Behrend Talks: A Penn State Podcast
Join Dr. Ralph Ford, Chancellor of Penn State Behrend, and guests for conversations about interesting things happening in the Erie community.
Behrend Talks: A Penn State Podcast
Teaching Online and In Person, with Eric Robbins
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Dr. Ralph Ford, chancellor of Penn State Behrend, talks with Eric Robbins, associate director of corporate outreach and research in the Black School of Business, about being selected for the George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching. Originally recorded May 6, 2022.
Welcome to Behrend Talks. I'm Dr. Ralph Ford, Chancellor of Penn State Behrend. My guest today is Eric Robbins, a faculty member in the Black School of Business. Welcome here, Eric.
Eric Robbins:Thank you for having me, Ralph.
Ralph Ford:Well, let me read through a little bit about your bio and your background. Not only are you a faculty member, you are the Associate Director of Corporate Outreach and Research in the Black School of Business. You started here at Behrend in 2010, working part time for us in our residential and online programs. You are now full time. Of course, you won a prestigious award recently, the George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching. So congratulations, I want to talk a bit more about that and what that means when we get into this. And just a little bit more, you know, before you came here, you had some really nice industry experience working in a family-owned business and wealth management, and have both bachelor's degree and MBA, and you are a Chartered Financial Analysts. So anyways, so everyone knows there's your background. But you know, tell me a bit what brought you to Behrend, starting here as a part time faculty member in 2010, when you were also working in industry?
Eric Robbins:Well, you know, I grew up in the world of finance with my dad. He owns a wealth management firm, started out in insurance, and then moved over to wealth management. So I've kind of been in this industry since I was a kid, I actually considered some alternatives, I consider joining the military, or a career in psychology. My dad was a Marine. And he quickly talked me out of the military idea. And then I was thinking about psychology. And I saw an opportunity to use my interest in psychology to help people with their finances. And really helping people I think, is the real undercurrent behind that. And my brain naturally thinks about finance. You know, when I see that in the news, or just read about it. When I find myself reading things privately, just for fun, I find that a lot of it is finance oriented. So it's just kind of how my brain thinks.
Ralph Ford:Well, you're in wealth management, you really are a teacher, right? You're trying to help people understand something that on the outside looks really complex to them? And I'm sure that it is. So you're really changing people's lives when you teach them about finance, don't you?
Eric Robbins:Yes, I think that you can. It's very practical information. It helps people with decisions that they will need to make on a daily basis. And you're right being in the finance industry, being an advisor really has an educational role to it. And I think the thing that I really enjoyed about that when I was vocational as an advisor, was trying to break down difficult and complex topics into a digestible format. So if I start talking with a client about something complex, like a Sharpe ratio, which is just a risk adjusted return, their eyes will glaze over. And sometimes it works that same way with students, right. So you have to be able to break down a difficult concept into a bite sized, digestible way, in order to get the learner or the client to understand exactly what you're trying to communicate and achieve that desired outcome.
Ralph Ford:Let's say you, you're talking to our students, and they take your class, what's their perception when they walk in? Versus how does that change? By the time they walk out? What's the difference that you're able to make in a class?
Eric Robbins:Yeah, it's interesting that you ask it that way. I have kind of a reputation of being a difficult professor, but one that the students learned from, you know. I actually have a capstone paper that my students will write in the course. And I just finished reading them over the last week at the end of the semester here. And one of them commented that at the beginning of the semester, they felt very overwhelmed thinking about the volume of information and the projects and just how intense it was going to be. Then by the end of the semester, they realized all the confidence that it had built in them. And that's one of the things that I love about teaching and about working with students, is being able to develop that confidence and content awareness at the same time.
Ralph Ford:It's a great approach. I mean, I always think of it as it's really simple. And you said it, basically, it's, you can be tough, but fair was students. And in the end, they'll respect it. Maybe not every single one makes it we want them all to I'm not saying that they don't. But if you don't challenge people, you push them beyond their feeling of growth, or where they can grow. They never learned that they can grow any further.
Eric Robbins:Exactly. I feel like I've always felt like I got more out of an experience, if there was some challenge in the process. If there was a struggle in the process, and you learn from it, you felt like you overcome something, you achieved something in the process. And that's one of the things I try and do in the classroom.
Ralph Ford:So you like being in the classroom, like being up in front of the students?
