The Executives-in-Residence Program has taken new form at UT, but it still offers incredible opportunities to students in the undergraduate and master of business administration programs.
Richard Reizenstein started the original program 34 years ago as a course geared toward uniting UT business students with accomplished professionals in the business field.
The original program was an honors course, offering one-on-one mentoring with business professionals who would come to visit and make presentations to students in EIR. In its primary form, EIR featured a small-group setting and dinners where students could interact with business leaders.
The program has been hailed as so effective that it is being carried on, even as its founder enters retirement.
While Reizenstein is retiring, EIR has been left in the hands of J. Paul Dittman, who will carry on the program.
Dittman will teach Business 417, which is a leadership course associated with the program.
“We discuss writings on leadership and also have six senior executives come in and talk about their leadership philosophies with the class,” Dittman said.
EIR has taken on a new shape, uniting with the Global Leadership Scholars Program in the College of Business Administration. Though the program will be laid out in a slightly different way, the partnership between the two programs hopes to be even more beneficial to UT students.
“EIR has been discontinued as a separate class, which is the form in which I taught it,” Reizenstein said. “EIR has been modified to its new format, targeted to the Haslam Scholars and MBAs, but as a program which is part of the Global Leadership Scholars, not a separate course.”
Executives will now come and speak in undergraduate classes, conference with MBA students, offer small-group sessions and even continue the dinner tradition of the primary program.
The program offers a different type of opportunity from those in other universities. While at larger schools, top executives will lecture to halls full of students, here at UT students have the opportunity to actually interact with adept businessmen doing what they hope to be doing in the future.
“The executive can give personal career advice to selected students,” Dittman said.
Students who are interested in taking part in this program can apply to the Global Leadership Scholars Program in the spring semester of their first year at UT. This program has a distinct curriculum of business study to prepare students to work in an increasingly diverse global marketplace. The program brings together faculty and students who share these same interests.
This Global Leadership Scholars Program offers the class taught by Dittman in the senior year of undergraduate course study, and students in the program develop a senior thesis presentation and present it to their peers. There are also a great number of opportunities for international study and internships.
EIR functions as part of UT’s nationally ranked undergraduate business program, listed as 48th by U.S. News and World Report.
