- Rajshree Agarwal
- Liora Bresler
- Paul Ellinger
- Gordon Hutner
- Gale Summerfield
- Michael Twidale
- Madhu Viswanathan
- Gary Xu
- Ali Yassine
Agarwal, Rajshree
Associate Professor, Business Administration, College of Business
BiographyRajshree Agarwal is a James F. Towey Fellow and Associate Professor of Strategy at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She received a Ph.D. in economics from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her research interests focus on the implications of entrepreneurship and innovation for industry and firm evolution. Her recent projects examine knowledge transfer through employee entrepreneurship/mobility, experience-based advantages in new product markets, and the influence of dynamic knowledge-based capabilities on firm performance. Rajshree has published articles in journals such as Academy of Management Journal, American Economic Review, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Journal of Industrial Economics, Journal of Law and Economics, Management Science, Strategic Management Journal and Review of Economics and Statistics. Her paper on employee entrepreneurship received the Best Paper Award for 2004 from the Academy of Management Journal, and her work on post exit knowledge diffusion received the Stephen Shrader Award at the 2005 Academy of Management Meetings. Rajshree currently serves on the editorial board of the Academy of Management Journal and the Academy of Management Review, and is the editor of the SSRN Entrepreneurship and Economics journal. She has received research grants from the Kauffman Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Marketing Science Institute and the US Department of Agriculture.
Rajshree has taught a wide range of courses in strategic management, technology and innovation, industrial organization and microeconomics at the undergraduate, MBA, Executive MBA and PhD levels. Consistent with her interests in innovation, she strives to incorporate the latest pedagogical technologies in her teaching, and has won awards for a demonstrated increase in teaching productivity.
Abstract: Entrepreneurship in Technologically Dynamic EnvironmentsThis course introduces students to modern managerial implications of engaging in technology based entrepreneurship. It is an elective in two College of Business Masters programs, the new Master of Science in Technology Management, and the Masters in Business Administration. Additionally, the course material can be leveraged in existing Executive MBA course offerings on strategic technology management, giving students exposure to entrepreneurship-related issues in that context. The course is also a component of curriculum aimed at introducing Ph.D. students in science and engineering to important management principles, so that they are equipped to address issues that lie at the interface of science and society.
In terms of content, the course draws on cutting edge research, melding issues related to entrepreneurship with those related to technological change and the resultant dynamics of competition. Topics covered in the course include but are not limited to: entrepreneurial opportunity recognition and exploitation; knowledge sources of entrepreneurship (users, scientists, and employees of existing firms); intellectual property rights; value creation and appropriation; creative destruction and strategic advantages of entrants vs. incumbents; corporate entrepreneurship and co-evolution of firms and industries.
Bresler, Liora
Full Professor, Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education
BiographyLiora Bresler received her Ph.D. (1987) from Stanford University (Education). Bresler is a Professor at the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and is a faculty in the Campus Honors Program and affiliate Professor in the School of Music. Her research interests include Arts and Aesthetic Education, and Qualitative Research Methodology and she teaches courses on these subjects.
Bresler was involved in a number of University as well as National and International research projects including the Getty Center/College Board Arts Integration in Academic Disciplines study, and the National Arts Education Research Center study. She is the author of eighty some articles (published in journals such as Educational Researcher, the Curriculum Journal, Educational Theory, and the Journal of Aesthetic Education, among others.) She has contributed numerous chapters in books including the two Handbooks of Music Teaching and Learning. Her work has been translated to German, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Hebrew and Chinese. Most recently, she has co-edited a book on context and culture in elementary and early childhood arts education (Bresler and Thompson, 2002 by Kluwer), a book on International Research in Education (Bresler and Ardichvili, 2002 by Peter Lang), and a book on embodied curriculum (Bresler, 2004, by Kluwer). She serves as an editor for a book series: Landscapes: Aesthetics, Arts and Education, for Kluwer/Springer.
Bresler is the founder and co-editor of the electronic journal International Journal for Arts and Education (with Tom Barone, 1999-), was an co-editor (with Nancy Ellis) for Arts and Learning Research Journal, and a guest editor for international issues in Arts Education Policy Review (1995-present), responsible for publishing ten issues. She has also been guest editor in the journals of Educational Theory, Research Studies in Music Education, and Visual Art Research. She is on the editorial board of ten international journals including the Journal of Aesthetic Education, Research Studies in Music Education, Asia-Pacific Journal for Arts Education, International Journal of Music Education, Studies in Arts Education, and the British Journal of Music Education.
