Building Community Through Experiential Learning

Dr. Alberto D�vila will soon become a familiar face to the Cape Girardeau community, as he assumes his role as the new dean of the Donald L. Harrison College of Business at Southeast Missouri State University in June. A Brownsville, Texas, native, D�vila spent his teenage years in the metropolitan hub of Mexico City, the major industrial city of Monterrey, Mexico, and the smaller coastal city of Tampico, Mexico, after his family moved for his father�s job. For his undergraduate studies, D�vila went back to Texas to study economics at Pan American University, followed by graduate studies in economics at Iowa State University. Upon graduation, he took a job as a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, where he did regional research and economic development research. From 1989 to 1996 he taught economics as a tenured professor at the University of New Mexico, where he met his wife, Marie. He served for 18 years as the chair of the Department of Economics and Finance at The University of Texas-Pan American. He currently serves as the interim associate dean for administration, graduate studies and research for the College of Business and Entrepreneurship at his alma mater, which was renamed The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley after the consolidation of The University of Texas-Pan American and The University of Texas at Brownsville/Texas Southmost College. Dr. D�vila has published and edited numerous books and articles about Hispanic entrepreneurs and issues involving economics along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Dr. D�vila recently took some time to sit down with B Magazine from his office at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg, Texas, to discuss his priorities for Southeast Missouri State University�s College of Business, his past experience serving as chair and interim associate dean at The University of Texas-Pan American and The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and his excitement to become part of the Southeast Missouri State University and Cape Girardeau communities.

B MAGAZINE: What attracted you to Southeast Missouri State University and to Cape Girardeau?

ALBERTO D�VILA: Southeast has a very strong student success focus; it�s very student-centered. The community is very close-knit. I like the small town feeling that Cape Girardeau has � I am from an area composed of medium to small towns, and I also lived in Mexico City. I know what it is to live in a huge city, and I made a decision after living in Mexico City: I would rather live in a smaller environment. Cape Girardeau has that small city feeling, the warm, welcoming feeling, but on any given day, you could drive to St. Louis and experience a bigger city. Obviously I was very attracted to the college � that�s my top priority � to be able to work with people in the college and with the administration. But from a personal level, where you live is also important, and Cape Girardeau is � how can I put it � it meets the requirements in that regard.

B: What do you hope to bring to SEMO�s College of Business, to the university, and to the broader community?

D�VILA: The short answer to that is a wealth of experience. I�ve been going over the strategic plan [for the Harrison College of Business], and many of the areas in the strategic plan are areas that I have dealt with over a 20 year period. So I bring experience to a lot of these goals and priorities that the college has developed. For example, the strategic plan talks about maintaining and enhancing faculty resources and making sure developed tenure track faculty become scholastically academic-qualified. Well, I�ve lived in that environment for 20-some years, and we�ve been successful in that area.

The strategic plan also talks about continuing activities to create more of a global environment for the College. Well, I have been actively involved in developing joint partnerships with universities in other countries like Mexico. In fact, I�m flying to Nigeria next week to meet with some people over there to start a relationship between Nigerian executives and our MBA program here [at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley]. Southeast has a wonderful international program, and I bring to the table additional insights on how we could even make it better.

The Harrison College of Business� strategic plan talks about implementing a new technology called digital measures to better monitor the teaching and the research progress of the faculty, a system that we pioneered at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley; I have insights in that regard. So as I go down the priorities, which the faculty and administration have done a wonderful job of putting together, I see so many things that I�ve already done and worked through that I can bring to these discussions to help the faculty and the administration sort through these priorities and meet these goals.

B: How did living in Mexico during your coming-of-age years shape you and your worldview? How has it shaped your educational goals for the students you will oversee as the dean of SEMO�s College of Business?

D�VILA: My wife and I travel extensively to many parts of the world, certainly all of Europe, Japan, Australia, and like you said, having lived in Mexico, the importance of that global experience is something that has shaped my way of thinking about teaching. I very much believe that when students go through their university experience, they should develop the skills to effectively compete in the workplace, and I also believe that experience should be very well-rounded in a hands-on way, in that experiential way where they�re applying what they�re learning to what they will be doing when they graduate from college. And that involves the global experience that Southeast has been really promoting.

