Imagine walking into a classroom on your first day and finding there isnât a place for you to sit. Would you feel awkward? Confused? Wondering if you got the wrong room?
Professor Chris Leach counts on that sense of dislocation to prepare new students in the World of Business course to engage in complex topics such as scarcity and allocation, trade, intellectual property rights, and globalization.
âThe first day, there arenât enough chairs for all the studentsâso who gets them?â Leach said. âLeft handers, musicians, athletes, people who benefit society in general, the disabledâwho knows?â
The idea is to prepare students for more tangible discussions about, say, how to allocate scarce resources. Yashi Uppalapati (Busâ23) is a model, in addition to being a student, and lessons on globalization have changed how she looks at a fashion industry sheâd like to have a career in. Videos documenting the treatment of workers in developing countries stuck with her.
Ìę
Ìę
Ìę
Ìę
Ìę
âBusiness is not your enemyâitâs how youâre going to change the world.â
- Chris Leach
Professor | Family of Robert H. Deming and Beverly A. Deming Professorship in Entrepreneurship | W.W. Reynolds Capital Markets Program Endowed Chair
Ìę
âIt was hard to watch those videos the first time,â said Uppalapati, who now works as a teaching assistant for the course. âI wasnât sure what I took away from that. But seeing them again, as a TA, I realized that as a result of the course, I was looking for more sustainable choices in fashion.â
That hits on a major point for Leachâthat no matter what you want to do, youâre likely to do it working for a business, and itâs through that business that you have the opportunity to create impact.
âA lot of purists think that they can be a physicist, a biologist or a musician without engaging business,â he said. âI donât think they can, and I think they need to understand that business is not your enemyâitâs how youâre going to change the world.â
After the lesson with the chairs, students discuss EpiPens, the controversy around the cost of each unitâand who should have access to them. Each game kicks off a new topic that challenges students to rethink thorny topics like minimum wage, global trade or access to resources.
âWhat weâve heard back from our students is that months after taking the class, they remember the games, even if they think theyâre a little bit silly at the time,â he said.
Thatâs definitely true of Nick Cervasio (Busâ22), a former sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps who resumed his education after being discharged.
âWhat I appreciated about the course was itâs not a typical college course,â Cervasio said. âThe way the information was presentedâwhether in games or through readingsâlets you absorb it in your own way. And the open discussions offered the opportunity to engage with your peers and figure out what everyone else took from it. Oftentimes, it got you to challenge your own ideas about business.â
Other students said the perspective they got from class discussions stayed with them, as well. Sarah Garcia (Busâ22) said taking the course as a freshman prepared her to embrace complex problems in areas like sustainability and ethics.
âI think a lot of people assume business students only learn about selling things and making money,â said Garcia, who spent her summer on a finance internship with Tolmar. âTalking about hard issues in World of Business helps you stand up for yourself a little, and show that business is there to solve problems and create opportunities for society.â
That, Leach said, is just what heâs looking for.
âI want our students to be able to defend business as a social covenant between the members of society, and understand how it benefits everyone,â he said.
Fast Facts: A World of Difference
Schools like Clemson and the University of Kansas have reached out to Chris Leach to learn more about creating courses like World of Business on their campuses. Hereâs what makes the program unique to Leeds:
Drawing on de Soto
The ideas of Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto greatly influenced the course content. De Sotoâs scholarly work examines the difficulties entrepreneurs face when they lack property rights, a key factor limiting innovation and economic advancement in developing countries. The course was redesigned and led to the subsequent creation of the Hernando de Soto Capital Markets Program at Leeds in 2016, established with a gift from William Reynolds.
Broad faculty base
Though Chris Leach was one of four designers for the course, heâs just one of a broad complement of professors who teach it. That diversity brings something unique to each class, said Yashi Uppalapati, a TA for the class: âThereâs definitely a different perspective, in terms of how the material is presented.â
Timing counts
World of Business is a required part of the first-year Leeds experience that helps orient students for their degree plan. A similar class was developed and launched for MBA students two years ago. âStudents have been enthusiastic about this exposure to current events in the business context, as enlightened both by contemporary and historical moral and economic thought,â Leach said.