Bresler has been on the incomplete list of Outstanding Teachers on almost all courses taught, and has recently won the Distinguished Teaching Life-Long Career Award at the College of Education (2004), and the Campus Award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Training at the University of Illinois (2005). She has been invited to give keynote speeches in five continents, including the United States, England, and Australia. She has given invited talks, seminars and short courses in thirty some universities in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, England, The Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Israel, Japan, Taiwan, and Australia. In her most recent project, she serves as Editor for the International Handbook of Research in Arts Education (to be published by Springer, 2007).
The overall goal of this course is to develop an entrepreneurial perspective of the role of faculty in academia. The three components of the academic endeavor - research, teaching, and service - are re conceptualized as highly entrepreneurial activities.
Building on their individual passions and strengths, the course will empower graduate students -- prospective faculty -- to view and experience each of these three components of academia along the three entrepreneurial axes: recognition of opportunities, acquisition of resources, and creation of a new entity of value. Specifically, the course will address the following:
(a) the expansion of content, form, and audiences in teaching;
(b) choosing research questions for significance and impact;
(c) garnering the means and resources for effective execution;
(d) creating avenues to bring the fruits of research to society, and;
(e) refocusing academic service as a vehicle for the building and nurturing of intellectual community.
The course has three major components:
1. Theoretical foundations of the field of entrepreneurship within the context of an interdisciplinary environment and social entrepreneurship;
2. Case studies of successful entrepreneurs in academia (including, typically, 3-4 guest presentations), and;
3. Capstone projects whereby students develop an "academic business plan."
This course also involves collaboration with other academic units including the Colleges of Business, Engineering, and Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the Graduate School for Library and Information Science. It is offered every 2 - 3 semesters.
Ellinger, Paul
Associate Professor, Agricultural and Consumer Economics, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
BiographyPaul Ellinger is an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics and the Department of Finance. He oversees the agri-acccounting program, advising 80 students and teaching two courses in agri-accounting and agri-finance. He is also co-instructor for an experiential learning course in Farm Policy and Leadership. Ellinger has been at the University of Illinois for most of his professional career. He received his undergraduate and master's degrees in agricultural economics, and later went on to obtain his PhD in finance.
Abstract: Contemporary Issues in Agri-Accounting and Agri-Finance; Case Studies in Agri-Accounting and Agri-FinanceFrom sole-proprietor farm operators and rural-based small businesses to vertically integrated operations and complex cooperative enterprises, Illinois is home to an elaborate myriad of entrepreneurship opportunities. As such, service sector providers, such as accounting professionals, financial planners and consulting specialists also require a unique understanding of the distinct mechanisms involved in individual entrepreneurship in order to serve their customers as well as manage their own entrepreneurial businesses. Finally, lenders, investment bankers and venture capital providers need to have a clear understanding of entrepreneurial attributes and concepts in order to understand risk and repayment capacity. Many graduates from the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics (ACE) take on leadership roles within these entities. A goal of the two course revisions in ACE is to broaden the experiences of students and to stimulate innovative thinking both inside and outside the classroom, thereby fostering a new entrepreneurial spirit within our students. With these goals in mind, three specific case studies with an entrepreneurial focus will be developed and integrated in an existing case study course. Each of the cases will have components that evaluate the organization, development, and assessment of formal business plans are not explicitly included in the current ACE curriculum, development and lender assessment of formal business plans will be integrated in the case study course as well.
Hutner, Gordon
Full Professor, English, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
BiographyGordon Hutner has been a professor of American literature for 25 years at various institutions, including Kenyon College, the University of Wisconsin, Cornell, University of Kentucky, and, since 2004, the University of Illinois. His specialty is American fiction of both the 19th and 20th centuries. He has also edited a book on immigrant autobiographies published by Penguin, with whom he has recently published a new edition of Andrew Carnegie’s autobiography. He also serves at the University as the Director of the Trowbridge Office for American Literature, Culture, and Society, where he is responsible for programs of interest to students and scholars of the US.
Professor Hutner’s new course coincides with research under way for a new book project, related to the subject. He is also the editor of a leading scholarly journal, American Literary History.
