Monday, September 08, 2003

Assignment Information

Beginning of Lecture Chapter 1

[I say, we drag these bloody desks out to the mall and set fire to them!]

So far no-go…though it has come up in several meetings and we’ve moved closer to it. Has anyone been to the Carlson school, toured the property at the U of M? it’s pretty nice. They have sponsors for many of their rooms, and it says the corporate name on the outside of the room and there’s beautiful furniture; and those companies paid for that. And a lot of times, those best ideas are stolen from somebody else, and when I saw that I said, “Why can’t we get corporate sponsors; why can we have each room dedicated to a local business? But that takes somebody to go out and make those calls, and it’s a fair amount of work, and not enough people, and too many other jobs going on. So it hasn’t happened yet at this point. But that is a project that I would hope someone in the Student Networking Club could team up with Pat Buel, who is one of my former students, who is a member of my Networking Club, and he is the director of campus operations.

So, move that forward, and I’d be willing to make some calls… but if it all falls on my shoulder’s it won’t happen, because I’m doing less, here, these days. Not more and more, because I’m trying to reduce my stress.

Unfortunately, in regards to my level of stress, I have a slight personal dilemma that I’m going to share with you. My mom had open heart surgery a little bit earlier. And my sister was able to go and be with her and deal with that whole dilemma. I told her that I couldn’t go, as I had to start school. I mean I have to be there and I simply couldn’t go. So she’s been there…she’s been there a little over two weeks. And unfortunately the end of this last week, my mother went into the hospital again with some complications. She’s probably going to be discharged from the hospital when they figure out what’s going on and then she’ll be in a nursing home. She’ll be in a nursing home, hopefully, for about two weeks; she’ll go through intensive therapy. And wife is a therapist, who knows all about this, and my wife tells me she should be good to go in a week and a half to two weeks. And then she needs to get transitioned back to home again. So when she gets transitioned back to home again, I may need to go to Florida. Now, there’s a dilemma with our parents moving south. I understand why they did it, but then they are there all by themselves, with becomes problematic.

Actually, the reason my dad moved down there is because there’s no income taxes in the state of Florida, and he was sick and tired of paying income tax. Do you see the business mentality coming out there? He was sick and tired of paying business taxes and personal income taxes here. But there aren’t as many services out there either.

But at any rate, at some point down the road, you may have a sub teacher coming in, and we don’t have a subs, we’re not set up for that, we don’t pay them. But I will give…I have a meeting today with Cheryl Frank, our president, and I will give her this news and information. And I will give either her and/or someone in personnel and my secretary, Michell, a list of people who could come in and pitch-hit for me. Because I don’t want to have classes cancelled. I just don’t like to do that. You’re going to have your project assigned today, so you can work on those. And if we have to make-up a test, we’ll just have to do that. But I only think it’s fare that you know, potentially, what’s coming up.

We do have videos for this class, when we teach this as a video class. You get a couple of lectures, you do some paper work, and then your done. This class is more for your matured, adult students in self-directed study for the most part. So, theoretically, Mitch, my secretary downstairs, or one of you could take those videos, and if Mitch has them on her desk, you could pop one of them in, and for that hour somebody can pass around the attendance sheet and you can watch the appropriate video, which will kind of track along with where we’re at in the book. So that’s one option that I will tell Cheryl is available. The other option would be to have Judy ____ come in or Lynn Murray come in. Judy ___ used to teach this class very regularly, so it would be pretty easy for her to pick-up. But we’ll see what happens; we’ll play that card when the time comes. The worse case scenario would be… Well, my sister was stuck for…she had to go home today, but she could go home today because she still didn’t have the diagnosis. But, hopefully, by tonight she’ll have that and she’s booked a flight for tomorrow. But she’s been there for two and a half weeks and hopefully I won’t be there for two and a half weeks but who knows? Theoretically that could happen.

We started off our school year with one of our sessions on our first duty days was dealing with the sandwich generation, and I laughed because on that day I had to come in a few minutes late, because we had to baby sit my grandchild. And that was the same day that my mom was having the open heart surgery. And it’s a pretty good indication when you’re dealing with your own children and, in some instances, their children, which are also dealing with your parents, because people are living a lot longer these days. Anyway it was someone from DARTS who came in and it was a good session. But afterwards there was a small group of us faculty that talked about it, because I had brought it up. You know, it’s a dilemma when your parents are out of state; and how do you deal with that; and when do you decide whether it’s enough of an emergency to go, and that’s what we talked about that at some length. Fortunately, our director of personnel and the V.P and Cheryl were all there and they all heard my comments and they all know kind of where I’m at, so they had a heads-up on this.

[What’s the sandwich generation?]

Well, the sandwich generation is defined as you being a care-giver for your own children, and you being your children, you are also the care-giver for them as well, because they’re not able to take care of themselves. And in the old days, the idea was to have a big family, so there would be a lot of kids who may live—because back then, a lot of kids didn’t live—that had a lot of children, so there may be enough kids to take care of them. And more often than not, mom and dad would live with one of those children in their home. And today, with two income working families, that doesn’t always work out. I mean my wife works and I work and we both have full time job responsibilities; and how do you juggle all of these things? So it really is kind of a dilemma. Fortunately, I have a very understanding and a very caring employer. And some of you might choose employers based on their willingness to be understanding and caring with what ever you’re dealing with in your personal life. But it’s a challenge.

On Monday…I had already put in for a leave of absence, and my wife is like, “You’re going to retire in a year or two; you have to use up your leaves of absences.” And I’m like, “Well, I don’t cancel classes; I’m always here.” Well, I did put in for a leave of absence on Friday, because my best friend in the whole world, his daughter is getting married. And he had wanted me to come to the wedding, and I thought about it, and I said yeah, we’ll be there. Normally, this would have been Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and I would have been back from Illinois on Sunday night, and I would have made class for Monday. However, we got an invitation from my daughter’s second pick of top colleges. And I think we can all relate to this, our top picks of colleges. She’s looking at Wheaton, which is close to where the wedding is going to be. The wedding is going to be in Dixon Illinois. And Wheaton is like the Harvard, ivy league of the private religious schools. So four times a year, they have an event where they show students around, you spend a night in a dorm, you get to interact with students who are in your program. So if she wants to learn about occupational therapy, she’d be with a senior who is in the occupational therapy program. Obviously, this is a very important opportunity for my daughter. And my idea, originally, was to go down to the wedding; Courtney can go to this thing at the school, and then she can make her way to the Chicago airport and they fly down on her own. She wasn’t quite comfortable doing that. Chicago is kind of a scary town, and the bus terminal downtown… I mean, I’ve been there and I’ve been scared. So I understand. But anyway, my wife looked at this Wheaton invite and it says that he parents are required to attend. So if your daughter goes and spends the overnight in the dorm, then you have to come along. So, that’s what I’ll be doing on Monday, and we’ll be back on Tuesday.