Eric Robbins:Yeah. I really do enjoy being in front of the classroom and working with students. I think one of the things that I enjoy the most other than seeing that light bulb moment for students is just simply, I guess, helping them develop confidence and grow as an individual through the process. In some of the classrooms where we would have in-person presentations, you'd see a difference in how the students would carry themselves at the presentation at the beginning of the semester, to a presentation at the end of the semester. There's personal growth, I really enjoy seeing that personal growth in the students.
Ralph Ford:Yeah, I think if you work with our first year students, and you look at them when they're seniors, and they're walking out the door, it's, it's a really great feeling, isn't it? Yes. I know, if you can get frustrated as a faculty member, it seems like the problems never change, you get a new set of students, and then you have to go through the same growth curve each and every year. So it's really it's really rewarding, though to see that
Eric Robbins:It can be, yes.
Ralph Ford:Now you teach. We talked about being in the classroom, but being in the classroom takes different forms. So you teach residential and online courses, you teach in our, what we call Penn State World Campus. Can you tell us a little bit about what is World Campus? What are the programs you teach in there?
Eric Robbins:Sure. World Campus is just simply Penn State's fully online course offering. The classes are completely asynchronous, which means that the students don't have to log
in and be there from 9:00 to 10:00, like they would if they were taking a class at the residential campus. It gives the students a lot more flexibility. And we here at Behrend have the finance or where the academic home I should say, of the finance major on World Campus. So I get to work with students really all over the place. It's really fascinating to work with students. I had one student I recall, who was taking my class while competing in Wimbledon.
Ralph Ford:Competing at Wimbledon?
Eric Robbins:She actually asked for an extension for two days, because my assignments are due on Sundays. And she was in a tournament that had matches on that Sunday in Wimbledon. I said, I'll excuse you. And I have one this semester who's competing in the LPGA, and I needed an extension for a day because of, you know, a tournament that she was in. So I get to work with students from all over the world, and certainly all over the country, all walks of life. And it's it's really fantastic getting to work with those students.
Ralph Ford:It must be so fascinating. And for our listeners just in case they didn't really get that distinction. I want to make it clear, we have not only a world class bachelor's degree program in finance here, residential on campus at Behrend. We're a pioneer in moving that program fully online. And now it's matured, and we're seeing graduates come out of the World Campus version. So someone who isn't here, or feels that that's their better mode of learning can go to the World Campus, right? Yes, exactly. And both are pretty full. And they're popular programs. So give me your pitch, then, why should somebody study finance, if they're thinking about going into a career? Why finance?
Eric Robbins:Yeah, that's a good question. And I think that people need to think about what really makes them passionate as they're considering a career option. If they're really passionate about helping people, finance provides an opportunity to do that. If they're really passionate about analyzing information and using that information to make decisions, finance would give them an opportunity to do that as well. And those are those are two, I think, really big kind of pluses in this industry.
Ralph Ford:They can go into a whole bunch of different careers. Yes. You can be a chief financial officer. Yep. They can go to Wall Street. Yep. And you can be a personal wealth manager.
Eric Robbins:Yep. We have students going through the whole spectrum. We have some go into Actuarial Studies at an insurance company. We have some students go into being a personal financial advisor, like a financial planner. We have some go to be investment managers at banks, go to be commercial bankers. Go on to be analysts. We've had some land at large companies like Vanguard or Cambridge analytics. We've had students go to NY Mellon. We've had finance students that have a dual major or a minor, and they end up doing consulting work for Accenture or KPMG. Or one of them, I think, is in Brighthouse, in the Washington, DC area. I actually just talked with him the other day, he's doing really well. And then we have others that end up in the corporate finance area where they want to pair accounting and finance and really focus on that corporate side, that corporate decision making. So there's really quite a spectrum that you can you do within finance.
Ralph Ford:And I mean, it always amazes me to go talk to the graduates and see what they're doing whether in Wall Street or working with firms in Pittsburgh or around the world. But you mentioned something. I see we see a lot of students get a dual Major in both accounting and finance, how common is that? How hard is it to do?
