Board of Education

Administrators also relish the opportunity to call on board members individually with projects or questions. Lawson recently appointed someone with broad international experience to St. Cloud’s advisory board, who can help her improve the college’s programs in entrepreneurship and global business. Davis-Blake and Puto say they will call board members throughout the year to get their opinion or insight on a problem. 

Board members also benefit from their service. Gage views it as a way to give back to the community, and he enjoys influencing the direction of the school. It’s also a useful place for him to connect with other business leaders and share ideas in a noncompetitive environment.

Of course, executives hope to ensure a steady supply of whip-smart graduates for their companies. And for alumni, service on an advisory board can help protect the value of their degree. “That value is dependent on the stature of the school,” Davis-Blake days. “You want your school to stay great, and you want this school to be of help to your business and the economy locally, nationally, and globally.”

Community Insiders

A board of advisors can be especially important to a dean who is new to the area. As Julian Schuster, dean of Hamline University’s Graduate School of Management, puts it, the board is “a valuable link between innovation and tradition.”

“The board should provide a sense of what is desirable, possible, and the timing of every innovative initiative that we are trying to accomplish,” says Schuster, who came from University of New Haven in 2006 to become dean and helped form Hamline’s advisory board. “These individuals will help you with prudent advice when settling down and establishing realistic goals that are congruent with the environment. They are the goals of the entire school, and the school is part of the broader environment.”

Lawson, who was named dean of St. Cloud’s College of Business nearly two years ago, says she relies on her advisory board for an outsider’s viewpoint on the school’s performance and options for potential growth. “Academic institutions can become very nearsighted,” she says. “The advisory board can be our check and balance for getting an external perspective.”

At Hamline, one of Schuster’s first initiatives was to propose changing the master’s degree in management to an MBA. He formed a faculty task force and together they assembled data and conducted market research to support his idea. Board members helped Schuster fine-tune the plan and create a unique approach to Hamline’s MBA program. Instead of offering 15 or so individual classes on specific topics, its MBA will include four modules clustered by learning objectives.