Unconventional Paths and Innovative Education: A Conversation with Dr. Amy Bianco 

00;00;00;00 – 00;00;16;12 

Unknown 

Welcome to the inaugural episode of whatever we’re going to call this podcast. By the end of it. I’m here with Dr. Amy Bianco. How are you doing today, Dr. Amy? I’m doing well. It’s it’s great to be with you this morning. I know eventually you’re going join me on this side of the table, an interview, multiple different people, both inside and outside the organization. 

00;00;16;12 – 00;00;44;25 

Unknown 

But do you want to take a second? Introduce yourself? Yeah. I’m Amy Taylor Bianco. I am the director of the Master’s of Science and Management here at Ohio University Place. I absolutely love. And we’re excited to just talk about talk to guests about the program, about the experience that we offer. It’s not really a program, but just a whole set of experiences that I think have made me better.  

00;00;44;25 – 00;01;07;12 

Unknown 

And I hope, I hope make all of us who go through it better. Absolutely. Can you tell me a little bit about your journey of what eventually led you to you? Yeah. So in undergrad, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. Landed someplace trying to figure it out. And I wrote a thesis on maximizing human potential. 

00;01;07;14 – 00;01;38;06 

Unknown 

And that was I always known I wanted to do something just helping people be their best. I didn’t know what that would lead to. And also always wanted to live in New York City, work on Wall Street. So I, I, I started started that journey. So after after college, I, I went into New York. I worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers where in consulting I learned just a ton about business and management. 

00;01;38;06 – 00;01;58;21 

Unknown 

I was not a business major. I had no background and no business being there. Really thought you were a business major. What did you major in anthropology and you went to Wall Street? Yeah. Okay, so take this story back further than you walked into college. What college was it? Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. And you said, I’m going to go into anthropology. 

00;01;58;24 – 00;02;24;12 

Unknown 

Yeah, I. I wanted to study deeply and I did study leaders. I studied different populations. I studied leadership, but I really wanted to critically study. And I took some management classes, not many, but I took a few. And it just never occurred to me that I would do anything else but business. And to be honest, it also never occurred to me to study business because I just can’t imagine. 

00;02;24;12 – 00;02;46;23 

Unknown 

Like when I think of anthropology, I think of like Laura Croft or Tomb Raider, like digging around and like, studying ancient cultures and everything. Yeah, but for you, you went into it from a business mindset. So you said you always knew you’re going to be in business. That. Yeah, I just. I just felt I was. And I studied a lot about what then was the Carlisle Indian School, which is kind of, you know, controversial in many, many ways. 

00;02;46;29 – 00;03;10;28 

Unknown 

But it really was the studying of of leadership for better and for worse. And I knew I wanted to do something in a values based leadership. So why that led me to Wall Street, I’m not sure, but that was the next question. So go ahead. But I did I did end up going to PricewaterhouseCoopers in Midtown, and I had a blast because I got to meet so many different people. 

00;03;10;28 – 00;03;35;19 

Unknown 

I worked with accounting and finance majors, and I just had to learn all the time. I took classes at night. My mom was like, Yeah, you better take some accounting if you’re going to work in an accounting firm. Yeah, right. I should do that. That makes sense. Let’s do that. Take that at night and and I just had really great managers and people who wanted to think differently and wanted to create new products that that they needed. 

00;03;35;19 – 00;04;00;27 

Unknown 

And there was one English major in the firm and myself. And I think we’re able to to help, you know, in our in our way. So and then I thought, well, you know, I need to go in-house to a client. So I went down to JPMorgan before it was JPMorgan Chase. So I’m dating myself, went down there and and didn’t like it more. 

00;04;01;04 – 00;04;23;07 

Unknown 

And it was they were doing some neat things, but there was also a lot that that wasn’t for me, made some great relationships. But that’s when I started to take graduate classes and kind of found where where I was headed. And then eventually, which you always want to get back into like the higher ed space Or were you looking what was your graduate program? 

