In each issue, Redbird Impact highlights a faculty or staff member who exemplifies Illinois State University’s core value of civic engagement. The fall 2024 Campus Hero is Dr. Peter Kaufman, marketing professor in the College of Business (COB).
Kaufman has been recognized with numerous awards during his time at Illinois State, including being named COB’s MBA Professor of the Year three times and the winner of the college’s Amar Kamath Faculty Innovation Award twice. Educated at Babson College, the University of Florida, Tufts University, and the University of South Carolina, Kaufman came to Illinois State in 2004. He teaches several classes in marketing, and his enthusiasm for his work is plain to see.
“My favorite thing about my work at ISU is being able to help students be successful in a career that they are passionate about,” he said.
In support of that mission, Kaufman is also co-founder, with Katie School of Insurance and Risk Management Director Jim Jones and several other faculty, of the Innovation Consulting Community (ICC). Undergraduate and graduate students come from across six colleges to participate in ICC and gain course credit toward graduation and help organizations with various projects.
Founded in 2016 and interdisciplinary in nature, ICC projects specifically address the areas of professionalism/work ethic (initiative), oral and written communications, teamwork/collaboration, and critical thinking/problem solving—all skills that employers are interested in seeing in a potential employee. It’s a practical, hands-on approach that inspired the ICC credo, borrowed from Confucius: “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.”
Ideas for the projects come from faculty, friends of the program, and alumni, and they are as varied as the clients themselves. ICC over the years have ranged from firms specializing in mining, cybersecurity, sustainability, and professional sports teams to organizations focused on
civic engagement.
While Kaufman, the son of professional educators, has a background in business, he believes it’s important for his students to experience what it’s like to work with nonprofits. For one, it’s an area of interest for him and for his students. With civic engagement in mind, Habitat for Humanity, health care organizations, NGOs in Asia, and schools have been past clients.
The following Q&A with Kaufman was conducted during the summer. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
You had a previous life working in the business world before entering academia, can you talk about that experience?
My parents were both educators, and they encouraged me to pursue things that I found interesting. When I was younger and before I started college, I started a small business and really enjoyed engaging with customers and solving their problems. During college, I enjoyed the more creative side of business and focused more on marketing and international business classes. After college I studied and worked in Mexico two times, each for a year. The first year I traveled on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship throughout most of Mexico and met a wide range of people (businesses, government officials, unions, etc.) to discuss their perspectives about doing business with the U.S. The second year in Mexico on a Fulbright, I worked at DuPont in Mexico City writing business cases on areas of strategic importance for the company that leaders in the company would then address. It was a humbling experience as I didn’t have an engineering background, and DuPont at that time was heavily oriented in this direction.
What made you change careers to academia?
In between the two Mexico experiences, I worked in sales at Nabisco in Florida. Working in sales for a large public company was an important experience for me as I needed to further develop my planning and management skills and draw upon my creativity to solve problems to meet my sales objectives. I decided to pursue a career in higher education largely due to my parents’ influence. I sought more freedom to explore topics that I found of interest and that I believed would be of interest to students. I also believed that my work experience at both consumer and industrial companies in the U.S. and outside the U.S., and my early life experiences starting and running a business, would help me connect with students and research relevant questions.
Where did the idea for the Innovation Consulting Community come from, and how did it start?
It was created from a blank sheet of paper. About eight years ago, a couple of faculty members in the College of Business and from across campus and myself realized that organizations were asking our classes to solve their problems, but many of the problems were interdisciplinary spanning multiple classes. We brainstormed and created the Innovation Consulting Community, which enables students from any major and grade level to team up. Over the years the ICC has helped hundreds of students accelerate their professional development and has been overwhelmingly positive for them. The provided faculty and practitioner coaches for the student teams also learn about the latest challenges facing organizations, so there is a professional development benefit for them as well.
ICC clients are not strictly corporate, so can you talk about some of the projects with a civic engagement focus?
The ICC since its inception has always been about identifying projects that are from very different areas. For the ICC, working with my colleagues in the College of Business and from across campus to identify those types of projects has been really important as many students and organizations have substantial interest in that work, as do I. Some previous projects include mapping ISU’s sustainability assets, developing a feasibility plan for ISU to have on campus a freight farm, essentially a shipping container with technology for students to learn how to grow fresh produce inside, exploring ways to help farmers in Africa and their rural communities foster greater resilience and better manage climate-related risks, how to sustainably use dredged material from Illinois waterways for the construction industry, developing a plan to bring more fresh and local produce to ISU students, aiding the local Bloomington-Normal Ecology Action Center with recycling insights and strategy, and helping a Peoria company that focuses on plant-based textiles.
ICC students have worked with MLB, the NBA, and the NFL and on projects related to financial services, health care, education and the environment. Why is such a range important?
We intentionally identify projects from diverse areas as we want students from across the University to engage, team up, leverage their unique skills and interests, and help organizations with challenging projects. We try to identify projects with strong societal benefits and those addressing cutting-edge technology issues. We have also completed several projects for ISU, which is especially satisfying to help the University.
As Students line up to be part of the ICC, what do you hope they take with them into the working world?
ICC students experience something similar to a very high-quality internship. They frequently comment after the project’s completion how challenging it was but are grateful for the experience. The project’s topic, working with their teammates, and client contact are very similar to their future work experience after graduation. Some students use it as a platform to apply to a graduate program. More specifically, students regularly meet with their client, set project goals under the direction of a student project manager, and work to solve unstructured, real problems. We consistently hear from those who participate that when they interview for a job, hiring managers almost always ask about the ICC experience listed on their resumes. Students who meaningfully participated on the consulting team have a great story to tell.
