Pan-Pacific Conference XXXIV. Designing New Business Models in Developing Economies

Cross-Disciplinary Education: Not Business as Usual
Canziani, Bonnie F.
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Welsh, Dianne H.B.
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Tullar, William
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Bonnie F. Canziani, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 516 Stirling Street, Greensboro,
NC 27402, USA, 336-256-8507
A majority of emerging economies seek to sustain
residual talent embedded in local entrepreneurs,
ranging from agriculture, crafts and arts all the way
up to digital and technological communication. It is
imperative that regions harness the collective energy
and entrepreneurial skills of artisans and local
business people. One way we have successfully
done this is to create the cross-disciplinary program
at our university so that all disciplines blend with
entrepreneurship education and, consequently,
create opportunities for graduates in all areas to
support local business development at the same
time.
Economic development hinges on teaching and
sharing new and appropriate business models with
people in the surrounding community. For
emerging economies to move forward, they must
develop connections with information resources that
can help them achieve their goals. Universities
oftentimes have faculty and students who can serve
as catalysts to help local residents think beyond
their limited foci in order to develop business
models that leverage skill sets and expand regional
employment capacities.
Higher Education Institutions worldwide are in the
midst of a number of “transformative changes” at
the conceptual and operational level. Our program is
one such model that proposes a new paradigm in
entrepreneurship education. Business schools have
responded in a number of ways, not the least of
which is to encourage critical thinking as a
prominent feature of the curriculum.
At the University of North Carolina Greensboro, we
have 49 courses in 26 departments that teach not
only an entrepreneurial mindset, but an
entrepreneurial skillset (Welsh, 2014). Part of the
intentional design of the cross-campus
entrepreneurship program is to effect student
learning at higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy
(Bloom, 1956; Forehand, 2005) through experiential
learning opportunities with local business owners.
We have built our learning upon a base of
reciprocity. This is accomplished through engaging
students in consulting projects with clients in the
area. The benefit for students is that they develop
critical thinking: one of the principal competencies
desired by business employers today that is
identified as lacking in college graduates. Critical
thinking is seen as an ever more
necessary component of entrepreneurship education.
It is quite often transdisciplinary in that it syntheses
information and ideas from different fields of study.
Critical thinking is increasingly vital for new
entrepreneurs as well.
Critical Thinking and Related Competencies
The National Council for Excellence in Critical
Thinking defines critical thinking as the
"intellectually disciplined process of actively and
skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing,
synthesizing, and/or evaluating information
gathered from, or generated by, observation,
experience, reflection, reasoning, or
communication, as a guide to belief and action"
(Scriven & Paul, 1987). It entails purpose, problem,
or question-at-issue; assumptions; concepts;
empirical grounding; reasoning leading to
conclusions; implications and consequences;
objections from alternative viewpoints; and frame of
reference (Scriven & Paul, 1987). In order to think
critically, a student needs to be able to gather and
assess information. First, the student needs to be
able to evaluate a problem, the information
concerning the problem, and the assumptions that
have been made about the problem. Next, s/he
needs to be able to make good judgments about
what to do.
What we have based our cross-disciplinary program
on are three critical competencies: 1. Functional
business skills (56 student learning objectives) 2.
Personal skills (103 students learning objectives) 3.
Syntheses skills (74 student learning objectives).
We have identified a dozen critical learning
competencies based on an analysis of 233 student
learning outcomes identified in 49 syllabi across our
program. We have furthermore classified these
learning objectives into the three critical
competency areas with the following results there
are 103 learning objectives tied to personal skill
building, 79 learning objectives that reflect
synthesis of objectives and resources, and 56
learning objectives that fall into functional business
skills (See Table 1).
Another way to look at the learning outcomes in the
cross-disciplinary program is to look at how many
were universally important across a number of
disciplines. For example, developing personal skill
sets appeared in the syllabi of 15 departments. The
second most common competency was applying
entrepreneurship in a different context which
reflects the multiple disciplines in the program. The
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