Eric Robbins:It's actually fairly simple to have a dual major. I talk with my advisees, to try and figure out what is their career aspiration. And then we try and tailor either a dual major, or major and minor, or a major and a certificate that would get them exactly what they need. For someone that wants to go into corporate finance, finance and accounting as a dual major is an excellent idea. For someone who wants to do analysis work, finance, and business economics is a great dual major. For someone that wants to do personal financial planning, they want to do finance major with a certificate in financial planning. There's lots of different combinations that we can do on our campus. And that's one of the benefits of being a Behrend student is you have the opportunity to do a major to tailor your education to exactly what you want to accomplish. But the electives will often overlap between those dual majors. So it's not like a student needs to add an extra year to get into a major, they can typically double major in four years if they plan well, because the electives and the supporting classes and the choices that we have naturally woven into the major, they just overlap between the two of them.
Ralph Ford:Now, what about certificates, you mentioned that that's another nice add-on that someone can put with their degree program
Eric Robbins:Exactly the certificates. It's almost like a minor, a specialized minor. We just call it a certificate instead of a minor. it's often the same number of credits as a minor. For example, the certificate in financial planning that we offer that satisfies the education requirement for someone to sit for their CFP exam. So that's really necessary. If someone has that as a career aspiration, they really want to have that. And that is available to both our residential and our World Campus students. We have a certificate in Actuarial Studies, we have a certificate in financial controllership, we have a new certificate that is a joint venture with the School of Psychology and Behavioral Finance. And I work in that area. It's absolutely fascinating content. But that is an add-on value for either someone who wants to be a financial advisor, or maybe a psychology student who is thinking about maybe working finance into their practice in some way.
Ralph Ford:And I mean, they're all great. There's also one in sports management we're developing as well. I realize it may not be right in finance, but yeah, you made me think about that one.
Eric Robbins:Yeah, there'sa lot of great options there. And many of them are interdisciplinary, you know, merging finance and accounting, merging statistics and finance, merging psychology and finance. There's a lot of great combinations there.
Ralph Ford:Let's go back to you know, we started this part of the conversation about residential and online and World Campus and you teach in both. So that means you're really flexible and adaptable. How do you change your strategy between teaching residentially and teaching in the online courses?
Eric Robbins:That's a good question. Honestly, I think that it really just comes down to the way in which information is presented to the students. For my residential students, I need to be more cognizant of providing face time, whether that is in my office, talking with them after class. They're taking the residential option, because they value that face time element. The online students, they value the flexibility, which is one reason why they're doing that. Also, they'd like to have a degree from a fantastic name like Penn State, and they happen to be in another part of the country or part of the world, and it gives them access to that. But that flexibility is really important to them. So the online learners, it's not so much about delivering the content, as it is being available to answer questions being available in the evenings being available on the weekend, being flexible to be available, when they're available. And whether that's through video chat or through email, just that availability for students, that's absolutely necessary for an online instructor.
Ralph Ford:If you could tell us what is the profile of a residential student versus an online student? Are some more adult learners? Or do they just want to learn in different ways based on location? How do you advise students into those two different options?
Eric Robbins:Sure. I think that my World Campus students do tend to be adult learners. Some of them have kids, some of them have had military experience, they have typically been out and had a job, like a vocational professional job.
Ralph Ford:Right. And in the real world.
Eric Robbins:Yes, they are in the real world. And so that's one thing that I noticed that's really different about my online learners. Some of them, I just spoke with someone the other day, who's in the upper management team at a company called CB Insights. We just had a video chat after the end of the semester, and he told me he's taking one class this semester, to help him get his degree but be flexible for his life. So the online students definitely they need that flexibility. However, they have to be really good at time management. They need to be able to map out their time and be self disciplined to get those things done. They're not having someone stand in front of them three times a week telling them remember, you need to do this by tomorrow. You know, whereas the residential learner, I think tends to be a little bit younger student, although we do sometimes have non-traditional students in the classroom as well. And we also have some very disciplined and very adept time managers in the residential classes as well. But the residential students tend to want someone to speak the concepts to them, rather than read the concepts. And my online learners, they like to hear the verbal, but they're also good with just reading the content as well.
Ralph Ford:But the higher education experience, too, I mean, that's, that's a great summary. The higher education experience, part of that that was building your peer group. It's work, it's the students you meet, yes, inside and outside of the classroom. Does that happen in both contexts?