I was originally going to cancel your class for that day and have you work on your project, and you’ll be getting your project handout today, and you’ll also be seeing samples of student projects. And you can all take the time to study for your test or get caught up on the reading or whatever; or you could walk over to the library and start your research. Then it will be good to come to school that day, but you won’t have to come to class. Because what they do is they normally put a note on the door that says class has been canceled. And that gets put up early in the morning and that’s the routine that they go through.

However, we do have a wonderful opportunity that Kevin O’Rourke has put together for us. He has put together a presentation, and he would like to do his oral report early, which is, I think, cool. And the presentation will help students plan and prepare for now and in the future how to take the best advantage of the resources that Inver Hills has to offer. Do I have this correct?

[Primarily, it’s more for this class, actually. However, this might not be all that enlightening to you guys. I don’t know, are you guys familiar with the faculty websites? You’ve never played with those? Ok, I want to show you guys what the faculty websites are all about, but more importantly, I wanted to show you this guys website, because it’s a cool one—really cool! I mean he’s got transcribed lectures and the whole ball of wax. And it’s a great resource for us all.]

So, anyway, Kevin came to me this morning, and he had asked if he could do this; and I gave him a preliminary ok; and he was going to take a few minutes of class time. But primarily, maybe you can get started before class starts, because many of you are here anyway. And he came to me today and asked if he could do it on Monday. And I said that would be great, because on Monday I put in for personal leave day, so you can have more than enough time. You guys can talk about your projects, you can spend some time after he has given his presentation going to the library. You can use the classroom to study; you can do what ever you want to do. But that way, you all get credit for attendance. So what he will do is he will bring an attendance sheet and he will pass it around; and his presentation is going to take five or ten minutes, and then you’re basically free to go. So you’ll come, see the presentation, you sign the attendance sheet, then you head over to the library and you get started on the project.

[I might have an issue with this room. This room isn’t wired, and I spoke to Dorothy about this. And if I can’t find a room that is wired for the internet on this floor or down below, I’m going to have to try and find a different classroom. Is that alright?]

Oh, absolutely. And you’re already working with Dorothy; so between Dorothy and Ann Johnson, she’s the one that schedules all the rooms, so yeah. Come here, sign the attendance sheet and then see if he’s put a message on the board as to what room he’s set up in, and then you can watch the presentation.

This will give us a few more minutes on presentation day, where we’ll have one presentation out of the way. So, thank you, in advance. That will work out pretty well.

So this will be on Monday, a week from today.

{So your nine o’clock class is canceled, but for this one we’re coming in for five minutes?]

The nine o’clock class, you’ll be working on your marketing plan. In this one you just come in for a few minutes.

Assignments

Alright, let’s get started on these assignments. Pass these around after you look at them. These are samples of either topical papers or career papers that previous students have turned in. Some of these were given to me and they made copies of them. So for some of these I have multiple copies to be shown as student paper examples.

Some of them were students papers who didn’t pick up their papers. And for years, I have told my classes that if you don’t pick up your paper, and if you don’t come during grade days, this is what I do with your paper. So if you don’t want someone to look at your paper after the fact, you need to come and get your paper, don’t you? That’s your responsibility. I do cross-out the names, so you can’t see the names on them. But students have appreciated getting these papers for all of the twenty-seven years that I have been teaching, because you’re always afraid about these projects: what do you do; what should it look like, etc.

Well, these are samples for you to look at, where you can see my comments, and you can see how I grade, and you can see what their scores are. And for the most part, their scores will be out of 140 points. So this one got 100 points…now that’s a B or a C…that’s a pretty good one. This one got a 100% of the points…it could have been better but…. Oh, this one only got 65 points and then minus 50 points for being late—wow—that hurts, so they only got 50 points, and that’s not good. So some of these are examples of goods. Oh, look at this one: 120 points out of 140, that’s pretty good. Most of these are career papers, because that what I did for a number of years was career papers. But now I let you do a topical paper or a career paper. And so some of these are topical papers… Here’s one on accounting, so that’s obviously a career paper, right? Here’s one on mortgage and loan processing…that’s a career paper. This one is on nursing homes, so that’s not necessarily a career paper, it’s more of a topical paper. But where are the table of contents on this one? Is that a problem? Yeah, you have to have a table of contents. This is a college-level paper. You have to have proper margins and numbered pages. You have to have a sources quoted: a bibliography or a works sited section in the end, so I know where you got the information. You have to have information from three sources or more. So here’s one on entrepreneurship, that’s a career paper. This one is topical: “Theory Z, How American Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge”. That’s a pretty good example of a topical paper. Insurance Agents… How about this one: “The Decline of the Banking Institution or Banking Industry”… that’s a topical paper.  …“Computers: The Founding Fathers,” that’s a topical paper.

Oh, here’s one…and you don’t want to do one like this; this is about a particular company, so it’s a topical paper, but there’s no table of contents, and there’s only 3 pages. Now, is that… And the students always ask, “Well, how many pages should I do?” Well, there’s no magic number of pages. I’m more interested in a well-written report. And if you could be brief and succinct, that would be great. But I don’t know how you can use three sources and write a decent paper with less than five or six or seven pages. And remember, you’re competing against each other. So the very best paper, and here’s one on advertising… You know the very best paper is going to get that 140 points, and you want it to be a pretty good paper.

Oh, here’s one, 132 points. Unfortunately they were 20 points late, but this was a pretty good one: “Human Resources Management.” So they looked at what human resources is, the different managers in human resources and what their duties are, working conditions, aptitude, educational background, job outlook, potential earnings, my personal feelings toward this project.

