Getting down to business

When students step into Professor E. Lauck Parke’s classroom, they quickly discover that this associate professor of business administration means, well, business. “Students take my classes to learn how to be executives,” Parke explains, “and treating them like professionals is the first step.” Parke demands that students arrive on time and prepared to participate. No food, drinks, or hats are allowed inside the classroom. Students who protest these guidelines are offered a drop slip. “If you grab people by the gut,” Parke says, “the mind will follow.”

But Parke is no dictator, as former student and current teaching assistant, Julie Kimble ’00, will attest. “Lauck’s philosophy is, ‘We’re a team, so let’s cooperate,’” she explains. “That’s why he has such great relationships with students, and with people across campus.” Like Kimble, dozens of Parke’s former students laud him as their most influential teacher — the one who made them think both in and out of the classroom, and helped them to recognize their own potential. Parke’s commitment to teaching, his contagious enthusiasm and outstanding ability to inspire and motivate students earned him the UVM Alumni Association’s George V. Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award for 2000.

“I’ve found the fountain of youth in teaching,” says Parke, who began college in 1965 and says he never left. “I draw my energy from the vibrancy of this campus,” he says with enthusiasm. “There are so many energetic students, and such a youthful sense of ambition and purpose here, that it’s impossible to sit on the sidelines.”

Parke earned his doctoral degree at the University of Massachusetts and taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before relocating to Vermont and joining the UVM faculty in 1977. A key member of the design team for the UVM Center for Teaching and Learning, Parke is currently the CTL co-director. He and his wife Libby, who teaches middle school English in Essex, live with their two daughters in Richmond. “My family and my home are the loves of my life,” he says with pride.

On campus, Parke is notorious for an innovative, experiential teaching style that keeps students guessing — and thinking. A mnemonic whiz, he consistently amazes classes of up to 150 students by almost immediately learning their names and something about each of them. Usually attired in a suit and tie, which he calls “a professional’s coveralls,” he is apt to teach clad in a motorcycle jacket, an airline employee’s uniform, or a tuxedo and tails to emphasize concepts in business management. A typical course syllabus is peppered with texts by Machiavelli and Orwell as well as films such as Das Boot and The Bridge on the River Kwai. He has students study pop star Madonna as an example of a savvy marketer, and recently treated a class to a videotape of quirky talk show host David Letterman visiting General Electric’s stodgy corporate offices. “A perfect example of how two different corporate climates can clash,” Parke says.

Admitting that students “can become a little unnerved,” in his classes, Parke explains to students that “dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty is what an executive does.” Because managing the dynamics among co-workers and evaluating employee performance are among an executive’s toughest jobs, Parke says, he divides classes into small groups that research and report on real-world business issues throughout the semester. Students receive a significant portion of their grade based upon their entire group’s performance, so it’s vital that each member pulls his or her weight. “There have been situations where a member slacks off and is fired by his or her group,” Parke explains, a situation that serves as a wake-up call to the delinquent student and teaches group members important lessons in group dynamics.

And sometimes students turn the tables on the professor. Parke laughs as he recalls the time a group enlisted University Police Services to stage a mock arrest of a student who was driving Parke to evaluate an off-campus presentation. “Two hours later, after the car had been confiscated and the students had made several phone calls to try and figure out how they could still manage to make their presentation, I realized I was being had,” says Parke with a smile. The students’ point? Demonstrating how managers deal with crises, put out unexpected fires, and still get the job done.

One of the key conspirators in that incident, third-year student Maria Mastroianni, stopped by Parke’s office at the spring semester’s end. “I’m leaving for home in twenty minutes,” she explained breathlessly, bidding Parke a fond farewell and, as promised, delivering the recipe for her caramel brownies. Parke thanked her, wished her a good summer, and advised her in a fatherly tone to drive carefully. Such concern is typical for this professor, who not only teaches from the heart but also forges a personal bond with every student. “He listens,” is the common chorus one hears from his advisees. Revered as a tireless advocate for his students, Parke works with his advisees help them gain access to classes, internships and job opportunities. In Kimble’s case, for instance, he made sure she earned academic credit for internships in the university President’s Office and in UVM Government Relations. He also networked with another former student to help Kimble land a position with an advertising firm in Atlanta that she will begin in June.

“My Scottish grandfather used to say, ‘Everybody you meet has something to offer you, laddie. It’s your job to figure out what that is,’” Parke says, noting that when he was a student, he rarely turned to an adviser. “They’d just pull out a list of the course requirements, which was pretty useless,” he recalls.

“The first question I ask a student is, ‘How do you want to show the special things you bring into the world?’” Parke says. By encouraging students to talk about their lives, their likes and interests, Parke empowers them to take control of their curricula. He also helps them choose courses that will make them attractive candidates to potential employees after graduation, and that simultaneously keep them engaged and excited about their studies. “My students are required to take one fun class per semester,” he says.

Mentoring, for Parke, doesn’t stop with graduation. He has been known to attend family funerals of former students, and once drove five hundred miles to attend a student’s commencement ceremony. After twenty-three years of teaching, he has a worldwide network of grateful former students who credit his guidance and support for instilling the self-confidence and abilities to launch successful careers.

Five or six years ago, Parke recalls fondly, one former student sent him a Christmas card that read, “Professor Parke, I hate you.” The student went on to say that, after analyzing popular films in Parke’s class, he couldn’t simply relax and enjoy films anymore; instead, he continued to isolate their structure in terms of power issues, team building, leadership, and group dynamics.

“I’m not a moviegoer by nature,” says Parke, “but I have accumulated a library of videotapes I use in class, many that have been recommended by students who will tell me enthusiastically, ‘You’ve got to see this!’” Parke says that he started out in 1977 showing sixteen-millimeter films “of talking heads explaining business concepts,” but now relies on contemporary commercial films that he says are more effective teaching tools and are more relevant to students’ lives. He also reinforces classroom concepts with web-based material that captures the interest of the MTV generation.

Although his past honors include the Kroepsch-Maurice Award for Excellence in Teaching, two nominations for the Carnegie Foundation Professor of the Year, and several faculty appreciation awards from students, Parke says the greatest compliment he can receive is to hear from students who “have gone to the next level, and apply critical evaluation techniques in their daily lives.”

“Students today may look different,” Parke says of the youth of the twenty-first century, “but they are the same as they were twenty years ago. They are interested in learning. And some students will stand on your shoulders and go on to accomplish great things.” VQ