A merger of school and stage
With the games of improv night, USF business students learn crucial lessons like teamwork.
By CHRISTINA REXRODE, Times Staff Writer
Published October 23, 2007
TAMPA - They spoke gibberish, tossed around imaginary red balls, pretended to be garbage trucks and bowls of Jell-O, and laughed at themselves a whole lot. For a handful of freshman business majors at the University of South Florida, Monday was improv night.
Throughout the year, they'll sit in lectures and learn in a traditional manner about traditional topics: how to decipher company filings, how to calculate shareholders' equity, how to dress for a job interview. Robert Forsythe, the dean of USF's College of Business, says they're learning important lessons on improv nights, too.
Old-school business professors will wonder if students can learn anything about business from a game called Bippity boppity boo, or if this exercise in improvisation is just drama club for b-school. But Forsythe and other organizers say the students are learning real-world corporate skills that a textbook or talking head can't impart, like working as a team, communicating without words, listening and being comfortable in front of people.
Improv nights are held once a month, and Monday's session was the third this fall. They are open to the 28 freshmen who are part of a program for high achievers called Bulls Business Community, which started this year. They all echo Forsythe's enthusiasm.
After last month's improv night, Dustin Tracy said, he was able to bang out a 500-word report in half an hour. "It was probably the best report I've ever written," said Tracy, an 18-year-old from Lakeland. "That's because this helps you come up with ideas right on the spot."
Christina Jaeger said the improv classes have helped her think on her feet when she's working at Hollister, a clothing store, and doesn't know how to respond to customers' unreasonable requests. "Especially the older people who come in shopping for their grandkids," said Jaeger, an 18-year-old from Daytona Beach.
Forsythe launched the improv program after meeting Kari Goetz at a luncheon in June. Goetz, who is the audience development manager at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, leads the USF improv nights.
The games, she said, are valuable as a business tool because they throw people into unfamiliar territory, which teaches them to think creatively. "It's not uncommon for them to pretend to be two french fries sitting in a McDonald's bag," Goetz said.
It's true that creativity is an increasingly valuable asset to corporations. (Google famously allows its engineers to devote 20 percent of their time to toying around with pet projects.) But the jury's still out on whether pretending to be a french fry will help a logistician confront the trends like sustainability or globalization that are obliterating old business formulas.
USF isn't the first to adapt the idea of Whose Line Is It Anyway? for the business world. TPAC hosts arts and theater games for companies hoping to get their employees to bond. Goetz's alma mater, the respected, Chicago-based improv club Second City, has a corporate arm that has worked with big names like Wachovia, Bank of America, JPMorgan, Deloitte and even the Federal Reserve Bank.
Christina Rexrode can be reached at crexrode@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8318.