Now, it would have been better if he had actually put in a personality profile and how they matched that personality profile for the people who hire for this job. That would have been a perfect paper, then, wouldn’t it. And instead of getting 132 points, he would have gotten 140 points. But it was pretty close, and this was a good one. So, pass these around and make sure that you take a good look at them.

We’ve got quite a variety of different stuff here. Here’s one that got 120 points. The contents reads, Management Degrees, The Top Schools, Management Ranks, Working Conditions, Pay and Income, Advancement. In the appendix there’s a chart here, a nice overview, and a nice works cited page.

Career Papers

Now, if you’re doing a career paper, I want to know what this job is about, what it’s responsibilities are, is this a good match for you, how much education do you need, how much is the pay. You know, I want to know where do you go to look for a job? Interview with someone who has the job, right? Ask him what his job is like. Better yet, interview someone who hires for that job. Ask them what they are looking for in a person to become a professor at Inver Hills? Well, that’s really beneficial isn’t it; to know what the person who hires is looking for.

So you need to get started on this fairly soon.

{What if we write about ________________? ]

Then your topic is entrepreneurial, and it’s a topical report if you talk about what entrepreneurs do or, very specifically, what business your looking at. It’s a career paper if you talk about, how do I set myself up to be an entrepreneur; here’s the steps that I need to go through to educate myself; here’s how I can make my money; here’s my idea in brief. So you can title it either way is the bottom line, if it’s an entrepreneurial. But you may just want to do a report on an industry or an opportunity…and then it’s a topical paper. If it’s looking at how you train and prepare yourself and the career path that it will take to fulfill this dream, then it’s a career paper. And there are some entrepreneurial examples in this mix.

What not to do

By the way, here’s an example of what not to do. This one is hand written…you know, is this high school? No! Your not in high school anymore, people! Granted, the information in this report was pretty good, which allowed them to get ninety points, even though it was twenty points late. But to tear rough pages out of a notebook? This needs to be typed, it needs to be college level work, so that we can, as a business department, put the stamp of approval on you that you can do college level work—you know how to do college level work, alright? Because if you transfer to Mankato, and you’re not prepared, we look dumb, right? And we don’t want that, because that means they won’t ever accept other transfers from our school. By the way, transfer institutions love us. Our students do as well or better than their students who started there. So, transfer students love us, because we’ve done a good job. Businesses love us as well. But you need to be able to prove that you can work at a college level. This one was done in ink, so you know… But at least they learned something and they got some value out of it, but…

Here’s an example of another topical paper: “E-Commerce and Small Business” Now, this one kind of relates to entrepreneurship. “Assistant Art Director Corporate Industry”…that’s pretty career specific isn’t it? And I like it when you can be very career specific. And if you’ve already written a career paper in high school, don’t take the lazy way out and just rewrite it and turn it into me. Because how much do you learn? Zero. Do something that requires you to learn more. You can go on the same topic, but just go in a different path. Or, you can get really finite and real specific, and then include some of the other stuff that you had from the high school report and then list that as a reference, right? Use some of the information and state where it came from. It’s good to let me know.

This one is pretty specific, “Project Management.” By the way, are a lot of our adult students, now, learning project management skills? Is that the big thing in the corporate world? Yeah, that’s the big thing these days. Here’s an overview of marketing…that’s a nice topical report. Unfortunately, this was written at the time when I was demanding a career paper, so I had to knock some points off. Now, I let you do either, but be sure in your title page that you start off by telling me that this is a topical report or this is a career paper. Here’s one on pharmaceutical sales.

By the way, one of my favorite success stories…this guy wanted to be in pharmaceutical or medical sales. He had been a medic in the military; GI Joe was paying his tuition to come to Inver Hills. And he originally thought that he wanted to become a nurse, so he took some of our nursing program coursework, and then he decided that he didn’t want to become a nurse: change people’s dirty diapers and bedpans and whatnot. He didn’t really like his choice. So he spent some time with a relative who worked for Johnson & Johnson as a rep. And then he said, I think I want to be a medical rep. And I said, “Great! Finish the nursing coursework that is terminology and concept oriented, and your science coursework, and then finish a business marketing sales program. And he did, except he never graduated; he jobbed out before he even graduated. He got hired for more than what I was making that year. Now, that’s cool. So he got a job as a sales rep selling surgical implants. And by the way, the guy who hired him was someone I had hired, and you never know who knows who in this world. But it was someone that I had hired to teach a sales class for me. And he called me on the phone one day and said, “Rusty, I know this is a long-shot, we usually hire people with four year degrees, but I know you have some sharp adult students there.” And I said, “Yeah, I’ve got a young adult student, but he’s been in the military, he’s had a couple years of work experience. He’s pretty young, but he was in charge of my club, he was in charge of our blood drive. I think we raised about 408 units of blood, and that’s a lot. This year I think we’ll only do one hundred or so. But his record will probably never be beaten at Inver Hills. He actually went to a hospital, got surgical gowns, and he had a good excuse, because it’s something he’s always wanted anyway. But he went around campus with this surgical gown on to beg people to give blood, and he was in the cafeteria every day.

Well, did I have a good story to tell about this guy, because of his involvement? Well, yeah! So I gave him a recommendation and he went out for an interview. And because he had been in my sales class, and he learned how to sell and sold himself, well, he got the next interview, which was at corporate headquarters. And then I got a call from the president of the company, “Well, we’ve interviewed so and so, and he says that you were his instructor. Can you give him a recommendation?” Well, of course, I gave him a good recommendation. He helped with my club and he got good grades and he’s going to be one of our success stories someday. I wrote that on a paper he had. Go ahead and ask him about it. And they hired him. Of course, he did a good job selling to the boss of the company that he knew about surgeons, and that he could sell, and that he could get right to the point. So, Jeff Adams, is now in medical surgical sales, and I think he might have helped to get my neighbor a job just this summer. I think that she had graduated with a four year degree and wanted to go into medical sales. So I told her that she should call this guy. So I gave her the phone number, and they became connected. Later she thanked me for the connection. I haven’t heard the follow-up yet, but that’s kind of how things work in the real world. That’s why you join and get involved in the Networking Club, right?