00;04;23;10 – 00;04;51;28 

Unknown 

Yeah, so I wasn’t looking to get back into higher ed, but eventually did. And my my older brother tells me it was my destiny. He told me that my whole life. So possibly that had something to do with it. And I started working with Tory Higgins and one or Burke, who are two kind of tremendous names in the field of higher education, in the field of really studying the way the brain works. 

00;04;52;00 – 00;05;19;17 

Unknown 

Human behavior is Tori’s side. And then on one side it was he also started a change management company that became the the change consulting arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers. So so I learned how to do this stuff and how to do it from the inside out. Yeah. And I think that that’s what I really liked. I’ve learned I like doing things the hard way so that I can teach other people the shortcuts. 

00;05;19;19 – 00;05;41;26 

Unknown 

Sure. And even if they don’t listen, at least you gave them a yes. Exactly. So then. Well, you had. Oh, you after graduate school. Yeah. So while I was in graduate school, I came out here because I had a brother who was graduating from the MBA. And so we he kept saying, I have these great professors. You wouldn’t believe how incredible they are.  

00;05;41;26 – 00;06;03;28 

Unknown 

They really care. They’re, you know, I’m going to this one’s house for dinner. I’m doing this. And I was like, Yeah, right. And and a difference, right? Yeah. And I came out and it was absolutely true. It was absolutely true. And, and my now husband was with me and he’d never been outside really, of New York City and couldn’t believe how much he liked it. 

00;06;03;29 – 00;06;24;20 

Unknown 

Really? Yeah. So New Yorker came to Athens and was like, This is great. It was a New Yorker, came to Athens. He was literally afraid of the drive between like if somebody stopped him, what he would do or how he would get gas going through all these rural places. It’s it was serious. I’m completely serious. Do you? So I hope you still give him like, crap for. 

00;06;24;21 – 00;06;45;17 

Unknown 

Oh, I give him credit for it all the time. Okay. Because he would never leave here. He would never leave now, like, you know that he settled. He would never leave. It took you know, a lot of years to say that. That he would never leave. Huh? And and it’s the people. I mean, it’s the people and the way we have set up so that we can learn and innovate here without you can make mistakes. 

00;06;45;17 – 00;07;05;22 

Unknown 

You can make lots of mistakes, but they’re small ones and you can grow and grow and then you can travel, you know, all over the world, but live here in Athens, Ohio. And it’s incredible. It is. And looking at the MSM program, which you started three years ago, four years ago. Yeah, we conceptualized in 2018. Started in 2020. 

00;07;05;22 – 00;07;30;06 

Unknown 

Okay, cool. And then what led to that conversation? What led to that decision, your interest in it? Yeah. So there was a number of people involved in it actually at the time. Luke Pittaway eventually had Heather, Laurence Benedict, Phil Taylor, a bunch of people kind of bringing it forward and it was really the best thinking of a lot of creative people. 

00;07;30;06 – 00;08;03;28 

Unknown 

Gary Coombs Just a ton of creative people and my thinking there, and not just mine, but our thinking there was let’s look at the open jobs for for people who have a graduate degree and see what’s just not getting filled, what weird combinations aren’t getting filled. And so it was early on just looking at I find myself always on the edge of boundaries a little bit about this, a little bit about that, and you make yourself valuable by merging those things. 

00;08;04;01 – 00;08;28;13 

Unknown 

And I think that’s what the MSN is. You know, you can take a little bit about human resource management and then you can take a little bit about, you know, sales and put those together or analytics h.r. And operations there are still so many positions vacant is is a brand new thing that like back when i was in school wasn’t even a thing yet. 

00;08;28;16 – 00;08;52;24 

Unknown 

Yeah. So you’re right. All these functional gaps that ever existed before and most people you know we think of, you’d have to get two degrees, right? But you actually don’t. You can get two certificates, one degree, and be able to fill those gaps if you’re, you know, a continual, continual learner. We’ll hear from Paul Benedict and and maybe Luke Pittaway in business venturing.  

