Faculty Q&A: Linda Richelson
Richelson is an Associate Professor of Business Administration. She previously held careers at several major national companies.
She has been teaching at the college level for more than 30 years and has decades of real-world business experience with major national companies, including Gillette, Hewlett Packard, and the consulting firm Drake Beam Morin. She earned an MBA and a Master of Science in mental health from Southern New Hampshire University.
An academic adviser at Great Bay, Richelson works with business department chair Lynda Bonneau and adjunct faculty members to offer a dynamic, hands-on educational program that prepares students for real-world business experiences. In addition to teaching at Great Bay, she has taught at SNHU, Merrimac and Endicott colleges, as well as other community colleges.
Richelson recently spoke about her job, her career, and the opportunity to study business at Great Bay.
Q: What does the business department at Great Bay do well?
A: Lynda and I and the adjunct faculty have been engaged in teaching and in corporate life for years. We bring our experience into the classroom. That is important. Students receive not only the philosophy of education, but they receive an applied education as well. They can see what we are doing in class applied in the real world, and that is significant for students. A lot of time they will look at what they are learning in a class and ask, ‘What am I going to do with this?’ We show them what they can do with this.
Q: What is the hallmark of the department? What does it do well?
A: We prepare student for the outside world. We prepare them to be the good workers they want to be. We want them to take initiative to learn and then apply the skills they have learned to their work, and we want them to bring a sense of ethics and social responsibility to their work. We want them to have good communications skills, so they can communicate effectively and can articulate what their needs are and what their business is all about and what it does well.
Q: How has the business curriculum adapted to the times we are living in at the moment, with the uncertainty of the pandemic, the upheaval in the job market, and other factors that impact business as we know it?
A: We spend time with businesses in the area to determine what their needs are and how we can best fulfill them. We’ve reviewed all of our courses over the past couple of years, and we have added one course, an Ethics and Social Responsibility course, which is very important in today’s environment. We are constantly revisiting everything we do. One thing Lynda and I are well known for, we change our courses every year. We have changed how we deliver our material, as well. We have adopted open educational resources and selected textbooks online that are free to students. If a student doesn’t have to pay for a textbook, that’s meaningful.
Q: Why is this a good time to be study business?
A: Business is involved in anything a student chooses to do. Whether they work in an office, in healthcare, whether they become an electrician, a lawyer – no matter what they do – business is a part of their world. We want to continue to stay on top of the requirements of the outside world. It is very important for us to prepare our students for whatever profession they would like to enter. That is a major focus for us.