But anyway, Jeff did very well. He basically, was bought-out by a head hunter to go and work for a different company for a lot more money. And I think he’s still with that company. He might have changed jobs one more time, but he’s still doing that. Surgeons call him, and then he goes to the surgery. And they ask him whether they are doing things right. Does this part go here or what? It says on his card “Hips Are Us,” because he does a lot of hip replacements for older people like my mom. That’s not really what it says on his card, but he’s got a good sense of humor. But he’s done very well.

Anyway, he did his career paper in the Intro to Business class on what he would have to do to get into medical sales. And it ended up happening for him. So be serious about this assignment, because this could be the rest of your life on this paper, here. By the way, I bought a house in Inver Grove Heights when I sold my duplex, and my wife sold her house, because neither one of us wanted to be in our house where our ex’s had been. I had already bought a lot here as an investment before that. So we built a factory built twin home here in Inver Grove Heights, right down here in Borman Court. Jeff moved into the same neighborhood in a way nicer house. I’m talking a way nicer house than mine. So what did I have to do? I had to sell, take every penny I invested since then, and buy me a kind of executive house in Apple Valley. I tease him about that, and he’s like, “Mitchell, it won’t be where I’ll have an even nicer executive house than you; I’ll have a houseboat and a speedboat. So this summer he was selling his speedboat, so if any of you are looking, he might still have it for sale. Anyway, that was a pretty cool success story. Inver Hills has a lot of those.

This paper is cool. This one may not have gotten very many points, because they were supposed to write on a career project, and they missed some of the requirements if you look through it. But this is looking at the Boeing Manufacturing Company. Do I learn a lot from reading your papers? Yeah, I mean I’m a fan of the aircraft industry and I do airport development, economic development work. My current project is expansion of the airport on the Island of St. Croix, where my sister lives. But I learned a lot about Boeing from this. The summer before we took a cruse to Alaska, and I didn’t get to spend any time at Boeing headquarters, but as we landed in our plane we flew over it; it’s in Seattle. And as we flew over it, I saw their whole operation from the air—and it was amazing! It’s an amazing thing to see from the air. I also saw the runway where the first 747 took off. And I also saw where they first launched the Spruce Goose, Howard Hugh’s first plane. I don’t know if it was launched there originally, but it went in and out of there for something. I think it only had one or two flights, and I don’t think it was ever used in any operation.

[I think they only took it about twenty feet off the ground, didn’t they?]

Yeah, I think it went out, went around the bay, and it came back.

The French, now, are building a double-decker 747, which is pretty cool.

{Yeah, that’s the Airbus XXX…}

Yeah, and Boeing is building one…they’re a little bit further behind, because they want to see the French do, and how it’s going to work, and whether they screw it up.

{Singapore Airlines has an order for twenty-four of them, right now.}

Ok, but part of my airport development thing is, hopefully, the Island of St. Croix will have the first airport terminal ready to receive that. And whether they jump on my idea or not…I mean, it’s up to them, as I can’t make them do something, but clearly that would be a way to guarantee them some in flight business if they were set up for that.

And they are working on another plane, right now, that actually has been in development since Reagan was president. But this one will take off like a regular jet plane or 747 and then it has an engine very much like the space shuttle or maybe even more advanced. But anyway it goes out into space, it could go to a space station, but it will get you from Minneapolis to Tokyo in an hour and a half. Does anyone know the name of that one?

{It’s a high orbiter is what it is, but I don’t know the name of it. }

Yeah, and I first learned about that, not from a paper like this, and the student could have written on that, but it was classified information at her work, so she didn’t write on it. But we did talk about it after class, after she learned that I was involved and interested in aviation.

But anyway, she had told me about this project that they were working on. She worked for Rosemount Engineering. And then about a year or two later, I had a student who worked for Honeywell who told me what their piece of the pie was. A good friend of mine married into the Rockwell family, so when I was talking to her dad, I got another piece from the Rockwell firm. So if you get a little piece of information here and there, eventually you’ll put it together. But it will probably be another ten or twelve years before this becomes public and talked about. But it is being worked on by a number of folks like Lockheed Marietta over here, as I also know someone who worked on a piece over there.

Make a Business Connection

Ok, here’s one on economics…so, is it topical or a career paper? Probably topical. This one’s on the FBI… Yeah, career.

Now, it’s ok to write about the FBI, but you need to make the business connection, ok? So, how do you make a business connection, if you really want to be in law enforcement and if you really want to work for the FBI? You work into the paper, “What am I going to do if I get shot.” Like, you know, the TV show, “Frazer” when he’s living in Seattle in that nice apartment. The dad was a cop and now he cant work. What happens when you lose your law enforcement job? Let’s say somebody sets you up, and tries to make you look bad, you can’t beat the case and you get fired, even though you did nothing wrong. Can that happen? Oh, yeah. My dad’s best friend in the whole world, whose name was Tom Jones, he was Chief of Police for many years, appointed by Hubert Humphrey. He had seen that happen within his own department with one of his own guys. And fortunately he knew this guy, he believed in this guy, and wouldn’t allow him to be fired. But he had to fight to keep this guy on the job.

So, what’s the business angle? Well, can you work part-time if you’re a cop in business? Oh, sure you can. Fire and policemen work all the time. As a matter of fact, my dad’s toughest competitor was a guy who started a company called Spartan Specialties and he was a St. Paul cop. By the way, cops know everybody in their territory, and they know every business. And so it was a good thing. By the way, Allen Hornwall, who runs Spartan Specialty has many booths at the State Fair. He built a building for his ad specialty business. He’s done incredibly well. So, it’s like, here’s what I want to do: I want to be a cop, but then how do I take my education and morph it into business if somehow I want to or need to go into business. That’s how you make that business connection.

Alright, those are all of the papers. Keep looking at them, keep passing them around. Now, from what I’ve explained so far, who wants to do a topical report? Raise your hand. You can get more than one of these, but if you know you want to do a topical report, I don’t want to have to give out too many of these. I don’t want to duplicate paperwork. And if you change you mind by the end of the week, you can come by my office and get the career paper as well.

{Are you related to that Mitchell billboard company?}

No, there is a Mitchell that owns billboards. There is also a Mitchell that owns, probably the most sophisticated, video production facility in the state of Minnesota. That would be Robert Mitchell (no relation). They do the McDonalds commercials or they used to. They do a lot of work with add agencies. But, no, my dad had an add specialty business: ballpoint pens, pencils, calendars….

