Entrepreneurship Professor Receives Award for Curriculum Innovation

Jeremy R. Brees, Ph.D., assistant professor of management, marketing and entrepreneurship at The University of Scranton, received the Kania School of Management Advisory Board Award for Curriculum Innovation for the 2015-2016 academic year.

The Kania School Advisory Board established this award to encourage and reward faculty who successfully propose and implement effective innovations in the curriculum. The award program particularly values innovations and enhancements in interdisciplinary and integrated learning.

In his courses, Dr. Brees uses an experiential style of teaching with reflection and two-way dialogue. Along with traditional lecture and multimedia presentations, he incorporates experiments and activity-based exercises followed by student-led discussion and peer-to-peer feedback. His use of these techniques is most extensive in the Entrepreneurial Mindset course he teaches, which requires students to “develop a pitch, find an entrepreneurial mentor and interview random strangers about turning an obstacle into opportunity,” among other assignments.

“This course in particular is highly participatory and requires engaged involvement by the students,” said Dr. Brees.

Dr. Brees also applies what he learns from past classes, continually tweaking and revamping courses year to year to be more effective.

Dr. Brees joined the faculty at The University of Scranton in 2012. Previously, he has worked for Bellsouth Mobility DCS, Cingular Wireless, BellSouth Advertising and Publishing and Intuit in the fields of sales, advertising, human resources and technology integration.

Dr. Brees’ academic research focuses on the role of human perception and its influence on workplace behavior. He has published research on personal accountability, attributions, psychological entitlement and abusive supervision in such journals as the Journal of Management and the Journal of Organizational Behavior.

Dr. Brees earned his bachelor’s degree in business management from Appalachian State University, his MBA from the University of Arizona and his doctorate at Florida State University.