Eric Robbins:Yes, it 100% does in both contexts. At least in my classroom, it does. One of the things that I've done, and it's actually something that I started in the online space, doing asynchronous online discussions. I actually have a paper under revise and resubmit right now with a peer or colleague in the School of Business, on asynchronous discussions. But what we do is we set up these weekly forums where students have to get together and they're in small groups, and they're in that same group throughout the entire semester. So they get used to talking with that group and discussing with that group. I try not to have group work per se, where they aren't being graded on the value of someone else's work. Everyone has an individual grade based on their own contribution, but they have a group to get together and discuss. And it's actually been so successful, I think, in my online classes, that I brought that to my residential courses as well, because the residential classes, I think most faculty would say that the students can sometimes be a little little reserved in their responses. And, you know, we try and do the best we can to draw that out. But it doesn't necessarily always work. But when you go to these online asynchronous discussions, I find that even students that are a little bit more reserved in person, they just come right out of their shell when they're talking in text. And it gives them a chance to come more alive, it gives them a chance to practice professional writing skills, and have that group interaction. So that's been, I think, a great opportunity. And, you know, just real quickly another thing that we do in the online program that maybe not all online programs do this, but we have, we have three different clubs in finance. And we host a lot of that online, as well as residential, so that our World Campus students can participate, I actually lead one of those clubs called the Business Analytics team. And we'll have bi-weekly meetings in the evening that are through zoom, our World Campus students join our residential students, they get a chance to mix together talk about concepts interact with industry, and executives from different companies. So that's been a great experience to allow everybody a chance to network.
Ralph Ford:You know, I love that part of it. Because I've personally observed that. I think a few years ago, frankly, it was like YouTube Live or something you were using. Now Zoom is overtaking the world. But the fact that you're mixing the residential and the online students and they get to meet each other and they get both groups get the outside, you know that extracurricular activity. That's such an important part.
Eric Robbins:Yeah, I agree. And I think it also gives the World Campus students a sense of connection with what we are doing here on our campus. I had to chuckle on one of the Zoom calls, where one of the World Campus students, you know, we all have these virtual backgrounds. And one of the World Campus students, his virtual background, was the business building at our campus. And this guy lives probably four states away from us. He's never been to campus. He googled that picture. And put that as the background for his his resume. That's how much he was connecting with our campus based on the interaction that we were doing. That was a good feeling.
Ralph Ford:Wow, very nice. You know, and it's a, it's a great story. And we know, sometimes they show up here in person, and like, let me just take this a little different direction. You know, this is really important discussion. If you go back, let's say five years, you know, and you listen to the wisdom in the press, you would have heard higher ed is obsolete. You know, there was a certain number of people saying just move online, you don't need this residential campus experience. But now we've been through COVID. It's not just COVID, we've had the strategy for awhile for World Campus and residential. You look ahead five or 10 years, is it still this mix? You've got the residential and online. Is one going to overtake the other? Do you have any opinion on that?
Eric Robbins:My opinion is that it's going to be a both and scenario, that both of them will have a need. Both of them will have value. It just depends on the individual learner. I saw some residential students from Behrend that were kind of forced into an online environment during COVID who couldn't wait to get back to in person and others say this is exact actly what I needed. And some of those that said, Wow, this was a great introduction to this, I can live at home and still do this, a couple of them made the choice to switch to an online format. And I have seen some of my online students say that they wanted more of an in-person element, they've actually moved to Erie to be here for our residential program. So I've seen it go both ways, where I think it's very useful to have both options for students. And then they can self select which delivery method is best to help them grasp the concepts and to network.
Ralph Ford:Wow, that's such a great observation. I mean, it's what you're seeing real time. And I love that idea. It's both and it's not either/or. So you know, the world sometimes wants to force you, and it's this one or that one, and one is obsolete. So what a great, great observation. Well, you mentioned, the pandemic, and I don't think we can get through this conversation. You know, it's two years later, just the date. But you've been here through the whole pandemic and observed. So you know, give us some of your takeaways. What did you learn going through this process, and now coming back to where we are?
