Returning to the Source

Alumni find the university is always a fount of knowledge and experts

By Colleen Kearney Rich, MFA '95

When Nancy Woolever, BS Management '83, MAIS (Human Resources) '93, was looking for someone to teach a business law course, the first place she thought to look was her alma mater.

Woolever is manager of education for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), which sponsors the SHRM Academy. The academy offers a broad spectrum of highly focused one-day courses that provide human resource professionals with a working knowledge of key business topics.

“We have a two-part mission: to serve the professional and to advance the profession,” says Woolever. “Many people in HR come from all walks of life. They don't usually come into the profession through a traditional business unit. Yet, this is the environment in which they work, sometimes alongside the CEO and CFO. We try to teach them the business skills—and the thought behind them—to succeed in this environment and work successfully with the other members of the C suite.”

“We had done some market research regarding what classes we should be offering through the SHRM Academy,” says Woolever. “Two of the topics we came up with were business law and business decision models.”

When Woolever was discussing the possibility of adding the courses with coworker and SHRM Academy manager Jeanne Morris, BS Accounting '91, Woolever told her the best business law teacher she ever had was Rick Coffinberger, an associate professor of legal studies in Mason's School of Management (SOM). So they decided to ask him

Woolever contacted Coffinberger and set up a meeting with him in January. Morris has been working with Coffinberger to develop the course ever since. The one-day course, Business Law for HR Professionals, will debut in November at the academy.

In addition, Morris says that Coffinberger was able to connect them with Mahesh P. Joshi, associate professor of management in SOM, to teach a one-day course on business decision models that they had also hoped to offer.

Now Mason is prominently displayed among the universities from which the organization draws academic talent. These universities include Georgetown, George Washington University, the University of Michigan, Cornell University, the University of Southern California, and the University of California–Los Angeles.

The Mason spirit is strong in SHRM's Professional Development Office. A number of the people working with Woolever and Morris are Mason alumni. Exhibits manager Triscia Doxey McGuinness graduated from Mason with a BA in Communication in 1992; Emile Davis, the exhibits assistant, received his BS in Marketing in 2002; and Sherrie McManus Thuot, who is SHRM's educational products manager, graduated in 2001 with an MA in Telecommunications.

And, according to Woolever, the Mason connections don't end there. Mason's Office for Continuing Professional Education has begun offering a number of SHRM's courses. In addition, several of the university's own human resource professionals have taken SHRM training and certification programs.

To learn more about SHRM, visit their web site at www.shrm.org.

Nancy Woolever and Jeanne Morris