1. What do you enjoy most about teaching?

To me, the best part of teaching occurs when the students are motivated to learn. As I have taught at Biola these past 15 years, I have found that students are motivated when they understand that the things they are learning will be useful to them as part of their career. While not everything that we teach will fall into this category for every student, much of the material in my courses is designed to be useful to students no matter what they end up doing after graduation.

2. Talk about the 'business as ministry' perspective.

All of us are designed by God with different strengths and desires. We honor God when we recognize those gifts and seek to pursue Him by using them. For business students, it is no different. We have students who are seeking to use their gifts to become (among other things) accountants, entrepreneurs, HR directors, financial planners, and data analysts. Here at the Crowell School of Business, our job is to help these students learn how to use their gifts to serve the Lord in these roles. When they graduate from here and enter their careers with this mindset, that is “business as ministry.”

3. You recently launched a new program in Business Analytics. Tell us about that. What is it? Why is this important? Why is the Business Analytics program at Biola so timely?

Back in early 2015, as we talked with businesses and reviewed employment trends, it became obvious that the field of data analytics was growing in size and importance. We saw this as an opportunity to provide a new area of study for our business students that would provide them with employment opportunities and a place to practice business as ministry. My educational background includes degrees in Mathematics and Management Science, so it made sense for me to lead this important program. We hired a consultant who teaches and works in the field and embarked on a detailed study to determine which topics, software, and skills would be the most important to an undergraduate business student studying in this area.