Speaker 1: What we'd like to welcome our Bloomberg television audience as
Speaker 1: well into a conversation we're always excited to have because
Speaker 1: we love business schools. Here on Bloomberg Business Week, we
Speaker 1: do an annual ranking. We dive deep into the business
Speaker 1: of the business schools, and it's a little bit different
Speaker 1: these days, that is for sure. Reach to Agrawal is
Speaker 1: the interim dene at the Robert H. Smith School of
Speaker 1: Business at the University of Maryland, also the founding director
Speaker 1: for the school's Center for Health Information and Decision Systems,
Speaker 1: joining us on the phone from College Parking, A really
Speaker 1: nice to have you with us. We know it is
Speaker 1: an incredibly busy and a very different time in the
Speaker 1: education of business students. Take us inside. What's school like
Speaker 1: right now? I don't even know where to begin cases.
Speaker 1: This has been such a wild ride for the past
Speaker 1: six months, and there are so many different things that
Speaker 1: I can talk about, but I do want to sort
Speaker 1: of take you to the ACOPA experience. Let me start
Speaker 1: by sort of directly addressing your question, what's it like
Speaker 1: inside the business school today? Density is low, but students
Speaker 1: are masked and they have big smiles on their faces.
Speaker 1: From what I can tell from behind their masks they
Speaker 1: are just so glad to be back. We'll talk to
Speaker 1: us a little bit too, Dnagarwall, about the adjustments that
Speaker 1: you guys have had to make to make in order
Speaker 1: to get students back on campus. So let me just
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, sort of two pandemics that we've
Speaker 1: dealt with in the last six months. Right. The first
Speaker 1: one is, of course the public health crisis that is
Speaker 1: front and center in everybody's mind. But there's also a second,
Speaker 1: more subtle one that reveals itself at the end of May,
Speaker 1: and that's you know, the national spotlight on the racial
Speaker 1: injustice and systemic bias. So we've had to make adjustments
Speaker 1: to address both of these pandemics. So I'll start by
Speaker 1: focusing on the first, which has you know, of course
Speaker 1: captured everybody's attension, time and energy for six months now. Um,
Speaker 1: I want your listeners to remember two words, unprecedented and pivot,
Speaker 1: because that has really described our experience so far. So
Speaker 1: on March eleventh, you know, we all received an email
Speaker 1: and a text on our cell phones telling us to
Speaker 1: go home because the governor had just imposed this day
Speaker 1: at home order, and literally overnight, the campus emptied out.
Speaker 1: Both campus and the city of College Park became ghost towns.
Speaker 1: And luckily we were scheduled to go on screen break
Speaker 1: the following week, and we delayed the startup classes by
Speaker 1: another week, and that allowed us to make the first
Speaker 1: crucial pivot, you know, on a dime. We took five
Speaker 1: courses and we moved them all to online delivery. And
Speaker 1: let me just say, Carol, anybody who thought can appreciate
Speaker 1: the complexity of taking what was design is a face
Speaker 1: to face course and moving it online in a matter
Speaker 1: of a couple of weeks. You know, It's not just
Speaker 1: simply getting onto a zoom meeting and giving a lecture.
Speaker 1: There are so many nuances related to teaching. There are
Speaker 1: so many different adjustments in pivots you have to make.
Speaker 1: So we did that. That was fall, and then the
Speaker 1: entire summer was spent in I want to say, hundreds,
Speaker 1: if not thousands of hours of meetings trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what should be our strategy in the face of
Speaker 1: a pandemic that nobody can predict, in the face of
Speaker 1: a virus that's totally unpredictable, that's moving in whatever direction
Speaker 1: it wants to, in the face of shifting public health
Speaker 1: guidance on how institutions should be moving. So that's what
Speaker 1: our summer looks like. And when you think about the
Speaker 1: NAGA wall, the students, the interaction among students, the whole
Speaker 1: notion of a business education is an extremely elaborative one.
Speaker 1: And granted, we're all adjusting to that, and we all
Speaker 1: are adjusting to to working on zoom and Carol and
Speaker 1: I only see each other over video conference at this point, literally, UM,
Speaker 1: but what's missing and how do you make up for it? Uh?
Speaker 1: If some, if even some of that interaction has to
Speaker 1: be virtual, that's a great question, Jason, and one that
Speaker 1: we've grappled with. UM. We have an Office of Transformational
Speaker 1: Learning that has betagogical experts who can allow us to
Speaker 1: recreate a few will, not a hundred percent, but pretty
Speaker 1: close to that of that rich, face to face interaction
Speaker 1: that you might have in an online setting. So we've
Speaker 1: tried to do that in as many of our classes
Speaker 1: as possible. But I don't want to make one more point.
Speaker 1: One of the controversial decisions we made over the summer,
Speaker 1: and for exactly the reasons that you outlined, Jason, is
Speaker 1: we decided we're going to come back and fall and
Speaker 1: have a hybrid quasi in person quasi online experience because
Speaker 1: we want our students to have that ragi interaction, you know,
Speaker 1: especially in the business setting when you're talking about case
Speaker 1: studies and you're talking about you know, all the things
Speaker 1: that go on in organizations where understanding people trust relationships
Speaker 1: are such an important part of your education. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we're back now in a hybrid form. Uh. And as
Speaker 1: I said in my fall communication, a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: back to faculty and stuff. You know, we some of
Speaker 1: flew by well and Dana Well, We've got about a
Speaker 1: minute and then we're gonna come back and continue this
Speaker 1: conversation on radio. But I do want to ask you
Speaker 1: in just about a minute where their financial pressures to
Speaker 1: also get the school opening again. Um, I don't think
Speaker 1: we made the decision to open the school based on
Speaker 1: fine to pressures. We made the decision based on the
Speaker 1: very strong message we got from students we want to
Speaker 1: be back. I had numerous down halls with students all
Speaker 1: through the summer, and in every one of them, they said,
Speaker 1: if the right health and safety precautions are in place,
Speaker 1: we value the campus experience. We value interacting with that
Speaker 1: professors with appears, and you know, we learned so much
Speaker 1: outside of the classroom as we do in the classroom.