00;08;53;02 – 00;09;19;19 

Unknown 

So as you know way better than I do, you can’t have your own business without understanding operations. That is the other piece or other another piece that’s so critical. And so those are often paired together so people get to pair together what they need at that point in their career. Now you start officially in 2020 and where we’re at now, again, three years into a going on, four years into it.  

00;09;19;21 – 00;09;43;18 

Unknown 

What has been some of the major takeaways? Have you changed the program at all or has been basically the exact same program that when you you know, I came up with the idea, yeah. So when we started it, it was going to be a fully asynchronous online program. That’s for well, I will say everyone had a different idea, but that was the the, the charge in the end.  

00;09;43;20 – 00;10;03;08 

Unknown 

And what we found is that people like to connect, they like to connect, but they don’t want to have to. And I don’t know, I can really I don’t like to be told what to do. That’s right. None of us do. I don’t think. I mean, maybe some people do, but I don’t know too many people that do. 

00;10;03;14 – 00;10;35;27 

Unknown 

So yes, you have to do your coursework. You got to keep going with that. But it’s those experiences that meeting other students. There’s fireside chats, executive coaching, all those kind of community events that can happen online. And I feel like in this program our biggest or my biggest goal spend to create a sense of belonging online, a sense of belonging virtually, and with all the things that we’re doing that we’ll talk about, I think we’re doing that. 

00;10;35;29 – 00;10;58;15 

Unknown 

You are for sure how to COVID impact those plans because again, 2020 was not a great year for innovation outside of pivoting very quickly. Right. So I’m sure did that hamper did that slow you down, that speed up? And COVID actually didn’t have much of an impact on the program at all. And we were set up, so we had spent two years teaching. 

00;10;58;17 – 00;11;21;03 

Unknown 

So what we did is chose our best teachers and taught them to teach online rather than people who knew how to teach online. We went with the best. And so it was a big ramp up. We were ramped up and ready to go online for 2020. So I kind of don’t remember much of COVID because we were just doing what we were supposed to do, right? 

00;11;21;05 – 00;11;40;04 

Unknown 

And maybe it gave us a little extra time or a little more interested audience. But now it didn’t have much of an impact. Nice. And now I know that we do all kinds of different things, like the fire sides and getting the different speakers that come in. And this weekend we’re doing RDC. So there’s all these different fun events. 

00;11;40;06 – 00;12;03;13 

Unknown 

When you were designing that, was that a centerpiece or is that something that kind of happened naturally that was I would say that is somewhat my personal signature. That’s the stuff that isn’t in the requirements of what we’re the LDC is is planned, right? Nothing else was in the requirements of what we’re supposed to do. And it really wasn’t done in online programs. 

00;12;03;14 – 00;12;27;28 

Unknown 

It was done in in person programs. Right. But not in online. And just reading all of that, I had been reading about the virtual workplace and how things were going to work with, you know, before COVID, we were still hitting a trend where people wanted more flexibility working from home. And I was just curious to get into this experiment and get feedback. 

00;12;27;28 – 00;12;54;21 

Unknown 

And the feedback that we’re getting is that people really, really like this format and they really feel part of something while they’re learning at a at a very high level. And I think a lot of it too, just as a student, the program is the exposure and the conversations are having virtually it’s very much you get out or you put in if you want to engage in the courses, if you want to participate, if you find something that’s absolutely fascinating, you still have the ability to reach out and have those one on one conversation. 

00;12;54;23 – 00;13;13;08 

Unknown 

It’s just fostered differently. So if you just want to get by, you could. But if you really put yourself into it, there’s so much extra value in you have a program like this. So it’s very much student led and I think. Yes. And that goes into oh, use mission, right? Yes. So what kind of response have you got from the university? 

