Top Executives Open Their Doors To Talk Business With DePaul Students

From the top of the Sears Tower to the depths of the Shedd Aquarium, MBA students enrolled in DePaul University’s new “Streets of Chicago” management courses are fanning out across the Chicago-area business and nonprofit communities this year to learn first-hand about the inner workings of these organizations from the leaders who run them.

Top managers from 13 area corporate, cultural and charity organizations opened their doors to operations management students this fall, offering behind-the-scenes tours that show how their organizations are managed. Beginning in March, high-profile executives – including Exelon CEO John Rowe, Lettuce Entertain You Founder Richard Melman and Playboy CEO Christy Hefner – will invite students to their executive suites to engage in off-the- record discussions about the ethical challenges they have faced as leaders of large organizations.

“Instead of bringing the business world into the classroom each week, we’re taking the classroom into the business world,” said Scott Young, chair of DePaul’s management department.

For 10 weeks this fall, Management Professor Daniel Heiser and his 18 students have examined operations management from inside the corporate world through in-depth tours and talks led by senior executives from a wide variety of local organizations. The class toured the Chicago Tribune printing plant, Sears Tower, Field Museum, Greater Chicago Food Depository and Ace Industries in the city. They also explored operations at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia; a Cardinal Health division near Waukegan; a Caterpillar plant in Aurora; Instrumed International medical instrument distribution center in Schaumburg; a UPS hub in Hodgkins; and United States Gypsum in East Chicago, Ind.

“The goal is for students to learn practical, real-life lessons about organizational processes and decision making within the organization’s business environment and directly from the executives in charge,” Heiser said.

One of the more unusual operations the students studied was the Shedd Aquarium, the second largest indoor aquarium in the world. Joyce Simon, the Shedd’s chief financial officer; Bradley Popovich, vice president of facilities services; and Michael Delfini, vice president for exhibit planning and design, led the tour in November. The three discussed a wide range of management issues, from the organization’s budget, goal-setting and decision-making processes to maintaining facilities that support more than 8,000 animals, to balancing the institution’s scientific and entertainment missions. “We value being good stewards for the animals but also take pride in the way we operate the building and treat the staff,” Simon told the students.

Leading students through a private tour of the Shedd’s Wild Reef shark exhibit, Delfini outlined staff roles and the step-by-step processes for conceiving, developing and marketing new exhibits at the aquarium. The class then stepped behind the scenes into the pipe-filled water treatment center, which maintains the facility’s 4.5 million gallons of water, including processes that transform fresh lake water into salt water. Here, Popovich discussed how staff expertise, teamwork and automation make the aquarium’s water systems work.

Next spring, students enrolled in the 10-week “Streets of Chicago” course, “Leadership and Ethics,” will have rare access to some of Chicago’s most well-known CEOs. In addition to Rowe, Melman and Hefner, the students are scheduled to meet privately with Mary Dempsey, Chicago Library commissioner; Ray McCaskey, CEO of Health Care Service Corp. (parent company of Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Illinois and three other states); Deborah Card, president, Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Patricia Harris, U.S. vice president/global chief diversity officer for McDonald’s Corp.; and entrepreneur Esther Fishman, owner of a Lincoln Park boutique called Art Effect. Students also will study leadership history and literature.

“The students will explore the tools these leaders have used – both successfully and not so successfully – to respond to ethical dilemmas,” said management Professor Laura Hartman, who will co-teach the course with Young. “By the end of the course, students will have enough in their tool box to effectively deal with leadership and ethical challenges when they enter the business world.”

Photos of the Shedd Aquarium operations tour:

Michael Delfini (gesturing), vice president for planning and design at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, discusses how the aquarium's operations are managed in the institution's Wild Reef shark exhibit:

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Bradley Popovich, vice president of facilities services at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, explains to DePaul University MBA students the aquarium's water treatment operations:

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