Ok, are we done with the topical one? Ok, this one is for people who want both. So, if I already gave you the topical one, just hang on, because I have one that’s for careers. This one has careers on the top page, and then on the back you should see some information about library resources at Inver Hills.

[Do you have any particular way you want this written, like from whose perspective or anything?]

Nope, I’m very open. You can do it in first person; you can do it in second person; or you can do it in third or fourth person. It doesn’t really matter. This isn’t an English class, but you need to tally your resources. Some students are familiar and prefer doing it with footnotes, some students like using the bibliography, but what ever you’ve been trained with. But I definitely need to know where you got the information. So a works cited or sources listed section is fine.

Giving you all of these different options sometimes complicates matters a bit, but… And I wasn’t going to do it…I had said, no, in Intro to Business you do a career paper. That’s just the way it was always taught. But what did my students say? They said, “Wait a minute, in your marketing class, you said you have to be open to change… Well, you not being open to change!” So I went, “Oh, ok, good point, so I lightened up on these assignment. Then when I started getting into these papers and reading them, I began to realize that I was getting richer work. And, yes, it complicated my grading, but… And students were telling me that they were able to do what really interested them. But if you do a report on something that you really want to do…I mean if your vested in it, you’re going to do better work. And so the whole quality of all my papers got better. So it really was a good thing that I decided to make that change.

And I’ll have these in my office if you want to come in and look at the other options.

Bottom Line For Paper

The bottom line is you need a title page with your name on it; that this is the 11:00 Intro to Business Fall 2003 that meets Monday and Wednesday starting at 11:00; and that you are turning this paper in to Professor Mitchell for partial fulfillment of class requirements. Why do you want my name on this? In case it gets lost; if you turn it in that day, and if you miss my secretary at four o’clock, you miss, that’s why I have the deadline at 3 pm… Anyway, if you miss her at 4 o’clock, you can slide it under the door and when she gets there, she’ll know whose box to put it in. Otherwise it could get lost, right? But if you were to slide it under my door, I would be more likely to get it. But don’t count on turning in a paper, unless you turn it in face-to-face, don’t count on my getting it. Because sometimes students have slide things under the wrong professor’s doors. Then a year later I find out that one of my collogues has this paper, and they say, “Gosh, Rusty, is this your paper? Like, I don’t know where this came from.” And then I go, “Oh, that must be that paper that that student told me about and said they handed it in.” So it’s a good idea to make a back-up of this paper. You keep your original work, you keep the disk that you created it on, so you can prove that you can print it again. If I go, “I never got your paper!” You can come back with, “Ok, I’ll just print out another copy for you.” But you want your name on the front, you want my name; you want to tell me whether it’s a topical paper or a career paper somewhere in or near the title. Then you want a table of contents. The pages that that paragraph or that subject matter or that section is related to is listed. And that’s critical, because teachers grade papers don’t they. So I need to be able to, after I have read all of these papers, and be able to see that this paper covers all of these things listed in the contents, but this one covered this, this, and this; and this one goes a little further ahead.

And that’s how I grade them. First I read every page of every paper, and you can imagine how painful that is for me, the poor little dyslectic kid… But I will read every page of every paper. And then, when I am done with that, I make little comments on them as to whether I think it was good, very good, were it is. And you’ll notice that some of these have those little comments. Then I put them into piles, ok? And then I go back and I reshuffle them and I look at them in more detail. Then I reshuffle them again, and by now I’ll have five piles. Then, I sit down with the papers and look at them again and I say, “This is my best paper. Clearly, this is my best paper.” And then I’ll set aside the next best one, and on and on. So they get all spread-out. So it’s kind of like this arch of papers in front of me, with the best paper here and the worst paper here. Then I go back and I look at them one more time to make sure that that’s the order that they belong in. And then I start with 140 points, then 139, 138, 137, 136 and on and on until I get to the end. And you don’t want to be the one on the end. You don’t want me to have to say to you, when we’re figuring out your grade, “You know, you got a good start on this, but everyone else worked harder on your paper than you did, and this paper is just not quite up to college level.” You don’t want to hear that. So you want to be in that top third running.

So, how many pages do you write, six, eight, ten, twelve pages? It doesn’t matter, you do enough to do a good job. By the way I’ve had students who have turned in papers that have been ten and twenty pages. And all of the other students might feel in awe about it, but, quite often, what kinds of grades do they get? The thickness doesn’t matter; it’s the quality of the work; it’s your resources. Yeah, many times the thickest paper that gets turned in is the worst paper.

Writing on and on and on and being redundant can be worse than writing to little in many cases.

{For the bibliography, if we do an interview with somebody, do we just put there name?]

All you need to do is tell me who they are, and where they work, or how you are related to them. And either give me a business phone number, or a personal phone number, or someway to get in touch with them. Because I may want, or need to, or have a desire to check that out. Although that rarely happens. But, yeah, typically for most papers like this, they want to know how to get a hold of them. For these interviews, you can do it on the phone, you can do it on the Internet, you can say that we’ve had a series of Internet discussions over time. Business people are hard to get a hold of, aren’t they? They are hard to schedule. And I’ve tried for the last three days to schedule an appointment with Cheryl Frank, our president. I finally have today at two o’clock. I waited in her office on Friday, because she had just a little glimmer of window on her schedule, and her secretary said, “I think I can work you in if you talk to her as you walk to her car.” Ok, well then that appointment ran late, so I ended up sitting in the president’s office.

By the way, it was so funny, because I’m sitting there and another faculty member sees me sitting there and says, “Are you in trouble?” Well, I didn’t even think of that, so I said, “Well, what do you mean ‘am I in trouble?” And he said, “Well, this is like the principle’s office…” Well, come-on, this isn’t high school. Cheryl and I are best friends. She and I have been teaching together for a long time. She and I used to hold picket signs together. We were union comrades out on strike. But sometimes people are hard to get a hold of.

But back to the interview thing, it’s nice to say that your interview took place at such and such a place, time, date, show me a contact, and… Some students have shown me a copy of the letter that they sent thanking them. Now, that’s, obviously, not required, but that could be a part of your appendix items, right? So it’s up to you.