Eric Robbins:Sure. I think the biggest thing that has stuck out in my mind is that we're all in this together, whether it is the students and faculty. We're all just people, we're trying to learn content. We're trying to be passionate about this content. And I think that I've seen more of a need to show empathy for students in their situations. I've seen that come up during this pandemic. And, you know, a few different times a student would come to me and say, Listen, I'm just feeling really overwhelmed with what's, you know, just life in general everything. And I'd say, okay, you know, let's talk about that for a minute. You know, have maybe a personal conversation with them to encourage them. But at the same time, give them a couple of day extension on an assignment, just to help them clear their head and get through it. And I think I'm a lot more open to that now than I was before the pandemic. You know, before the pandemic, I was a lot more focused on the lesson that we need to get you used to deadlines, because that's what the professional world is like. And now while I do try and maintain that, I have a little bit of flexibility in that area, just a little bit more empathy for the students and their situation.
Ralph Ford:Can you speak to how serious is the, I'll say, the learning loss? I mean, there's just no doubt whether they came from high school or they were in higher ed, it wasn't the same learning experience. It's significant. can we overcome it? What do you see?
Eric Robbins:Yeah, I think we can definitely overcome any learning loss that they had. It's just a matter of how much additional work do faculty and students need to put in to get there? I'll tell you from my own experience, I have not changed the rigor of my assignments or my class, I didn't change anything. Although I did add a few extra review assignments, I added a few more structural supports, to help the students understand things better. I took some of the assignment instructions and put them more in step by step instructions, rather than bullet points. I'd number it instead of bullets, just to help them, you know, remove any anxiety that they had in the in the assignment and tried to structure the assignments to remove any any points that I thought might be causing undue anxiety, while still keeping the assignment robust.
Ralph Ford:Are you seeing it right now? I mean, we're on the last day of final exams, it's a time of high anxiety. Are things getting better on the anxiety front? Or is it still pretty front and center?
Eric Robbins:I think that it's mixed. I think that some students are moving past that. And they're just focused on what needs to be done. They're kind of shifting their focus to the learning objectives of the course. I think some others just because of whatever's going on in their own personal world, or maybe still having a little bit of that issue. I still think that anxiety is still very a real issue that that we're facing and something that we still need to address. But I do see it may be letting up a little bit.
Ralph Ford:Well, it's just it is going to take time. Yes. And we have to help them all in whatever capacity that is. Let's switch back to some of the things you do in your classroom. You like to have real-world simulations, and you use a program called Riskalyze. Tell us what that is, and how do you use it? You know, how close are these simulations to reality?
Eric Robbins:Sure. I am a big fan of using simulations and using software that students would use in practice. Because if the students actually have to go out and apply something that's theoretical that we taught them in the classroom, then it becomes sticky for them. If it becomes a real, then they internalize that learning. So we do several trading simulations. And the students have to go out and actually pick investments and go and invest in one of them. They've got $500,000 to invest in mutual funds and exchange traded funds. And many of them have never even heard of a mutual fund before my class and that I give them a million dollars to go and invest in stocks and options, and just see what happens. And I think that it's a very rich learning experience for the students. And one of the things that I do to try and enhance that richness is to bring in software packages, like Riskalyze. Riskalyze, is just an amazing risk visualization software, it helps students kind of target the risk exposure that they'd like. And usually students will build a portfolio, put the assets into the software and say, Oh, my goodness, I had no idea I was taking that much risk, or that those two investments were the source of most of my risk, I had no idea. But Riskalyze helps them to understand that and then track it. It also gives them kind of a measure of how well the portfolio is expected to do they have something that they've called a GPA, which is very intuitive for students to understand or, and the higher the better. So it gives the students an estimate of understanding how efficient is this portfolio that I built. And then they go through and they track their portfolio using Riskalyze. In that process in risk management, we also use software called White Charts, which is some of the listeners may be familiar with a Bloomberg terminal. My Charts is kind of like a Bloomberg terminal in the cloud. It has a little bit less information, but it's extremely robust. And students use that to search for various parameters for individual stocks, or for any investment really, that they want to want to add to their portfolio and monitor. And then throughout the simulations, I find that students get very competitive, and their emotions also get keyed into it. And you know, I have two different classes that I do these in. One of them's the core investments class, and the other is the behavioral finance class. And in the behavioral finance class, I have them focus, not on performance, I do not care about how it performs. I want to know how you're monitoring your psychology throughout the twists and turns of the market. And you're journaling this and telling me about how you're processing and self reflecting. That's all that I'm focused on is the learning objective. And of course, this semester, was a great time to get students emotions involved with the stock market.
Ralph Ford:Absolutely. It's every day right now is a winding road, so to speak.
