Kimes to explore 'virtual teams' as Menschel Teaching Fellow
By Daniel Aloi
Sherri Kimes wants to leverage new technologies and the connected world to give students “a virtual international experience” and enhance teaching at Cornell.
Kimes, a professor of service operations management in the School of Hotel Administration, will pursue this work with Cornell’s Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) through next fall, as its 2014-15 Menschel Distinguished Teaching Fellow. Her project will involve virtual teams, new models and platforms for international learning and collaboration, and potential partnerships with universities and businesses worldwide.
“We’ve got a very big push for internationalization,” she said. “There’s Cornell Abroad, but not everyone can do that. For our students who will be working in some international context after graduation, how do we help them to work better in a global economy?”
In 2008 Kimes taught a course in Singapore for a joint master’s degree program with Nanyang Technological University. “Half of the students were in Singapore and half were in Ithaca; there was a 12-hour time difference,” she said.
“Technology wasn’t then what it is now. In the first class, the camera was over the door. But now, for example, ILR has amazing technology, with bridging capability for 24 different locations. We could develop courses for organizations that have offices all over the world.”
Kimes will develop prototype models for virtual learning and collaboration “that can be replicated across schools or across departments,” she said, and is looking into “how to team with those universities we have a Memorandum of Understanding with,” for example in Singapore, Canada, Chile and Cuba.
A recent conference on teaching in emerging markets showed her that “Pakistan, Bangladesh and other countries all want their students to have international experiences.”
Her investigation has involved old-fashioned networking, discussing ideas for the project with students, clients, colleagues, alumni and information technology professionals.
“I have friends and former students who work in virtual teams,” she said. In Nigeria, “where almost nobody has the Internet, but everyone has a mobile phone,” she said students of a colleague at a Lagos business school created a mobile phone app they could use for their classes.
“There’s a very high ‘cool factor,’” Kimes said.
She envisions a long list of possibilities – from “Skype calls with [research] co-authors who have never met face-to-face” to courses conducted for students around the world. “Maybe they’re in Western Africa, looking at the role of art and culture,” she said. “Or in Romance studies – advanced Italian students here matched up with students in Italy taking advanced English. I talked with [Vice Provost for International Affairs] Fred Logevall about this. What if he taught a course on the Cold War, with students from the affected nations?”
“I can see this tying into Cornell’s social mission,” she said. “What if we teamed our students up with an NGO like EGBOK Mission? They work with kids in Cambodia who didn’t go to high school.”
Kimes came to Cornell in 1988; her teaching and research interests and consulting work are in revenue management, forecasting and “how to make operations work more efficiently,” she said. She has served as interim dean and director of graduate studies at the School of Hotel Administration.
The Menschel fellowship engages distinguished faculty members in promoting the university’s teaching mission. Fellows develop a project in collaboration with CTE, with support from the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education.
“We are thrilled to have Sherri Kimes join the CTE as our Menschel Distinguished Teaching Fellow for the coming year,” said CTE Director Theresa Pettit. “I look forward to working with her and tapping into her creativity and innovation as a teacher.”
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