tipping point.”
The college currently doesn’t rank among the top 100 business schools on the U.S. News and World Report list. For those rankings business school deans rank each other’s programs. The top-rated business school is the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, where students put their leadership skills to the test during weeklong outdoor expeditions, such as mountaineering on Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro, sailing in Grenada or exploring Antarctica.
“I like the idea of putting that goal out there. I think it’s possible,” says Erik Dodier, CEO and co-founder of PixelMedia, a digital agency in Portsmouth, and a member of the Paul College’s executive board, an advisory board comprised of business professionals. “But they’d have to really focus on what’s going on in the real business world and integrate those changes into the curriculum at a much faster pace. They can’t wait two to five years … the pace of the world today is fast, and academia has to speed up if they want to compete.”
Poised for Evolution
School leaders and professors say they’ve been eager for some time to evolve the business program, but the lack of space was always an obstacle. Now the school has an opportunity to consider how and where it should grow, Garron says. “It was literally the space that was holding us back.”
The new building includes “flipped” classrooms, designed for hands-on group work. Instead of traditional lecture-hall seating, flipped classrooms are equipped with small, technology-enabled tables that correspond to flat screens on the wall. As students work, their group’s project appears on their designated wall screen, allowing the professor and the classmates to view all projects at the same time.
The classrooms give professors more flexibility in how they teach, and the hands-on group approach mimics how many businesses work today. “It’s a big change. The building itself has brought out different dimensions, a professional touch. The environment is very special,” says Michael Merenda, professor of strategic management and entrepreneurship and chair of the Holloway Prize, UNH’s annual business plan competition focused on innovation.
School leaders are also exploring other ways to evolve the program. Garron is working on a new initiative with UNH’s liberal arts program aimed at helping business students improve their soft skills—writing, presentation and public speaking—that many businesses say today’s graduates are lacking.
The school is placing new emphasis on hot, in-demand fields like entrepreneurship and innovation. The new innovation lab allows students to use the 3D printer and 3D image scanning system to rapidly prototype new products in a matter of hours, allowing students to move beyond the concept phase to creating an actual product.
“Before, we didn’t have the resources that could handle that much innovation. Now, we have a space that really fosters the college entrepreneurial spirit,” Garron says.
Undergraduates interested in a career in sales leadership also have a new opportunity to work directly with the business community. The Sales Center of Excellence allows students to receive training, mentoring and coaching from business leaders in marketing, sales, business etiquette and leadership. The idea is to help students gain a competitive edge in the job market by developing consultative sales skills as early as their sophomore year, Garron says.
Another way the school collaborates with businesses is through the Executive Development Program, which provides training to business professionals. Courses are customized for companies based on specific needs and taught by professors or UNH consultants, who then bring those business lessons and examples back to their classes with assignments related to the business problems those companies faced.
“What’s changed for the university is that it all used to be a lot more theoretical...Now there’s a heck of a lot more outreach from the professor and the university to the business community,” says Mike Alberts, director of organizational development at New England Wire Technologies in Lisbon, where UNH has provided leadership training.
Bright Future, Big Challenges
The $50 million building was five years in the making, starting with the record-setting donation in 2008 from Paul, who wanted to give his alma mater a high-tech, innovative space to foster new ideas. The result is a bright, innovative space. Students lounge and study in the Great Hall, a two-story common area in the heart of the building, steps from a café and an outdoor courtyard. Leafy plants, natural wood and stone, and huge windows provide a welcoming and relaxed setting, but it’s also brimming with technology—an eco-friendly water cooler, touch-screen directories and a line of 400 electrical outlets placed discreetly along the window ledge for charging laptops and tablets.
More than 25 breakout rooms are equipped with recording and video conference technology. There is a 208-seat auditorium for guest lectures, and there’s a dedicated space for the student-run Atkins Investment Group, where students use Bloomberg terminals to research, analyze and purchase stocks.
The executive development program also has two classrooms so students can mingle with visiting business professionals. “Some business schools put their executive training programs in an off-site facility to isolate executives from students. We put it right in the middle of the students. We wanted our students to see who was here and for them to see our students,” says Dan McCarthy, the program’s director.
While the new building is a huge step, the college must overcome many challenges to truly compete with the nation’s top business schools—and funding is chief among them, says Todd Black, chair of the Paul College’s executive board and senior vice president at Unitil in Hampton.
New Hampshire is last in the nation in per capita funding for public higher education, and UNH allocates less than 10 percent of its operating budget to the business school—$24.3 million in FY2012 and $26.5 million in FY2013.
The school is also challenged to address online learning. While UNH and the Paul College offer some online courses, it has yet to create a clear plan to integrate online learning and respond to student demand for more online options, says Black. “I think that’s definitely something where we have a lot of opportunity but still have to work through how we do it,” he says.
School leaders and members of the advisory board say that overcoming these challenges will depend largely on the incoming dean. A search is underway with the goal of having that person in place by the start of the new school year, says Black. “The next dean is going to be incredibly important … The new dean needs to help us establish the vision, goals, and frankly, the stepping stones to get into the top 100,” Black says.
For now, though, the business school’s biggest obstacle—a lack of space—has been cleared. For the first time, Garron says, the school can look beyond its physical constraints and imagine new possibilities. “The world is changing, and I like where we’re positioned,” he says.
Current Issue - May 2024