And I’m not a fanatic about how things are done. The English people teach you that stuff, alright? I just need to be able to look at this and know that you can communicate at a college and, quote, a “college introductory level” and it will be fine. It’s not like you’re going to work for NASA, although some of you might, and then you’ll need to know NASA protocol.

{When is it due?}

It is due November 26^th. I’m pretty sure that’s on a Wednesday, and no later than 3:00 pm. In the old days, I didn’t put a time frame as to when the thing was due. I kind of learned from experience, however, that that is a good thing to do. So now I have a time frame where it is due by 3 pm. And then you get late points, ten points per classroom day. And normally our classes meet Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Ours are kind of bunched up for two days, but that’s how I do it though, if the paper comes in the following Monday, it’s ten points. If it comes in the following Wednesday, it’s twenty points, and if it comes in on the following Friday, it’s thirty points; if it comes in the following Friday, it’s forty points; if it comes in on the following Monday, it’s fifty points. So you want to get this done.

{For the oral presentation can we do a summary of our paper, or…}

Oral Presentation

No, the oral presentation and your paper are totally different. By the way, I have a copy of my resume, here, if anybody wants it. And if you’re doing a career paper, it might be a good idea to throw in a resume, right? But the oral and the paper are totally different. Now, does that mean that you can’t combine them? No, you can combine them, but the guiding rule, the guiding principle for the oral report is this is something that is going to benefit and value everyone in this class. And you’re the teacher for four or five minutes. So if you’re writing about accounting careers, and other people don’t care about accounting careers, you’ve kind of missed the boat, there. If you did a topical paper, and it’s about entrepreneurs, and if it’s general, and if it’s beneficial to the class because we’ve covered entrepreneurs, and if you think that we would all benefit…well, it’s a judgment call, you know? I’m kind of leaving it there, but… Some students get the mistaken idea that the paper and the oral report have to be the same but they’re separate. But we’ll cover more detail on the oral presentation as we get a little closer.

{Is it possible to have like a __________________}

No, because a marketing plan is very specific…

{Right—right, but what if took like ________________}

You could talk about the marketing profession in general or you could talk about the creation of marketing plans as a subject for this class. You could connect the two, but they have to be separate enough where there needs to be a general topical information paper where you’re sharing information that you have learned, that you have wanted to learn… But, yeah, you could write a paper on how do I prepare a marketing plan, and what is the benefit of a marketing plan, and why doing a marketing plan pays off, and here’s the computer software available that actually writes the marketing plan for you; you just have to plug the info in. You could do that for this class, and for the marketing class, you can turn in the marketing plan.

By the way, I believe in creativity, I teach creativity, and so I try never to stomp upon creativity, so go ahead and be really creative. And if you’re concerned as to whether you are on the right path, that’s why I have an office hour, right? Stop by my office and say, “This is the direction I’m going. Am I on the right track or do I need to alter my path a little?”

Why Study Business?

Alright, how many of you have read the chapters? Alright, what we’re going to talk about today for the balance of the time that we have is a little bit about why we study business. And then we want to get started on the business environment. What is the environment that we operate in, in this world of business? What is the environment that people will operate in who chose business as a career path? And we’ll get fairly specific with that as we go along. We’ll look at the history of business, the timeline, and how we got to where we are today. We’ll look at the economic model, the economic engine. We’ll talk about the environment a little bit.

But first of all, why study business? Give me some benefits. You’ve paid your tuition, and you’re not getting it back, by the way. I hope you all did pay the tuition…there was a deadline.

Ok, so you need to speak the language…you need to know what it’s all about. And where do you learn to speak the language? In college—yeah.

{to make money…}

Say it loud and clear—one more time!

{I want to make so much money!}

Yes! It’s about money honey!! Yes, it’s about the money! Isn’t that ok? Isn’t it ok to talk about that? Oh yeah! It’s, of course, ok. I mean the essence of business is entrepreneurship. And entrepreneurs say, “I don’t want to work for somebody else, and get a paycheck like everybody else. I want to get boat loads of money! I want to own boats! I want to own airplanes! I want to own hotels! I want to be the boss; I want people to say, ‘sir.’” Yeah, it’s ok; and this is one avenue to do it. Now, if you go to work for NASA, you’re going to have great job and a great career, and you’ll do a lot of exciting things. But you’re not going to come away with a shit-load of money. If you leave NASA and you take things that you’ve learned in NASA, and you use that to start a business, then you might end up with a shit-load of money. But that isn’t going to happen. I’m going to stay an employee, right? I get paid a salary, sixty-six thousand seven-hundred dollars this year… Maybe some bonus money; and I’ve got a retirement program, which is really nice. So even if the state of Minnesota goes bankrupt, I still get money. But if the whole economy goes to hell, and the state’s bankrupt, well, then I’m in trouble, but then we’re all in trouble, right?

But I chose the route of security and not opportunity. If you choose to go with the world of opportunity, you can make some money? By the way, if I’m a good teacher or a bad teacher, do I get paid any more or any less? The Republicans want to come up with a way of teaching good teachers more and bad teachers less. But the unions will never allow that. I don’t think that will ever happen. Actually, I think it’s kind of a neat idea. Of course, I think that I’m a good teacher, so I think that I would fall into the good category, but…

Now, I came up with an idea a while back…It would never work but, nonetheless, it was brilliant…that my future depends upon how much each of my students that I’ve ever taught makes. So every year, you would be charged one percent of your income that automatically goes to any teacher that ever developed you. You think that would make for better teaching? I think so. And, yes, there would be problems. It would kind of have to be universal, because—wait a minute—I wouldn’t want Ms. Banes to get some of that money! But how do you determine who did and who didn’t contribute to your success. So it would be like any teacher that you have ever interacted with. Otherwise, I don’t know how to implement it. And it’s a great idea, but it would never work, but you know… And when I mention it to people, they say, “Well, you’re not going to tax me for that! We already have taxes that pay for the education.” But that’s the problem with being employed by the state, right? Whether I do a good job or not a good job, I get the same amount of money as… As long as I don’t screw up so bad that they fire me. Whereas, in business, I get paid based on my work, my productivity, my work ethic, how much I produce, how good I am, how bright I am.

