Consulting with Clients

I don’t think of my students as customers. Yes, they pay tuition to my university, which in turn pays my salary. I’m not selling a product – “an education in chemistry” – although marketing departments in tertiary institutions sound like they’re selling something, an experience of some sort. Am I selling expertise? I do know much more about chemistry than the average person. And thanks to many years of teaching, I have some expertise being a seasoned instructor of chemistry.

Perhaps I should think of my students as clients. In this case, I might be a consultant. That’s the suggestion made by Robert Talbert in a blog post I recently discovered. He portrays the consultant-client relationship as a cooperative effort towards a shared goal. He writes: “It implies a close and productive working relationship with students, one where I am working with students rather than against them, treating them not necessarily as equals but as expected partners.” In contrast, “a customer is participating in a transaction in which something of value (money) is being exchanged for a finished product.”

I certainly can’t download chemistry knowledge into my students’ minds Matrix-style. Nor can I guarantee that if the students do the reading, pay attention in class, take good notes, ask questions, answer questions, study, revise, visit office hours, that they will necessarily do well – although if they do all those things, their chances of doing well are much greater. There is no guaranteed product in exchange for money. Or time. Learning is a funny process, and the “product” not so easy to measure. Yes, there are skills learned and honed in practice, and perhaps ‘thinking’ is a similar muscle to be flexed and exercised.

I’m wary about being considered a consultant. That’s likely due to my bias (healthy in my opinion) against the purported usefulness of management-consultancy and their fads. I have not honestly met many truly knowledgeable management-consultants from storied firms, but perhaps it’s because I’ve not met many to begin with and our orbits typically do not intersect. I should be clear that I’m strongly in favor of consulting with experts, and I would call them consultants, but these folks are typically working directly in their fields of expertise, and have many years of experience. They are in sharp contrast to the coterie of young, fresh, flashy, jargon-speaking, data-toting, stereotypes, that I have met from brand-name companies. There’s usually one old hand in the group, to assuage the client-administrators, but once the “slick presentation” begins (you’ll know what I’m talking about if you’ve sat through these), my skepticism returns in full force.

As both a professor and a consultant, Talbert summarizes (in his blog post) six steps in his process of helping out clients. I particularly like #5. “During the workshop, I work actively with the client (group) and make sure everything runs as planned. Which it never does, because people do not know what they truly want when they first talk to me… So, I kiss my plans goodbye and improvise on the spot with the goal of helping them want the things they truly need.” This describes what sometimes happens in class. Perhaps not often enough. Maybe I stick through my vaunted plan-for-the-day a little too closely, and sometimes don’t quite meet the students where they are. They think they know what they want to get out of the class. I sometimes forget that we have different ideas of what an education in chemistry means. I’m thankful to Talbert for the reminder, and I might be a little closer to embracing my role as a consultant-professor.