FOR THE PAST few years, undergraduate
and graduate students at the Naveen
Jindal School of Management (JSOM)
at the University of Texas at Dallas have
been encouraged to produce their own
original scholarly research. Recently, the
business school took this initiative one
step further—it has formalized the process
for approving student projects. This
includes granting scholarship funds for
student scholars and even providing
students with a list of academic venues
where they can present their findings.
To support student researchers, a
scholarship committee developed a
rubric to evaluate the students’ work
and make decisions regarding scholarship
dollar amounts. The committee also
signed up to use a plagiarism detection
service to ensure academic integrity.
“These research projects help build
strong connections between students
and faculty members,” says Monica
Powell, senior associate dean and dean
of graduate programs. “They also help
students gain a better appreciation for
and understanding of the research that
our faculty members do and just how
rigorous that process is.”
A MORE RIGOROUS APPROACH
The scholarly inquiry that JSOM
students are asked to conduct is much
different from the papers they may have
written in high school, says Powell.
Rather than simply choose a topic and
thesis statement and write a paper based
on a list of citations, students must
follow a more exacting process to produce
their research projects. First, they
formulate hypotheses by identifying
gaps in the knowledge base. Then, they
go through the formal steps of research:
reviewing relevant literature, explaining
previous research in a particular area,
and pinpointing the gaps that support
their hypotheses.
“At that point,” Powell says, “students
create either a qualitative methodology,
in which they’re aggregating narrative
information to come to a conclusion, or
a quantitative one in which they’re looking
at data and asking what it says about
their hypotheses.”
Students who undertake research,
Powell says, have the opportunity to go
to one or more conferences, which allows
them to practice their presentation
skills or sell other people on their ideas.
“A secondary effect is that it helps
build the Jindal School’s reputation
because it shows the world that we are
producing scholars who are solving
real-world problems,” she says. “It’s
also a great résumé enhancer. It gives
students something with which to
impress a prospective employer during
an interview because it sets them apart
from other candidates.”
CAREER DIVIDENDS
Mark Chang, who earned his MBA
from the Jindal School this past May
and is pursuing a master’s degree in
information technology and management,
conducted two studies—one on
data privacy issues affecting the United
States and the European Union and one
on overcoming immigration challenges
that international corporations face
when hiring. Chang used scholarship
funds to help defray the cost for him to
present his work at conferences held
at the University of Oxford, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
The experience is “very much
paying dividends when I go on job interviews,”
says Chang. “Almost
everybody wants to learn more about
my experiences, how I prepared for
them, and how they have helped hone
my professional interests.”
Sean Haas, who is a senior double
majoring in finance and economics,
researched the process of financialization—
or, as he describes it, the increasing
size, prevalence, and importance
of the financial sector relative to all
other economic sectors since the 1970s.
Haas was particularly interested in
the process of securitization, by which
current or future cash flows are transformed
into marketable products sold
to investors who share in potential
risks and rewards.
“Being exposed to academic research
and learning how to perform research
has fundamentally changed the way that
I think,” he says. “It taught me a different
way of looking at the world, a different
way of looking at ideas, and a different
way of analyzing the things that exist.”
The experience has been so positive
for Haas that it has helped him set a new
course for his life. He has decided to apply
to PhD programs in finance this fall.
TESTING ASSUMPTIONS
Powell believes that management
education should teach future leaders to
identify not only problems, but also their
root causes, in ways that have a favorable
impact on a company’s bottom line.
“Doing that takes a certain level of
critical thinking—assessing and evaluating
and bouncing your ideas off other
people who are experienced scholars. It
takes having your hypothesis tested by
others critically to determine whether
the assumptions that you’ve made
are correct or what you’ve deemed as
important is really important,” Powell
says. “This scholarly research program
teaches just that. We want our students
to go out and be so valuable to their
employers because they already have
experience identifying and solving the
right problems.”
Learn more about the Jindal School of Management's approach to student research.