RBS students learn from Rutgers basketball practice

Rutgers Business School students found a place on the basketball court when they got the opportunity to observe women’s basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer train her team this past October.

A course called “Management Skills” made its debut at the Rutgers Business School in the fall of 2013, said Phyllis Siegel, an associate professor in the Department of Management and Global Business, which developed this event. The course is required for all first-year business school undergraduate students.

The learning objectives of the course include the ability to better understand and work more effectively with others. The department wanted students to have an opportunity to meet and observe a “real” team that echoes concepts and utilizes skills taught in class.

“The course focuses on specific concepts and critical skills that individuals need to know and have in order to work more effectively with others in organizations, work well in teams and lead teams and organizations successfully,” Siegel said.

Since Rutgers joined the Big 10, now seemed like the perfect time to get business undergraduates excited about Rutgers athletics and academics while examining the potential connections and synergies between the two through an educational platform.

The program also afforded RBS the rare opportunity to bring together business students from both the New Brunswick and Newark campuses in an academic setting.

“The program was a big hit with our students,” Siegel said. “Over 700 students from our programs on both [the] New Brunswick and Newark campuses attended the event, with 160 students bused in from our Newark campus.”

Students absorbed the insights and experiences that Stringer, her coaching staff and the players shared. 

Siegel believes the event was a remarkably tangible way of representing the value of teamwork and providing the business school students with an opportunity to appreciate how these principles are applied in a very different context than which they are accustomed.

Peter Sopranzetti, a Rutgers Business School first-year student studying accounting at Rutgers-Newark, said Stringer taught him that communication is absolutely crucial to the success of any team. Without proper communication and teamwork, a team will not be able to achieve its goals.

“It is a breath of fresh air when you are able to take a break from typical lectures and PowerPoint to be able to witness real world applications of communication and teamwork,” Sopranzetti said.

Payal Sharma, an assistant professor in the Department of Management and Global Business, said she thinks having the students observe a leader such as Stringer helped them realize how the content and exercises from the course offers “off-the-books” learning.

“In my own teaching, I strive to promote a sense of community in the classroom, so [Stringer’s] approach really resonated with me as a faculty member,” Sharma said. “The world is not an easy place, and there is a lot of tough competition out there for students and athletes, but learning how to support one another is a critical part of the college experience.”

Sharma thought the event reinforced the link between theory and practice that is a fundamental part of being a business student.

Aditya Jain, an RBS first-year student, said getting out of class to experience something new was a fresh and great idea. Watching the basketball players warm up and go through drills was a strong way of grounding some of the concepts he learned in “Management Skills.”

“Every player on that team had an open lane of communication with each other, and for that reason specifically, their experience working together resembles that of a work team and not a work group,” he said.

Stringer taught Jain that to accomplish a goal, discipline and dedication are key.

He said the dedication to understanding roles and the offensive and defensive system shows how committed the players are to winning and becoming better.

“I think students really seemed to grasp the academic material much better after seeing a live, physical representation of certain concepts,” Jain said. “I also think this form of clarity and face-to-face demonstration is essential for a student to really learn.”

Stringer was not available for comment before press time.