I played football when I was in Mexico, if you can believe that; discipline and doing things in a timely manner is very important to me. So I am going to be keeping a very close eye on students graduating on time and creating roadmaps so that each student will be able to navigate through their coursework in a way where they can graduate on time. I also believe in teamwork. I believe that we should teach our students to appreciate the university and the College in a way that they will want to come back to future generations to mentor them, to help other students become successful. I really do believe that you have to prepare students in the right way, you have to provide them with a well-rounded education, you have to instill in them that they should have the discipline or the vision of graduating on time. I also believe that there needs to be a sense of community to come back and help other students.

B: You mentioned experiential learning � can you talk a little bit more about that and the ways you�ve implemented it in the past? How do you hope to bring experiential learning to SEMO and to Cape Girardeau�s business community?

D�VILA: For close to 18 years I have promoted the idea of students having internships. When students ask me for an elective, I advise students to use one of their electives to take an internship. For example, since I was the chair of economics and finance [at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley], if a student came to me on the econ side, interested in going to law school, I would tell them they could get an internship at a law firm. If it was on the finance side and they told me they were interested in working in the banking sector, I would promote the idea of getting an internship in a bank or a financial services-related field. So that was something I built into the culture of the department.

On the business side of internships, I recruited. I went to the local banks and law firms and talked about the skills our students have and how they could help them as interns in their respective businesses. So I have a lot of experience in that area, and it is something that is done at Southeast in the College of Business that I would like to promote and that I would like to enhance. It�s extremely important for the well-rounded aspect of the student, for them to have some experience in the hands-on experience in what they�re learning.

Boeing is there in St. Louis, you�ve got Proctor and Gamble there, you have the hospitals in Cape Girardeau; there are just so many opportunities. In the little time I was there in Cape [during my interview], I thought it�s a good environment to get students out there and to participate in these internships. The hospitality industry, for example � I didn�t know the Drury came out of Cape Girardeau. We have one right here [in McAllen, Texas]. So when I was in Cape Girardeau and I stayed at the Drury, as I drove in, there were two of them. I said, �How can you have two?� But I was told the corporate national headquarters of Drury are in Cape Girardeau. So there are a lot of exciting opportunities regarding internships. I know the faculty are doing a very good job in placing students, but there�s always a way to make it better, bigger, to create more opportunity for students.

B: What kind of opportunity do internships create for businesses?

D�VILA: For one, students will be at the state-of-the-art of the new business ideas that are developed. It is a goal of mine and a goal of the faculty to continue to develop our faculty on the state-of-the-art, cutting-edge new business techniques that are out there. So a business would benefit greatly from this � you would have a student who might intern to apply a new technique in accounting or in finance or in management that would be a great asset to the businesses.

B: You are active in the American Society of Hispanic Economists (ASHE)?

D�VILA: I am one of the founders of the American Society of Hispanic Economists. It�s been around for close to 20 years now, so I am past president of ASHE, and I was just named the treasurer of ASHE this past year.

B: Is that something you hope to promote at SEMO?

D�VILA: Certainly. I�d like to promote that, but I�d also like to promote a stronger relationship with issues that have to do with financial literacy and economic literacy. I have been part of a network of economic education through the National Council of Economic Education and the Texas Council of Economic Education. Being part of that for the last 20 or so years, I became aware of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis� great work in the area of financial literacy and economic education. So one thing I will do is visit with their community affairs division there to see how we can have a relationship between Southeast and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, to promote economic education and financial literacy.

B: Anything that we haven�t talked about yet that you would like to discuss?

D�VILA: To the extent that economic development and job growth are pretty much driven by the small business sector, I think it�s important to highlight to the business community that Southeast�s Douglas C. Greene Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, led by Dr. Judy Wiles, is a good vehicle for that purpose. They�re doing fantastic things there, and I�m sure many of the community know about this effort, but it�s one that is very consistent with the College of Business trying to reach out to the community to foster small business relationships, job growth and economic development.

One of my big priorities is to be out there in the community � in the business community and the community in general � and to be as present as possible. We need to learn what it is the community wants us to be teaching our students. I feel very impressed with the faculty, and there are a lot of really good efforts, and I would really like to continue to promote that. I want people to feel comfortable in talking to us about what it is that they would like to see in our graduates, what kinds of skills they should have. At a recent conference, I was in DC and talking to some entrepreneurs there. There is a sense that there is a disconnect between what we do as colleges of business and what the community needs. We need to bridge that gap. I�m going to be out there. I�m going to be out there talking to people.