{So in your little plan, there, would you also get taxed for all the people that helped you?}

Oh, yeah—oh yeah! And all the people that helped me, helped me to be a better teacher and so they would deserve some of that wouldn’t they?

{Well, then, you’d be sitting in the middle and you wouldn’t make anything or lose anything…}

{And you might be called a communist.}

Well, you see, that’s the other thing…it stinks of communism. No, it doesn’t really, but…

{How about you _________________}

Well, right now there’s a number of proposals out there on how to make teachers more productive.

The bottom line is, one of the reasons to study business, it puts you in a place where the number one employment sector is.

{How does that work where some teachers in Europe are paid more than others are like in the U.S.? }

It’s just based on an historical precedent in America. Women, for the most part, did the teaching in America. Men did the jobs that were the real jobs, so to speak, you know? And women did teaching, and women were willing to do it for less, and the school system didn’t have any money, because we were a pioneering and poor country, and it just happened to evolve that way. Whereas in Europe, it was a great privilege to be educated, and only the totally educated got paid. And people said, hey, these people have spent a lot to get an education and so they deserve…. It just evolved differently. But you have to understand that there’s a lot of old money in Europe. We’re just now starting to have old money, here, in America. But Europeans tax themselves. There raising a lot of taxes. Look at how they tax themselves for gasoline? It’s unbelievable. Whereas Americans, for the most part, they don’t like taxes. And we’re going to talk about that. About the democrats and liberals on one side, and about the republicans and conservatives on the other side, who like and dislike taxes and the size of government. But we’ll talk about that another day.

Ok, it’s the number one employment sector. Ronald Regan became president after whom? Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter took us this close—a democrat—took us this close to government being the number one employment sector in America. And I’ve been born and raised a republican, and I know I vote my paycheck on the democrat. I didn’t vote for Jessie Ventura, I voted Skip Humphrey even though I didn’t like the guy. But he would have put more money into education while Jessie Ventura would have taken money out of education.

But the bottom line is that Carter took us precariously close to having government as the number one sector. And, if that’s the case, how many people would be getting business degrees? Well, it would be less and less and less every year, right. You’d get a degree in economics or something else that will qualify you for a government job, whether it be law enforcement or what ever, right? But then Regan came into office and said we’re going to do deregulation, we’re going to scale down government sector, because we don’t want it to become the number one employment sector. And government has been scaling down, really, ever since. We’ve cut out most of the welfare program, student aid, student financing, work study programs, all kinds of things. And that’s based on how we vote, isn’t it, whether we vote democratic or republican.

But, in the U.S.A. today, the number one employment sector is the business community. And they pay some of those people very well. Corporate CEO’s get millions and millions, right? So, it’s not just the number of jobs, but it’s the dollars equated for those jobs. So, do you want to be where the money’s at? Yeah.

{I was going to ask what does about the welfare. Is it basically true that by the time I retire I won’t be able to collect on my social security?}

It depends—it depends—whether the republicans continue to down this path, and if society chooses every year to say that’s the right way. Or, it depends on whether the democrats get a chance to put things back together. When the great depression came, who was in office? Hover, a republican. And they called all of these shanty towns, where all of these poor people lived Hovervilles. And it was FDR who said we’re going to have government work programs and we’re just going to borrow from everyone’s future and we’re going to create jobs. Then things will get better, and then they’ll pay taxes, and then we’ll pay that deficit off. Well, we’re still in debt…some of it still hasn’t been paid off, but it’s nice to go up to Duluth and see the nice wall that the WPA guys made. But, I can’t answer that. I can tell you one thing though. I have _____ of investment more than enough to make up for when social security isn’t there for me, and when Medicare isn’t there for me. I want to be able to take care of myself. So, I’ve been lucky. I’ve been able to work in the world of money, make some money, build a house, you know. But I’ve also been in the world of security, so I’ve been able to…. My dad used to say, “You know, you can’t piss in both pots.” You can’t do that, he said. But thanks to my brother-in-law, he taught me that I can. And I did the private thing, and now I’ve done twenty seven years of the public thing. And when I retire, I’ll do the private thing again. Whether I make any money or not doesn’t matter, because I still have my state retirement though, right?

But you, as young people, are going to have to choose. Are you going into the world of security or are you going to go to the world of opportunity?

{But how secure is it? I mean…}

Well, look at NRON, I mean people went to work for NRON thinking they had secure and good employment, they were in the world of opportunity, but it’s not. But government work, however, is more secure. There’s no way the state of Minnesota is going to go bankrupt…well, maybe I shouldn’t say that, but it’s pretty doubtful. But 3M could go; they could get bought-out by a foreign firm, which could screw things up, where a lot of share holders could lose, where a lot of employees could lose.

So if you choose that world of opportunity, there is what we call risk involved, right? So if you’re risk adverse, you should work for a big company, or a real solid company, a blue chip company, or you should work for the state government. My dad had a good friend whose wife worked for the City of Richfield. Her husband was a sales rep for Formica. How did they pay their retirement bills? He wasn’t earning a commission anymore. He didn’t get any retirement from Formica. They pay their retirement bills on her city pension. So later on in life, he began to realize that his kid is smarter than he thought he was, he’s probably going to do alright. But you have to choose and you have to look at that risk.

So the environment of business is a risk environment, and we have a chapter on how to control risk, and we’ll talk about how to control risk, and we’ll talk about risk management. Entrepreneurs are taking the most risk, aren’t they? If I were working for an entrepreneur, I’m not taking quite as much risk, but I’m still taking some risk.

If I go to work for her, or if she goes to work for me, and the company doesn’t pan out…well, shit, now I’m screwed. But at least, hopefully, you’ll have some skills and hopefully you’ll have an education in business, and somebody else will be wanting to pay for what you know and what you’ve experienced and what you can do.

So, there, you prepare yourself to play this game of business. It’s like Monopoly. Once you really learn Monopoly, you can win almost every time can’t you? Now, if your playing the game where other people know the game better than you or as well as you do, well then you might not win every time.

But once I really learned to play Monopoly and I loved Monopoly as a kid; I used to play it over and over, and pretty soon, I was the king of Monopoly. No one could beat me.

