Celebrating 35 Years of Strategic Leadership
Human resources management remains essential for every scalable business. What the entrepreneur conceives is often unsuccessful without the right growth and development strategy, as well as the right team members, developed within the most effective culture. That is the strategic impact of human resources (HR). The Hankamer School of Business Human Resource Management (HRM) major is approaching its 35th year of preparing Baylor students for that responsibility, and our dynamic plans promise even greater opportunities moving forward.
The HRM major is distinctive in several ways. Most prominently, HRM students have boasted a 100 percent job placement rate. We achieve this success through leveraging corporate and alumni relationships, creating opportunities for hands-on industry experiences, and establishing vital coaching and mentoring relationships. Last year, six industry experts directly coached our students, giving career advice, expanding students’ networks and creating job shadowing opportunities. To augment this further, all HRM majors receive a faculty mentor who provides counsel on topics including course schedules, locating internships, career development and placement.
Last spring, HRM students visited two unique site locations to observe HR practices within a business. One team of students toured the corporate and regional division headquarters of logistics juggernaut McLane Company. During this visit, the students were guided through the complex logistics operation and then shown how HR experts enact the strategy used in both maintaining and growing even the most complex organizations.
Later in the year, a second team of students conducted a site visit of Summit Electric Supply. Here, HR leadership explained the challenges facing evolving industries like electrical component distribution. This visit highlighted the importance of the cultural and training disciplines within HR, where the strategic direction, guided by a strong mission and vision, served to prepare for rapid industry evolution.
Both experiences demonstrated the vital role HR leaders play in developing the strategic direction of an organization. Both revealed the synergy between industry and academia upon which the HRM major is constructed.
We are excited to add an advisory board tasked with anticipating employment challenges, which will help guide course selection necessary to train the HR leaders of tomorrow. From its inception, the HRM major was designed to create proactive, strategic-minded, corporate leaders, focused on solving future challenges before they arrive. That remains our goal and our promise for our students. The ever-expanding corporate and alumni partnerships, along with our new advisory board, place us in an excellent position to ensure we deliver on that promise.
