Professor William Koehler

Where can a degree in business management take you?  According to Professor Bill Koehler, anywhere!  “Business principles are a part of every activity in which you're managing people and resources,” he says.  “What’s really interesting for me is that areas that thought of themselves as being outside of business – like nonprofit organizations and academia – are realizing that incorporating business management techniques and approaches can allow them to do even non-business kinds of things in a more effective way.”

As Chair of the Business Department and Dean of the School of Management at Bay State, Dr. Koehler sees a Bay State education as a unique balance between a classic college education and, as he puts it, “a very professionally oriented career school. We provide the same sort of broad-based and intensive business education that students will get at a number of schools,” he says, “But the difference here is that we approach teaching with a lot more of an individual focus and with a greater emphasis from start to finish on ‘What are you going to do next and how does this all tie together?’"

So that his students get a more realistic feel for the business world, Dr. Koehler promotes internships as the best way “to bring our students more into the workplace as a classroom.”  Unlike internships at other colleges that are little more than “an opportunity within a big company to file and photocopy,” he says that Bay State student interns have a much more hands-on experience. “Our students on internship tend to do meatier kinds of things during internships, where they can take ownership of smaller projects and their input is actually heard,” he says.  “Our employers instantly recognize Bay State students because they can't wait to get out and work.”