FSB lecturer working to help students, others grow in human resource roles
Professor, department working to raise profile of growing program
FSB lecturer working to help students, others grow in human resource roles
Tom Mobley is an assistant lecturer at the Farmer School of Business Department of Management, a 1986 alum of Miami University, and runs a human resources consulting company.
And he is on a mission.
“I want Miami to be known as, one, the place to come to if you want to study in the HR arena. I want us to be the premier undergraduate HR program around. Number two, I want employers going, ‘Hey, we got to hire somebody for our HR department. We got an entry level job. Let's call Miami.’ And number three, I want us to be the place where those HR professionals come to when they need support.’ Hey, we got this idea, we got this project. Can you help us?’”
Mobley knows that human resources might be one of the more misunderstood parts of the business world. “If you ask the average person why they want to go into HR, they usually say something along the lines of, ‘Well, I like working with people,’” he said. “You better like people if you're in HR, but even more than liking people, you need to enjoy solving people problems. I tell people that means you enjoy solving problems involving people. If what you like doing is solving people's problems, you're going to be really frustrated.“
Mobley, who joined the Farmer School faculty just over a year ago, is not just focused on creating better human resources students but helping HR professionals on and off campus.
“So the Human Capital Management and Leadership program has gotten itself designated by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) as ‘academically aligned’ and one of the things that that does for us is it allows us to offer courses for recertification credits,” he said. “So now what we're able to do is, if we offer a workshop or a class, we can offer that for recertification credit.”
Certification and recertification in HR, like in other industries, focuses first on demonstrating knowledge and skills, then demonstrating that a certified professional is continuing to stay up to date in their field. What’s different about this particular process is that Mobley’s students are on both sides of it.
“In my class, students were tasked with coming up with a leadership topic and creating a one-hour workshop that would be of interest to the HR community. And because we're academically aligned, I'm able to make these presentations available for recertification credit,” he said. “We partnered with Butler Warren County SHRM, who offers a leadership webinar. Our students do the sessions, and then the HR professionals who attend get a credit. Butler Warren SHRM charges a nominal fee to attend this workshop, but what they do with that money is they put it into a scholarship fund.”
That fund helps pay for students like Lauren Paulus to take the SHRM Certified Professional exam. This semester, she was the first to complete Mobley’s own certification workshop – a $700 workshop that Mobley lets students take for free -- and pass the exam thanks to the scholarship.
“Passing the SHRM-CP felt like a huge accomplishment because I spent countless hours studying for the exam through Tom's exam preparation course, the provided study book, and answering practice questions,” Paulus said. “I was happy to have passed the exam in December, so I could focus on getting as many SHRM credits as possible during this past semester toward the 60 recertification credits I need to get every 3 years.”
Another group that’s benefiting from Mobley’s efforts? Miami University’s own human resources professionals.
“Last semester I had the opportunity to present some real-world problems that we face in Miami HR and his students pitched solutions to those concerns. I was able to bring along some of my staff to attend their presentations and they enjoyed the opportunity to hear some fresh solutions to common HR problems,” Miami University Director of Employment Rebecca Denney said. “This year, we have continued to work together. Professor Mobley has been helping us with recertification credits by inviting us to training sessions and events that provide us with opportunities to learn and engage with students and staff while simultaneously earning credit.”
The students putting together and running these workshops and training sessions are learning HR and showing what they’ve already learned at the same time. “When they know that they've got to give the presentation to HR people, it changes the game. They elevate their presentation another notch. And the feedback that I get from the HR people, they're just continually just blown away by the quality and the content of the material that our students can put forth,” Mobley said.
Even as a new faculty member, Mobley said he's received plenty of support for his efforts from the Department of Management. "I have had the opportunity to be part of a lot teams during my career, and honestly, the HCML faculty are by far the best group of people I have ever had the opportunity to work with and we are working together to move our HCML program forward,” he said.
“As organizations navigate rapid shifts in workforce expectations, the demand for innovative talent strategies has never been greater. In response, we are exploring a Human Capital Management-focused Center for Excellence to position our department at the forefront of this evolving field," department chair Xiaowen Huang said. "Leveraging our faculty’s expertise and industry alignment, the center will prepare students to be beyond ready for the future of work, while also serving as a resource for organizations and communities through research, partnerships, and experiential and service-learning opportunities."
All of which helps Mobley get closer to completing his mission. “When that high school student says to their guidance counselor those magic words, ‘I don't know what I want to do, but I think I want to do something business-y involving people,’ I want that counselor's light bulb to go off and say, ‘You need to talk to Miami. That's the place, because they're doing things for their students that will prepare you for a career in that very thing.’”