Speaker 1: Dina Argrea, Well, you your research is on the use
Speaker 1: of information technology and health care and health analytics, AI
Speaker 1: applications and health I do want to ask you before
Speaker 1: we shift to the other pandemic, is what do you
Speaker 1: think will be the lasting impact on our healthcare world
Speaker 1: as a result of the pandemic. Well, we have been
Speaker 1: talking about digital transformation of healthcare for almost two decades now,
Speaker 1: but this has been an industry that's been slow to adapt,
Speaker 1: as you all know, you know, in contrast to let's say, retail,
Speaker 1: of fin edge of services, or any or any one
Speaker 1: of those industries. I think this is the inflection point
Speaker 1: after this pandemic, where so much of the health care
Speaker 1: that we're consuming is happening through digital channels. We are
Speaker 1: almost certainly going to see a greater incorporation of data,
Speaker 1: analytics and technology into healthcare, and I think that's a
Speaker 1: good thing in the long run. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: this other pandemic and this reckoning that we're having as
Speaker 1: a nation and certainly as business leaders around the notion
Speaker 1: of racial injustice. And diversity, especially in companies. How do
Speaker 1: you train what's the most effective thing you can do
Speaker 1: with this next crop of leaders being aggrawall to ensure
Speaker 1: that they are in a position to to take this
Speaker 1: on successfully. Yeah, you know, let me just start by
Speaker 1: saying that this has just been such a heartbreaking time
Speaker 1: for all of us and a time of great anguish
Speaker 1: and outrage in our community. So for the past several months,
Speaker 1: you know, we've been dealing with the second pandemic, and
Speaker 1: we have a very robust set of diversity, equity and
Speaker 1: inclusion the initiatives that we put in place over several years.
Speaker 1: But in the last three months, we've really accelerated the
Speaker 1: scale the scope of our activities just in response to
Speaker 1: everything that's happening around us. And you are so righteous,
Speaker 1: and you know, we would be remiss if we were
Speaker 1: not training the next generation of leaders to really take
Speaker 1: this you know, uh, take this boll by the horns
Speaker 1: and address this dilemma even before they get into the workplace.
Speaker 1: So let me share with you some of the things
Speaker 1: that we've done. I think one of the most remarkable
Speaker 1: things that happened is that our students step forward and
Speaker 1: one of our underrepresented students from the undergraduate program. Brilliant
Speaker 1: young man. He produced a video over him self with
Speaker 1: help from a black entrepreneur to spark conversations around diversity,
Speaker 1: equity and inclusion. And you know, if you have time
Speaker 1: on your schedule sometimes you should view that video. I
Speaker 1: shared it with colleagues, amongst the big ten deans and
Speaker 1: everywhere else, and just incredible kudos for it. But the
Speaker 1: bottom line of this video is that it prompts everybody
Speaker 1: with a series of very provocative questions and then it
Speaker 1: ends by saying, and what will you do? So we
Speaker 1: show it. We have shown it to all of our
Speaker 1: incoming students across all of our programs, undergraduate Master's, NBA UH,
Speaker 1: and we're using that as a way to spark conversations. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a whole host of other activities that we have planned.
Speaker 1: We just recently revised our mission and our values and
Speaker 1: our strategic pillars to expluicitly call out diversity, equity and
Speaker 1: inclusion as a fifth strategic pillar. So we are so
Speaker 1: strongly committed we are changing our curriculum to include more
Speaker 1: discussion of the EI, even in our regular business school classes.
Speaker 1: And let me just say one more thing, we started
Speaker 1: a case collection, if you will, cases that feature diverse protagonists,
Speaker 1: so our students get exposed to leaders from all colors, races, gender, ethnicities, etcetera. Well,
Speaker 1: and you know, we've just got about a minute left,
Speaker 1: Dean Agrawal, and I do wonder it's all about making
Speaker 1: sure that folks who have seats at the table, it's
Speaker 1: a diverse lot, right, so that we're not just surrounding
Speaker 1: ourselves with people that you know are like us. And
Speaker 1: so what do you do to make sure whether it's
Speaker 1: your faculty, with your administration, whether it's the student population
Speaker 1: and base, that it's diverse. And again, we've just got
Speaker 1: about fifty seconds here. So we have started participating and
Speaker 1: have been participating for a while in a number of
Speaker 1: programs that allow us to attract more diverse students. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, we partner with the Black National Black NBA Association,
Speaker 1: the Hispanic NBA Association, with the Forte Foundation to get
Speaker 1: more women in. We're actually pretty proud of our diversity
Speaker 1: statistics in all of our programs. We're not doing so
Speaker 1: well in faculty. UM. We've just partnered with the Big
Speaker 1: Tendans to start a program for unrepresented minorities in h
Speaker 1: d s so we can attract more diverse candidates to
Speaker 1: the academy. And you know have been growing to professors.
Speaker 1: So it's going to take a multi problemt approach. I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone single strategy would work, and all of
Speaker 1: us have to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that representation at the professorial and the instructor level
Speaker 1: is key. Interesting to hear what you said about the cases,
Speaker 1: because uh, really rethinking the entire curriculum. It seems to
Speaker 1: be one of the things that everyone's going to have
Speaker 1: to take on. Ret Agraball, she's the interim dean at
Speaker 1: Robert H. Smith School of a Sin at the University
Speaker 1: of Maryland, joining us on the phone from College Park