Western International University Blog Archive

February 5, 2009—Many years ago, the first course that I taught for working adults was Labor Economics, a class that was required for one of the adult degree programs offered at the school.  The course had a term project that required the entire class to negotiate a labor contract.  I split the class into two groups – labor and management.  One of the students was a bank manager who I put on the labor team.  Another was a former labor union officer who I put on the management team.  Throughout the course, they studied the case that was provided to them, including a labor contract, and developed their positions.  On the final night of the course, they sat down and entered into negotiations.  After about two hours, the leaders of the management and labor teams stood up, screamed at each other and almost came to blows.  Their long-standing perceptions and paradigms were being challenged by their reverse roles in this negotiation, leading to a state of frustration.  To bring order to the situation, I pointed out that if a mock negotiation in the classroom could get this heated, think about how difficult it is to conduct real labor negotiations when people’s livelihoods are on the line.

In a management information systems course for non-technical people, I was teaching about Pareto Analysis, the rule where 80% of the sales, for example, come from 20% of the items.  One of the students was a salesman for a paper company whose territory included several states in the west, from Wyoming to New Mexico.  He asked why he needed to know “this stuff,” as his job was to sell his paper products.  I asked him if, with such a large territory to cover, he needed to schedule his customer visits efficiently.  I then asked him to go to his IT people and get a listing of all his customers sorted by annual sales.  He then conducted a term project to develop a customer contact schedule for customers that he classified as “A” (high volume), “B” (medium volume) and “C” (low volume).  The net result was that he had built himself a basic tool that was used to improve his effectiveness as a salesman.

The adult classroom is certainly a stimulating environment.  Whether students are taking part in interactive online classes for one of the many available online degree programs, participating in certificate programs, or their course schedules require oncampus study and discussion, the adult classroom is a place where minds are opened to different perspectives and an understanding of other viewpoints is achieved.  It is also a place where we can learn how to use tools and techniques to change the way we do things and make us more productive and valuable as employees.

—Mike Seiden

December 19, 2008—Today’s news is full of negative stories and dire predictions relating to the economy and the job market.  Sometimes, however, it takes bad tidings to make us realize that there are opportunities to improve our lives and build for the future. That’s why many individuals are taking advantage of the opportunity to return to school and complete what they may have started many years ago but, for a variety of reasons, never completed. Or, they have realized that what they didn’t think was necessary when they struck out on their own after high school is essential today in order to make a better life for them and their families. As a result, more and more adults are returning to school at Western International University.

A few years ago, I was at the gym working out on the cross trainer, when the young man next to me noticed my Western International University T-shirt and asked me about the university. He told me that he hadn’t completed college, so, naturally, I tried to recruit him.  When I told him that he could complete his degree at WIU in the evening or online while he was working, he chuckled and told me that he didn’t need a degree.  He was in the mortgage business and making a lot of money.  I wonder where he is today.