This class examines the discourse of entrepreneurship through a series of readings - in full and in excerpt - that document entrepreneurship's changing values in American life. Students will study the contours of entrepreneurship as a literary as well as social tradition and ideology, even as they learn about the ethical issues that these works characteristically raise. Readings include autobiographies, novels, essays, magazine articles, and how-to books, and are chosen to cover a broad historical spectrum. Some of the works draw from canonical American literature, such as an essay by the American philosopher, perhaps most quoted by businessmen, Ralph Emerson. The course syllabus also includes a Horatio Alger story, as well as novels like Babbitt or Bruce Baron's The Man Nobody Knows, once the nation's biggest selling book. Other works come from social history or contemporary culture, like Andre Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth, a biography of Madame C. J. Walker, Connie Sitterly's Female Entrepreneur, and Jack Welch's Winning, as well as postings from a Website like Wall Street Journal's Center for Entrepreneurship. Supplementing the syllabus is an anthology of excerpts drawn from a wide variety of sources: immigrant as well as business autobiographies like Henry Villard's, Lee Iacocca's or Donald Trump's; magazine articles like Fortune or Ebony success stories, inspirational literature (e.g., 7 Habits of Highly Successful People), professional articles (in print and on the Web) on ethnic entrepreneurship. Students will also have the opportunity to screen relevant topical films like Working Girl and The Smartest Guys in the Room.
Summerfield, Gale
Associate Professor, Human and Community Development, College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences
Director, Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program
Professor Summerfeld is the Director of the Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an associate professor in the department of Human and Community Development. Earlier in her academic career, she was an associate professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and a lecturer at California State University at Hayward and at Eastern Michigan State University. She received her bachelors, masters and doctorate from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
Abstract: Gender Relations in International DevelopmentGender Relations in International Development provides graduate students an interdisciplinary, innovative approach to research and policy analysis on pressing topics of our increasingly linked world. A key goal of the course is to shift the focus of this area of study from one of victimization to one of empowerment, agency and entrepreneurship - that is, to actors participating fully in society. In today's world, it is especially important to have students prepare to work with private institutions as well as government in addressing the problems of poverty, human security, and gender equity. The course focuses on analysis of the gendered dimensions of globalization and socio-economic transformation policies, with an emphasis upon the last few decades. Students examine the impacts on people's lives and the agency roles of women and men as they adopt strategies to improve conditions for themselves and their families. Individual and social entrepreneurship provide real-world approaches and solutions to problems that pose questions for critical analysis. The course provides conceptual tools for evaluating development policies based on different paradigms. This course satisfies the core requirements for the graduate level GRID concentrations offered by the Women and Gender in Global Perspectives (WGGP) program in cooperation with over thirty departments and units across campus.
Twidale, Michael
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science
BiographyMichael Twidale has been at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 1997. He earlier held positions as a post-doctoral research associate, UK Science and Engineering Research Council IT Research Fellow, and Lecturer in the Computing Department at Lancaster University in Great Britain. Professor Twidale received his bachelors in Computer Science at Queens' College, Cambridge University, and his Ph.D. in Computing at Lancaster University.
Abstract: Developing Novel Information Technologies: The Entrepreneurship of DesignThis 400-level course is open to students from across campus, but concentrated within the GSLIS Undergraduate Minor in Information Technology Studies. The course introduces students to a range of rapid prototyping techniques and methods to analyze needs, opportunities and design spaces. Students work in teams to develop ideas for novel computational devices or applications to meet identified needs. These ideas are explored and demonstrated using various prototypes, scenarios and other methods. Students learn the interlinked entrepreneurial skills of identifying an unmet need, exploiting technological opportunities, exploring a design space to refine an idea, and communicating their vision through demonstrations with prototypes and proofs of concept. This enables developers to show how their envisaged working interactive technology will be used productively in a particular real-life context that is hard for people other than the device's developers to imagine. The ability to produce convincing, clear, powerful demonstrations, even at the early stages of a project, is a highly valuable entrepreneurial skill.
Viswanathan, Madhu
Associate Professor, Marketing, College of Business
BiographyMadhu Viswanathan is Associate Professor of Marketing, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he has been on the faculty since receiving a PhD in Business Administration from the University of Minnesota in 1990. He focuses on two programs of research; measurement and research methodology, and low-literate buyer and seller behavior. His work in the area of measurement and research methodology includes a book entitled Measurement Error and Research Design (Sage, 2005; http://www.sagepub.com/book.aspx?pid=10505). This book, targeted to audiences in the social science, uses an in-depth conceptual examination of measurement error to develop insights for designing and using measures and methods. His research on low-literate buyer and seller behavior examines low-literate consumer behavior in the US and low-literate buyers and sellers in India. This work has been supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. His research has been published in journals in several disciplines; Computer, Speech, and Language, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Marketing Letters, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and Psychology and Marketing. Professor Viswanathan has served in several positions in academic organizations, including Secretary-Treasurer in the Society for Consumer Psychology and Conference Chair in the American Marketing Association. He is currently serving on the editorial boards of the Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Psychology and Marketing and has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Consumer Research. His research on literacy is applied through the Marketplace Literacy Project (www.marketplaceliteracy.org), a not-for-profit organization that he founded and directs. This organization has developed and conducts business and consumer literacy training programs for low-literate, low-income adults in India with plans to expand to other developing contexts. This organization is also currently developing educational materials for nutrition education targeted to low-literate consumers in the US with similar plans for adult education.