00;13;13;08 – 00;13;29;09 

Unknown 

Because I know we’re talking to the Walter Center as well today. So how does that all work with the university? So the Walter said has been really helpful in letting us in. They also our our graduate programs like they’ve been letting as you know, I’ll be like, okay, crazy idea of the day we’re going to break sort of thing. 

00;13;29;09 – 00;13;53;23 

Unknown 

It’s going to be great. Yeah. And they’ve been phenomenal. And I think the universities given us the latitude and freedom to come up with something innovative so long as we eventually do well with it, which which we are actually from the beginning. But still, you know, there is accountability. But I think, you know, all the way up through the president, they’re excited about the program. 

00;13;53;26 – 00;14;21;11 

Unknown 

Other programs with sort of different certificates have come out since then. And we really created ours was the first kind of where the barrier for the Higher Education Commission took us quite a while to get through that. And it was seen as, you know, just sort of different radical. How dare you change higher education? Yes, exactly. And now I think a lot more people are doing that work. 

00;14;21;11 – 00;14;51;12 

Unknown 

And so the university’s been just phenomenal and the college in particular has supported that innovation. I mean, you know, Mike Snavely, our director of kind of technology operations, really, he’s really a a teacher of instruction and he’s brought us all kinds of things, reviewed everything, looked at ideas. We have completely opposite opinions many times. And it’s great, right? 

00;14;51;12 – 00;15;14;12 

Unknown 

You know, healthy way. Yeah. It’s a beautiful thing to have people, you know, that kind of push you to be better. Jill Nice is the, you know, Assistant dean of of graduate program she’s just supported us in every way, including like the Passion Works event that you know, that we’re doing different things like that. I’m sure you want to do something on campus even though you’re an online program. 

00;15;14;12 – 00;15;35;14 

Unknown 

Absolutely. Why not here? You know, and so we’re just we’ve been really, really fortunate to have good leaders all above us and around us. That’s fantastic. Final question, kind of looking towards the future. So we’re three years and four years and we’re learning a lot of lessons. We’re developing this really nice online presence and I think we’re going in the right direction. 

00;15;35;21 – 00;16;01;00 

Unknown 

What’s your vision ten years from now? Are you still expecting this same capacity? Is it more students, less students? What do you think? Can I go back to the other question? Oh, yeah, for sure. So and when when we talk about sort of the best leaders and the support for innovation, I want to say that the actual students in the program have been some of the biggest innovators. 

00;16;01;02 – 00;16;22;05 

Unknown 

One of our first students that came in that had a PR background, she taught us kind of the branding and and all of that. You know, you with your kind of human human capabilities and podcast background and all these different things and how to start something up. So there’s room for your students who are passionate and who want to put the time in to lead us. 

00;16;22;05 – 00;16;47;12 

Unknown 

And I think that that is really unique where you get hands on leadership experience and they may very well change our direction, which is exciting for sure. So the program in ten years, I see that we will be quite a bit bigger, not big, but a lot bigger will And the way we’ll be bigger is will have different certificates now, so we’ll keep innovating and adding. 

00;16;47;12 – 00;17;04;22 

Unknown 

We have a couple more certificates that are already pass through and on the books, but we’re just not going to offer them until we get, you know, the critical mass to do so. And I think we’ll keep studying the market and figuring out whether the certificates that we thought of are the right ones or whether we’ll need to do other ones. 

00;17;04;22 – 00;17;29;13 

Unknown 

So I hope we’ll keep with the idea that it’s a scientific degree. It’s not just, you know, pick topics and management, but it’s learning these topics and pulling them together in a capstone experience where you really analyze and can use the different pieces, you know from again just to stick with say it’s, you know, h.r. And analytics where you’re using all of that together. 

00;17;29;13 – 00;17;47;04 

Unknown 

So we’ll stick with that, but they’ll just be different pieces, different inputs because, you know, we know that when when anyone graduates, they’re going to have to you know, what they know is going to last them a few years. But what they learned how to learn is going to last a lifetime, especially in data analysis and the tech world, like it changes so fast. 

