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Diversity - the Business Perspective:
It's Diversity of Thought, Not Just of Skin Tone
by Pam Bixby Losefsky
I was listening to a National Public Radio broadcast in December. The reporter sought the reactions of students and professors from UT Austin on the Hopwood decision and their thoughts on what the end of Affirmative Action means for Texas.
One student, sounding frustrated and angry, insisted that diversity had nothing to do with the quality of education or the work environment. She gave the example that when a brain surgeon is performing an operation, the amount of diversity in the operating room has no affect on the outcome.
Many companies do not agree. Just ask Cargill. Cargill is a Minneapolis-based international marketer, processor and distributor of agricultural, food, financial and industrial products. "Cargill looks at diversity as an essential business tool," says Jim Larsen, manager of reengineering and information systems for Cargill's Worldwide Audit. "On any given day, someone at Cargill could interact with people from any region in the world. Having a diverse workforce helps us leverage our individual experiences and ensures we will indeed think globally and act locally."
Diversity, for Cargill, means both Americans from different racial backgrounds and those who have had work or life experiences in other countries.
To ensure that they do have a diverse workforce, Cargill has been recruiting heavily at UT for more than 15 years. "A high percentage of the UT student population has lived or studied in another country or speaks a non-English language," he says. "The global perspective of the students is a great match with what we need in our young professionals." That's an understatement considering that Cargill has operations in 72 countries and business activities in 100 more.
"It is critical for us to be able to hire young professionals with the cultural and language backgrounds that will help us achieve our goals in Latin America and other parts of the world," Larsen continues. "Ensuring UT is able to attract and admit students with diverse backgrounds is the obvious first critical step in that process."
To that end, UT has become one of Cargill's "Core Schools." "We are working harder to develop relationships with the schools that can help us meet our business objectives," says Larsen.
What does that mean? It means that Cargill puts its money where its mouth is. Within a $150,000 grant to the school is an on-going provision to recruit Hispanic students into the business program. The bulk of the grant goes to fund the Cargill Fellows Program -- a program that provides significant scholarships of $4,000 each to students studying abroad, particularly in Brazil and Thailand. It means money for faculty foreign exchanges, to engender the internationalization of the entire school. And it means internships, both domestic and abroad, for several UT students every year.
Claudia Castro, a senior marketing major, is one business student who has benefited from Cargill's extensive relationship with UT. She completed an internship at Cargill de Venezuela in Caracas last summer. "My experience with Cargill was phenomenal," she exclaims. "I was able to have first-hand experience with the trading and marketing aspects of their business. Now I feel I have a new set of tools to help me get to where I want to go: experience, cultural awareness, and an outstanding educational background."
Another UT student successfully wooed by Cargill is Karlo Morgado, a PPA student graduating this May who interned with Cargill in both Minnesota and Chile. Morgado is Mexican-American and speaks Spanish fluently. He said that it was obvious how valuable the recruiters considered him to be. "They were the most accommodating of everyone -- they changed their schedule when I told them I had to leave town on a certain day," he remembers. "My grades were the first thing they looked at, but another big factor was my Spanish."
With these internship experiences under their belts, Castro and Morgado become much more attractive in the marketplace as a whole, not just to Cargill. But the company's generosity paid off, because Cargill is now their first choice as an employer. Morgado has already accepted a position which he begins in June. "It was really the only offer I considered," he says. Castro anticipates a Cargill position when she graduates as well.
While the Texas Business School's strong academic offerings are what first attract employers, it's the response to industry needs in other areas, such as diversity, that keeps good companies coming back, becoming more involved, and investing more in the school. To wit, the Cargill Fellows Program grant was approved at a level 50 percent above the recommended amount for what the company considers to be its first-tier Core Schools.
"A number of factors contributed to the higher level of funding," says Larsen. "The Fellows Program needed a critical mass of funding to make an impact among the students and faculty. Other factors we looked at were the prior success at the school, the fact that we recruit for three job families at the Business School -- accounting, merchandising, and IT -- and the potential for an ever improving relationship with UT."
Cargill reps have told Claudia Castro, "The company is impressed by our students' well-rounded capabilities and has acquired a profound loyalty and appreciation for The University of Texas." That appreciation and respect also overflow into other areas. For instance, Cargill supported a Business School program that introduces the basics of futures and options contracts to FHA and 4-H high school students who would use them in their future agricultural occupations. "The industry perspective and market update provided by the Cargill people was a great help in adding a real world perspective to our program," says Mickey Williams, finance professor. "Cargill played a great role in making the program a success."
Companies realize how homogenized would be our convictions, our way of thinking, if we never encountered someone different from ourselves in school or the workplace. And they are sincere about partnering with and rewarding, in far-reaching ways, those institutions that foster heterogeneity in the student body.
Affirmative Action or no, it is imperative that the Texas Business School continues to strive toward diversity, if for no other reason than to satisfy such market demand.
Diversity truly does have a place in education.
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