Abstract: Product and Market Development for Subsistence MarketplacesSubsistence Marketplaces Initiative:
http://www.business.uiuc.edu/~madhuv/submktinitiative.html
This is a two-course sequence, cross-listed in both the colleges of Business and Engineering, and jointly taught by engineering and business faculty. Developing Products and Markets for Subsistence Marketplaces combines in-class pedagogy with significant experiential learning, resulting in useful and marketable product concepts and prototypes. Second-year masters students in business and engineering will jointly learn and use principles of marketing, cost accounting, project finance, engineering development, manufacturing development and new product development across two semesters to develop successful and portable new products suitable for emerging markets where the business and technical infrastructures of the developed world are not found. This course is differentiated from other courses offered at the University by virtue of its substantial experiential learning component and in its highly cross-functional nature. It is differentiated from cross-functional experiential new product development courses offered elsewhere in the nation by focusing on products for low-literate, low income individuals residing in transitional economies, such as in India and China.
Xu, Gary
Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
BiographyProfessor Gary Xu received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He specializes in modern Chinese literature, Chinese cinema, and critical theories. He is also affiliated with the Program in Comparative and World Literature, the Unit for Cinema Studies, and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretative Theories at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His publication includes articles on Chinese literature and film in such journals and anthologies as the Journal of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Communications Review, and Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes (ed., Chris Berry). His interests in transnationalism and trans-ethnic representations have led to the completion of a book, Sinascape: Transnational Chinese Cinema at the Turn of the Millennium (forthcoming). He is currently studying the relationship between East Asian regionalism and transnationalism; he is also interested in the impact of neoliberalism on China's transition to a globalized consumer society.
Abstract: Contemporary China and EntrepreneurshipThis course introduces the political, cultural, and economic transformations of contemporary China. It focuses on how entrepreneurship has impacted these transformations and how a new global understanding of entrepreneurship is in turn being shaped by China's rise. We discuss topics such as globalization, neoliberalism, socially and environmentally responsible entrepreneurship, as well as opportunities and challenges brought by a changing China.
Yassine, Ali
Associate Professor, Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, College of Engineering
BiographyAli Yassine is an assistant professor in the department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the director of the Product Development Research Laboratory and an affiliated professor with the Technology Entrepreneur Center (TEC) at the University of Illinois. Prior to joining UIUC, Professor Yassine was a research scientist at MIT's Center for Technology, Policy and Industrial Development, and a project manager at Chrysler International Corporation. Dr. Yassine received the B.E. degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1988 from the American University of Beirut, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1989 and 1994 in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He is a member of INFORMS, ASME, and PDMA. Dr. Yassine's research deals with the interdisciplinary issues of developing and managing complex engineering systems. This research has been motivated by a lack of formal product development models in the engineering/operations management literature and practice. His research concentrates on this gap by using quantitative techniques (based on optimization theory, linear systems theory, and stochastic modeling) to formulate and analyze an emerging set of product development problems, including the management of iteration, overlapping decisions, system decomposition & integration, and information technology enabled product development.
Abstract: Product and Market Development for Subsistence MarketplacesThis is a two-course sequence, cross-listed in both the colleges of Business and Engineering, and jointly taught by engineering and business faculty. Developing Products and Markets for Subsistence Marketplaces combines in-class pedagogy with significant experiential learning, resulting in useful and marketable product concepts and prototypes. Second-year masters students in business and engineering will jointly learn and use principles of marketing, cost accounting, project finance, engineering development, manufacturing development and new product development across two semesters to develop successful and portable new products suitable for emerging markets where the business and technical infrastructures of the developed world are not found. This course is differentiated from other courses offered at the University by virtue of its substantial experiential learning component and in its highly cross-functional nature. It is differentiated from cross-functional experiential new product development courses offered elsewhere in the nation by focusing on products for low-literate, low income individuals residing in transitional economies, such as in India and China.