00;17;47;04 – 00;18;05;15 

Unknown 

Absolutely. So no spoilers, but what are some of those certificates are considering? Have you do you have anything can you talk about it or is it still confidential? We do have some things. I think I’ll just wait on that. Okay. Nice. Well, keep posted that I’m anxiety here. And then final question. This is actually my final question now. 

00;18;05;17 – 00;18;27;06 

Unknown 

So I have been incredibly impressed with everyone from the faculty and the teams that I’ve talked to. I mean, just some very brief shout outs. I mean, Professor Paul Benedict, I just got out of his course and it was absolutely incredible. And going into it, it was a completely different structure than the course that you talk about or that Professor Kamali talked about. 

00;18;27;06 – 00;18;47;19 

Unknown 

Right. So they’re all different. They’re all unique. They bring their own attitude. So when you’re picking who you wanted on your Msme team, did you look at that skill set diversity, or like, how did you decide who you wanted to get involved? I absolutely did look at the skill set, diversity, and looked at people who are really good at communicating their trade, whatever it is. 

00;18;47;19 – 00;19;12;12 

Unknown 

Right, and I want to learn from them. So I want to see how they do it differently. And I would say, you know, again, our resource people, our instructional technology people are really there to help folks create courses that that reflect them. We all have some basics across the across the line, but we’re looking for great innovators who are you know, you’re taking part of that a dick now. 

00;19;12;12 – 00;19;49;09 

Unknown 

And he’s phenomenal. Ten years from now. He may be he will be phenomenal, but he may be doing different, you know, teaching in a different way. Right. And we hope so. Right. Like he’s somebody who’s going to keep trying new things. So we’re definitely looking for that. Absolutely. It makes a lot of sense. Is there anything else to talk about with an introduction of the missing program and just in the introduction to say that that first certificate where you come in management and leadership, if people want to try anything, a kind of low risk try and that most companies tend to pay for at least a small amount of education and most people seem to 

00;19;49;09 – 00;20;13;19 

Unknown 

be able to fit one certificate in within what they get in a year or the better part of it. So that is a certificate that that’s one that I lead with gregarious cleverness and Janet’s family. And we are three very different people. My gosh, a few different people. Right. And that’s how we picked the our I picked the certificate, people that have completely different backgrounds. 

00;20;13;19 – 00;20;41;23 

Unknown 

So you’ve got an economist, you have a cognitive behavioral psych analytic psychologist and myself on the sort of human behavior psychology side. So to put three very different people, three different, very different sets of information together to cover management and leadership, that that was our goal. I think we’re doing it well. And if you’re not sure what you want to do, join us there and see how it goes, see what you like. 

00;20;41;26 – 00;21;06;15 

Unknown 

And and, you know, you may just stay with us. This is a fantastic first episode of whatever we’re going to call this podcast. So is there anyone else you want to thank or any other closing thoughts? Absolutely. Dean Jackie Reece Ulmer has been supportive in every way. Like, what do you want to go learn? How can I help you to be as innovative as you want to be? 

00;21;06;18 – 00;21;40;16 

Unknown 

Chair on a risotto figure, Former Chair Ashley Metcalf put away before that, Gary Coons before that. This is really a collective of many, many people. And the key professors in it have been Mary Tucker and Hazel, Dad and Laura, Steve musser, Janet’s family, of course, that I mentioned, and the gregarious Lemonis that I mentioned. And then Tim Reynolds is joining us kind of in that in that strong crew. 

00;21;40;16 – 00;22;02;00 

Unknown 

And and of course, we have our our folks in different certificates. The h.r. Certificate is the only certificate that is just part of the msn. So that’s tim and tammy reynolds who many of you may have had in undergrad, a great duo and laura drake who is also phenomenal. So those are just some of the many people i’d like to thank.