When my brother-in-law challenged me to chess, and I actually beat him a couple of times, not because I knew much about the game, but I would make these completely wild-ass moves that he wouldn’t expect. He would say, “Wow, where did that come from?” And I’d say, “Well, I don’t know what I’m doing!” And he would say that I should have done this, this, and this; and if I had done this, this and this, and on and on, but “You went here! Gez!” Well, after I beat him a couple of times at chess, he got to thinking, “Well, maybe this kid’s got some gray matter up there, after all?” And then I said to him, “Well, my game’s Monopoly!” And here’s an economics professor who teaches accounting. But I just blew his but right out of the water! But then, I knew the rules; I knew how to play the game; I had a strategy down. By the way, later on, my game became Risk. Has anyone ever played that army game of world control? I love that. It’s been a while, now, but there was a time where you couldn’t beat me at Risk either.

But you have to learn the rules of the game. And that’s what you learn in college; you start with Intro to Business… And Intro to Business is a class that looks at every subject you could take a whole other class in. So you get a little glimpse of management, sales, marketing, advertising. You get a little glimpse of resource management, manufacturing or operations management, and project management. You get a little glimpse at insurance, risk management. All of the subjects that can be taught, you get a little flavor of. This is just like a little sampler course. And we get you started on the terminology.

Well, why study business? Well, it’s so that you can win! If you’re going to play a game, you want to win; you don’t want to lose. So if you study business and you learn why other people fail, why other people were successful, what works, what doesn’t work, how does it all come together, what’s the terminology… If you want to go into the computer business, you had better learn the terminology of the computer business. Well, here we learn the lingo and the terminology of the business world.

Actually, the real language of business is accounting. Did you know that? All over the world, it is spoken the same. The accounting language is universally global. And, by the way, more and more, what’s the transaction currency of the world? Well, it’s dollars. And euros are gaining a bigger and bigger share all of the time, and Japanese yen do pretty well, and German marks used to do pretty well, but the German mark has been eliminated by now, so it’s the euro. but if you learn accounting, it doesn’t matter what currency you are trading in, the economy is ruled… Business people always talk about that. When I went to Turkey, and when spending time with my host, who owns businesses, we could talk, because I learned accounting. So you want to learn the language; you want to learn what its all about.

Is there any other reason why we study business?

{To capitalize on the world’s different trends.}

Ok, to understand what the trends are, to understand what may be going on in the future, where you want to be in the future…yeah, preparing yourself for that career path, down the road.

{________________ , so bringing in new ideas.}

Alright, yeah. If I have a business I want to launch, it’s innovative. We’re going to sell that space on sail boats. Well, that’s not a totally new idea. Other people have put adds on sailboats. In the America’s Cup, you see adds on sailboats. But I want to create a network, a franchised system; I want it to be just as powerful as outdoor advertising. And maybe, someday the name of Mitchell will be associated with outdoor advertising. But I have to create that, don’t I? It’s not out there, but I have a vision. And I want to play out my vision. Well, if I understand how to put a business plan together, if I understand how to put an operation and procedures plan together, how to do a project management plan, how to do a marketing plan, I am better prepared to launch that vision, and to make that innovation or creative idea or service happen.      

Ok, are there any others? Is there any other reason why to study business? Ok, I always have to end this part of the lecture with my favorite word… It’s fun! It’s just cool! Now, maybe that’s just me, you know? And I believe in what I do. But I think that the world of business is, inherently, very fascinating. It is certainly very cerebral isn’t it. I mean this game of business is much more complicated and way-cooler than the ultimate chess game. So this is chess, Monopoly, and Risk all rolled into one, plus one-hundred points—it’s just cool! It’s just fascinating.

What is business

Ok, what is business…then we can end with the business environment. And we can start again with that. So, what is business? How would we define business?

{What is it, organization, taking a profit,}

[Ok, it’s profit making activities of those engaged in purchasing or selling goods and services to satisfy societies needs and wants.]

Ok, it’s the profit making activities…you guys are giving me formal definitions, and that’s good. It proves that you can read…anything else? But here’s my definition: Business is people. So if you understand people, then you understand how people work and how they make decisions and how they click. You can do well in the world of marketing; you can do well in the world of business…

What business really is, is a group of people, it’s an organization as he said, planning a mission and a strategy, launching a product, meeting people’s needs to deliver goods and services that meet those needs that make people happy. Therefore, they unload their dollars on to you for products or services.

It’s an exchange whereby we meet their needs; and if we meet or exceed their needs, hopefully, they will come back to us. Hopefully, you will stay here at Inver Hills and take more classes, ok? Because Inver Hills…it really is a business isn’t it? It’s government run, but it’s still operated much like a business.

If I am Gateway, I need to have a group of people—a team—who will figure out what you want, and how it will be delivered. And Gateway will have it delivered by UPS, right? The people, they bought it, they save money; they have a computer custom designed for them, and each computer was different, right? Well, it was brilliant! They were able to launch that because they knew business, and they put together a team—and a good team—and they grew a pretty nice company. So, business is a group of people that create goods and services for others and they meet or exceed their needs and satisfy them over and over again.

And if they do that, then there is a reward for them, and/or the investors who gave them the money to put the thing together—that’s what business is!

By the way, if you are in a job interview, are you likely to get a question like, “Well, what is business; what is the definition of business, what is it that business people do?” Well, it would be nice if you had such an answer right off the tip of your tongue that was really cool.

And at the heart of every business is serving people’s needs, a group of people who meet people’s needs.

Ok, see ya!

{____________________________________}

What you might want to do is you might want to title you paper as a topical paper, looking at multi-level-pyramid marketing concepts. So you might want to talk about: who does this, how big the company is, how successful they are, like Amway, Sprint…I mean there’s a whole lot of people doing it. And then you might want to get into specific or finite detail about the legal (?) service and what you learned specifically about that career and how you take that experience and move it forward.

{_____________________________________}

Sure…so you’ll be doing a topical paper and it will titled as a topical paper, and it will have a very career flavor to it, because you’ll be doing interviews and all of that, but you won’t be, necessarily, looking up how many jobs are available and how much education you’ll need, but you will have some stuff about here’s how, what, and why, and how this is successful and…

{I will just talk about…}

We actually taught a class in multi-level marketing. And that’s when a lot of people thought it wasn’t a viable opportunity—but it certainly is! And we made the point that it’s not easy, because it’s hard. But I know people who have lived very well because of Amway.