"The central component of our mission at the School of Business is that when our students graduate they will be ready to be immediately effective in cutting-edge organizations."

-Karen Dennis

Karen Dennis conducted post-graduate research on post-Famine demographic evolution in Tullamore, a rural town in the Republic of Ireland, examining the effects of waged employment opportunities for women. But after receiving an M.Phil. in anthropology from University College London, she nearly became a statistic in her own research.

According to Dennis, there was a powerful anti-immigrant movement in Britain in the '80s, during which the British government didn't want foreign students working. So she returned to the United States only to find a tough job market for anthropologists.

Getting progressively deeper into debt with student loans and no source of income, Dennis went to work for the Direct Marketing Association where she conducted educational seminars. After that she ran the executive graduate degree programs at Baruch College/The City University of New York for six years before accepting the assistant dean's position at Montclair State in 1997.

"One of the things I like about being at Montclair State," said Dennis, "is that in addition to the joys of helping the School of Business grow, I'm able to teach in the Anthropology Department."

Dennis recently discussed how her background in anthropology helps in her position in the School of Business, and why she believes technology should be invisible.

Q. How were you able to segue from anthropology to business?
A. Anthropology is a superb disciplinary background for any line of work. It's a more natural match-up than most people think. My particular area of research can essentially be described as demography, and marketing research is firmly based on demographic analyses. The analytical tools I developed doing field research in the Republic of Ireland were important selling points moving into the private sector. Anthropology encourages us to understand the real variety of the human species, how we vary not only in ways that are evident to the eyes, but in all kinds of subtle ways.

Q. How does the School of Business approach the issue of globalization?
A. Since long before I came to Montclair State there has been a conscientious effort to internationalize the curriculum across the board. It's not possible to work in any branch of business and ignore the reality that we live in a single world, imperfectly integrated and full of disparities, including income, development, legal systems and access to resources. The technology of modern distance communication has enabled us to develop friendships with people we've never laid eyes on, so we want students to think about what that means to them professionally and personally. We encourage our students to think in international terms, not just when it comes to making decisions about personal investments or developing business opportunities, but also what it means for them as citizens of a multicultural world.

Creative thinking, considering multiple alternatives and having multiple viewpoints available in order to arrive at decision-making are valuable and necessary. And that's what we're telling our students.

Q. How do you prepare business students to advance to the private sector?
A. By fostering a professional environment in which our students are mastering the skills that will enable them to be immediately successful when they graduate. The central component of our mission at the School of Business is that when our students graduate they will be ready to be immediately effective in cutting-edge organizations. To accomplish that, we have to expose them to the whole range of new technologies available for distance communication, for transmitting information, for learning, for teaching and all the rest of it.

Q. Tell us about some of the technology available in the School.
A. We have in place our first fully mediated classroom, which became possible because of a generous gift from the Stillman Foundation. The seating layout is curved so that every student is a short distance from the instructor, enhancing sight lines and communication, and every seat has access to a data point and electrical power. The technology allows the instructor to tap into research databases on the Internet, to use PowerPoint, video or ordinary transparencies, or to project three-dimensional objects in the classroom on screen. There's also a SmartBoard, which allows instructors to write onscreen, then capture and upload notes to their Web pages so students who forgot a point covered in class can see it again online. That classroom is what we'd like all our classrooms to eventually become, because we want this technology to be at everybody's fingertips.

Q. What do you mean by technology should be invisible?
A. Technology is a means to an end. It shouldn't stand in the way of the point. We want it everywhere but we want it tucked away. There's also the issue of matching and incorporating existing technology with cutting-edge technology. We must remain conscious of, and help our students understand the fact that just because a new technology is introduced doesn't mean the use of the old technology should disappear. We've all become active users of e-mail on campus, but that hasn't made the phone obsolete. Sometimes a PowerPoint presentation is less effective than a well-thought out, simple transparency, because the temptation is to put in too much. Those bells and whistles are hard to resist.

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