Eric Robbins:Yeah, exactly, jagged road.
Ralph Ford:Well, we have the philosophy of open laboratory learning here at Behrend, and, you know, quite simply, that is how do we take learning and research experiences and connect them with external partners industry? So as part of that approach, in your mind?
Eric Robbins:Yes, definitely. I'm trying to get students using software that they would use in the real world. I actually had one student, this was about a year ago, got a job after graduation. And one of the reasons that kind of tipped the scale in his favor, was because of his use of one of the software packages that we use in the School of Business, because his employer was switching to that piece of software and said, Oh, you already know this. You've had some experience. We're switching to this, it'd be great to have someone who's at least seen this and used it. So yes, we're gonna hire you over someone else who hasn't seen this yet. So it's, it's very productive, I think for the students.
Ralph Ford:Well, I've seen the students use...you mentioned the Bloomberg terminal. And what a phenomenal tool. I'm going to brag a bit, we have access to Bloomberg terminals here, like many institutions do, particularly of our size. What's the Bloomberg terminal? Why is it so important for students studying finance?
Eric Robbins:For a student who is planning on a career on Wall Street, this is the information piece that they're going to use. If they are going to go to a very large financial firm, they may also have access to a Bloomberg terminal. We've had students just in Erie that go and work at Erie Insurance, and they're using a Bloomberg terminal. So it's very useful for them to learn how to use this software package, which the terminal for any listener who's not familiar with it is a customized desktop with software on it. And this software allows access to pretty much every piece of financial information that's out there. If you want to know what Apple Computer did for its, say, its revenue growth, or its earnings from 10 years ago, you can find it in the Bloomberg terminal very easily. If you want to know the probability of the Federal Reserve, increasing interest rates in their June and July meetings, you can find that in the Bloomberg terminal. There's websites and other sources where you could go and do that as well. But the Bloomberg terminal aggregates it all into one place. And it also has an Excel plugin. So there's the ability to pull information out of the Bloomberg terminal into Excel and then use it in a different format as well. It's just a very robust experience for our students. And I know that they use that almost exclusively use that with our student managed funds.
Ralph Ford:Yes, lets kind of go there. Yeah, we can't not talk about the Intrieri student managed fund if you're going in this direction. And so How are we doing with that? Explain what that is? And how are we doing with that?
Eric Robbins:Yeah? Well, I use simulated trading. In my classes, but this is the opposite of simulation. Students are actually investing real money, they are investing upwards of a million dollars in the live markets. Students do analysis on different industries and on different stocks, and they make pitches and they make decisions as a group, the professor can override a decision if he feels that it is inappropriate. But the students get get full vote and full flexibility on doing the research and picking those individual investments. We have some students that are lead analysts, we have some students that are in a class that's associated with the student managed fund. And then we also have a junior analyst program that really any student is welcome to add. They don't have to be a finance major, it could be a history major, and they're interested in getting involved in the student managed fund. They can add that class, and then be involved in the process of doing analysis with the stock market. It's a one credit class, and anyone is able to add it, it's finance 362.
Ralph Ford:It's a great experience. And, you know, now it's over a million dollars, and we're providing scholarship from the funds. So it's been a wonderful success of the finance program in the Black School of Business. Let's switch right now to your role as Associate Director of Corporate Outreach and Research in the school. And you reach out and connect our school with business in industry. What do you do there? What are some of the success stories?
Eric Robbins:Sure, the primary thing that I tried to focus on is managing current relationships that we have, we have several hundred relationships with industry partners that we've already built over time. And I make a point of reaching out to a lot of those partners to try and source internships and job opportunities for our students. That's really what I try and do. And then I will also reach out to try and form new relationships with businesses. I've done that just last year, there's a company down in Cranberry called MSA. It's a wonderful company, they employ a lot of engineers, they employ somebody safety or something like that, right? Yeah. Safety company right in writing cranberry, right off, right off 79 there. And so I reached out and tried to form a relationship there to benefit the School of Business. And, you know, their HR staff has been very amenable to that idea. And so I try and form new relationships if I can, and try to further existing relationships. You know, just last school year, I brought in 41, internships and 31 job offers for students in the School of Business. And it was, it was very rewarding to know that some students are working this summer, I know of at least three students that have internships this summer directly because of someone that I connected them with. And I'm sure that there are others that I don't know about. But it's, it's very rewarding to know that students are getting jobs because of these efforts.
