In conversation with the Institute for Excellence in Teaching and Learning – a series of thought-provoking exchanges designed to introduce new approaches to teaching that engage students and boost learning outcomes. The higher education landscape continues to evolve, and it becomes more important than ever to equip students with the real-world skills they need to thrive in a rapidly changing professional landscape.

In Conversation with Gregory Stoller– Elevating Entrepreneurship through Creative Approaches to Experiential Learning and Interdisciplinary Experiences

Gregory Stoller is a Master Lecturer in Strategy and Innovation at BU’s Questrom School of Business. He is actively involved in building entrepreneurship, experiential learning and international business programs at Boston University. Stoller also actively mentors student teams participating in business plan and venture capital competitions and has over 25 years of experience teaching at Boston University and Boston College. He owns a commercial real estate holding company and speaks, reads, and writes seven different languages. Finally, Stoller is also a past winner of the prestigious BU Metcalf Award for Teaching Excellence.

Q&A

BU Institute: You have been teaching for a number of years and in a field that is ever evolving. Can you talk a little about what has changed in teaching over the years, and what are some of the biggest challenges for faculty in teaching today?

Gregory Stoller: I focus on three different areas with my teaching, all under the cloak of experiential learning:

  • I teach traditional classroom courses at both the undergraduate and the graduate level on entrepreneurship, international entrepreneurship, and small business growth and management. For example, here is a 1 minute promo for one of those courses.
  • Every year, I take our students to visit businesses across the globe to provide consulting recommendations and/or meet with companies to discuss their business strategies.
  • I run many of the case competitions at Questrom where I either mentor teams, myself, bring in domain experts, or organize competitions for which we write custom case studies.

I would like to believe that I am arming students with real-world knowledge by using my international business background and contacts in the entrepreneurial and venture capital worlds to offer students industry insights and practical tips. In many of my courses, students present to, and are in part assessed by, entrepreneurs directly. But I still insist that I learn from my students as much as I am teaching them.

BU Institute: What defines an exemplary case competition at Questrom? Can you walk us through the model—how students participate in the program, how the case is developed or proposed, who the students partner with in industry, and what outcomes you want students to achieve?

Gregory Stoller: What defines an exemplary case study is student satisfaction. For example, two students recently provided these unsolicited comments either during an alumni panel or online. “My most valuable experience from the Questrom MBA was learning to build a narrative to explain and advocate for your strategy via case competitions,” and “Someone pinch my 13-year-old shy self and tell her that almost a decade later, she’ll be pursuing an MBA, traveling to Sweden, and sitting across from founders and CEOs.”

The model is for us to either receive a case competition invitation from another university or begin recruiting students for one(s) that we are hosting. We collect resumes, and I often use individuals in different outside groups to help objectively select the students. Then, the fun part starts. I meet with the team regularly to help them refine their hypothesis, devise a research plan, write their PowerPoint presentations, and cheer them on in the competition.

After the competition ends, if the entrepreneur or participating company walks away with at least one or two innovative ideas, I will consider the experience for everyone to have been a grand slam.

BU Institute: I am interested in hearing more about the interdisciplinary collaboration you have helped to steward across our schools and colleges.  Can you share a particular example, and talk a bit about what it takes to do this successfully?   How might you advise faculty new to this approach to benefit from such a collaboration?

Gregory Stoller: Two specific examples come to mind:

  • HUB IC 203 course: BU launched its Hub program in 2018 as an innovative general education program for all undergraduate students emphasizing “working across disciplines to prepare for a complex and diverse world” (BU HUB web site). To the Hub’s credit, they are always trying to innovate. Two years ago, a call went out to develop new content for multidisciplinary themes by working with industry practitioners. Over nine months we developed and launched a new course, essentially using the case competition mentality of teams competing against one another, but doing so under the auspices of a for-credit class. 45 students registered for the fall course, representing seven different colleges within the university and all four years of the undergraduate program (i.e., first-year students through seniors). Again, we leaned in hard to the case competition approach in that we brought in outside judges to review and grade the students’ work.
  • The second example is the 2nd annual Questrom School of Business, Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, and College of Engineering case competition (see LinkedIn posting here). BU graduate students from the different colleges are placed on multidisciplinary teams and receive the case two weeks before the competition begins. Each team is paired with an industry mentor who guides in advance of their presentation. The judges are either the protagonist of the originally created case study or industry experts who work in that field.

BU Institute: You are an entrepreneur yourself and the owner of a successful company. How do you bring that experience into the work you do teaching in the classroom?  What skills do you want to see today’s learners achieve to be future leaders?   How might other faculty members replicate or adopt these kinds of approaches?

Gregory Stoller: I’ve been fortunate to run a small business for over 20 years and I believe this makes me a better teacher, in that I can incorporate positive and negative entrepreneurial experiences into classroom lessons. My objective is to ensure that the students always approach business problems from a real-world perspective. I remember my first negotiation (after I had just launched the company) with someone looking to rent a small office. I offered one price while he offered a lower one. I then countered by convincing him that my price was correct based on the BATNA and the ZOPA. This person looked at me like I had three heads and offered to split the difference in the middle. We signed the lease 15 minutes later. Ever since then, I’ve learned that knowledge acquisition is essential, but how it’s applied and how one deals with people are ultimately the best assets a business owner has in his/her/their proverbial quiver of strategic arrows.

BU Institute: You have a successful teaching career over 25 years. What changes have you seen in teaching and learning over this time, and how do you continue to keep your curriculum and your approaches current? Can you share some examples that have been most rewarding for you?

Gregory Stoller: I’ve been fortunate to be in the classroom continuously for over two decades and do not take that opportunity lightly. In fact, I’m still in regular touch with the person who hired me 25 years ago to teach my first class. I think I have gradually seen a healthy merger of theory and practice. I’m also so happy to see that our classrooms at Boston University effectively represent the United Nations because we have students from all over the world in our undergraduate and graduate programs.

BU Institute: Can you describe the student of today? What excites you about working with this generation of learners? What are their interests and aspirations, and how can we continue to support, motivate and challenge them?  Are there particular teaching strategies you employ to engage students? How do you see them demonstrating that engagement?

Gregory Stoller: Today’s students are overstimulated by eons of information and technological options. And if these students aren’t putting pressure on themselves to succeed, their parents certainly are. But I still try to remind our undergraduate students that college should be the best four years of their lives. Despite the stress and nobody wanting to be the last person standing in the game of musical employment chairs, an increasing number of our students still has an insatiable desire to keep learning—not just for the almighty grade, but indeed to improve themselves and parlay their academic experiences into internships or full-time jobs (or graduate school acceptances).

BU Institute: Given the advancements in business and the rapid pace of continued transformation in areas like AI, what is next on the horizon? Do you have aspirations for the next big project or case competition?

Gregory Stoller: I use AI regularly as a de facto research assistant. It’s terrific to do searches on my own and then turn to engines that might provide (non-hallucinating) alternative sources. But my conclusion is always the same: it’s a great tool, but there’s no substitute for doing the work yourself, and the technological tail will never wag the dog. What’s next on the horizon is constantly providing our students an opportunity to advise business leaders on their future strategic moves directly. Nobody wants to keep legislating the Betamax vs VHS debate from the 1970s and 1980s, so in this regard we owe our students nothing less than engaging and inspiring them to be their best selves. Using our undergraduate and graduate students, I write all the case studies for these competitions from scratch. So, the horizon in question is only a few months off as we try to write these documents as close as possible to the competitions themselves.