Ralph Ford:It's amazing, and we really appreciate you doing it. I will say that, and you're making such an impact on students lives by doing that. Thank you. You also created something called finance day. What is that?
Eric Robbins:Finance day, I actually academically borrowed I bet you that they really grow up when they interact with these the idea from the accounting department. They Linda Hajec in the accounting department was the one who kind of first started this idea in accounting. But essentially what we do is we have a series of eight panels. And we bring industry experts, we had about 21 different industry partners, we had the CEOs of some companies, we had senior directors, we had vice presidents, we had business owners, we had several different people, directors of finance at different companies. And they will sit on these panels and explain to students what life is like in that industry. So for example, we'll have one panel on corporate finance, we'll have another on investment management within a bank, another one on financial planning, and another one on alternative investing. And it gives the students a chance to hear what life is like in those careers. And so through that opportunity, some students would say that is exactly not what I want to do. And that's very useful. That's good information. And then some other students would say, Wow, I hadn't thought about doing that before. That's exactly what I'd like to do that really resonates with me, I can be passionate about that. And that's, I think, a win for the students. We also have a networking component, even though we do this in zoom, we do it in zoom so that our online students can participate. And we have a networking component built into it at towards the end of the day, where we bring in alumni from across the country, and we set them each up with their own zoom link. And then we give students the opportunity to just freely bounce between the rooms based on who they'd like to connect with. And they're talking with managers from Vanguard, they're talking with guys that are doing cryptocurrency. They're in a cryptocurrency firm in Lake Tahoe. I've got, you know, people that are doing investment banking work in Georgia, all over the place. They're coming to network with our students. And it's just fantastic. And then at the very end of the day, we did a joint venture. We did it two years ago for the first time. And we've now done it a total of two times, and we'll probably continue it. In conjunction with career services. We did a finance only job fair, it was completely virtual. And we had employers like Vanguard and federated Hermes, and being why Mellon coming to this job fair, and students could sign up for a spot to talk with these employers, and go in and have that conversation. So it's, it's really been a very robust way for students to kind of kick the tires on different career options with a finance major, people. I would think so too. Yeah, it's a great experience for students. And I would like to point out too, that we do have these now in accounting, finance, project and supply chain management, management information systems, and we have one under development for the business economics department as well.
Ralph Ford:Wow. Well, we're coming close to the end here. But you won a big award recently, something known as the George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching. Just to put that in context for our listeners, that's a Penn State wide award. I got to go down to University Park and see you get that award as a proud moment, I think for you and your family. And you were one of six people who won that award out of thousands of Penn State faculty. So first of all, congratulations, I hope you feel really good about that.
Eric Robbins:Thank you. Yeah, it was an amazing experience.
Ralph Ford:Well, I will tell you, you know, I got to read the great things the students say about your teaching, so you can blush a little bit. But you know, a lot of it was about how you communicate with students, how you help them with opportunities and provide internships. We heard all of that today. So, you know, no surprise here that you won that award after this conversation. But you know, anything? How do you measure students success? How do you think about that, at the end of the day?
Eric Robbins:I think about student success in terms of, did I build confidence for them? And did I help broaden their perspectives? You know, there's so much information in the world of finance information is always out there on the internet, they can Google a term. I don't really care so much, if they understand what a term means. If they can define something, I want to see them using it, which is why I give them so many projects. And one reason that I focus on all those projects, is because so many employers are asking students to show them that they can do something. And I want the students to be able to do that. Just this past semester, one of my online students told me that he used a project from that current semester, in an interview with the state of Washington and actually won the job because he could show them do it. I've had within the last six months, I've had two or three emails from former students that have graduated as much as two years ago telling me they're still using projects for my class in interviews, which That to me is a success. That is a win, that they can use that to get a job.
Ralph Ford:Wow. Well, I'm going to give you the last word. Is there anything you'd like to add?
Eric Robbins:I think we've covered it. I think I've told you everything that was really on my heart to say here today. So I really want to thank you for having me and inviting me to this podcast.
Ralph Ford:Well, it has been a great conversation. My guest today is Eric Robbins, assistant teaching professor of Finance in the Black School of Business. You have been listening to Behrend Talks. I'm Chancellor Ralph Ford.