What was once called the personnel department, dealing with people and paperwork, is now known as human resources, a term coined by Leonard Nadler in his 1970 book “Developing Human Resources.” The field of human resources, or HR, has evolved to include working in an operational capacity and implementing a company’s strategies. Aside from on-the-job training and years of general workplace experience, where do professionals learn HR skills? Area universities are providing educational opportunities.
Since the late 1990s, the Executive Education Center at the University of Kentucky’s Gatton College of Business and Economics has offered an HR management certification. The continuing education credit program has helped more than 400 people at the University of Kentucky prepare for the exam to become certified as a professional in human resources (PHR) or a senior professional in human resources (SPHR). Those exams are administered by the HR Certification Institute, based outside of Washington, D.C.
Within the College of Business and Technology at Eastern Kentucky University (EKU), the bachelor’s degree in business administration has an option in human resource management. Created by Mike Roberson, Ph.D., the program began in 1994. In the early years, EKU had a hard time getting students placed in anything other than entry-level positions, because HR positions were traditionally staffed by senior members of corporations.
“A lot of organizations didn’t think they needed to hire people with specialized training in human resources,” Roberson said. “That has changed. We see our alumni proudly serving in all kinds of organizations throughout the Bluegrass and beyond.”
In addition to an introductory HR management course, students take four advanced courses in labor relations, compensation management, employee recruitment and selection, and human resource development.
“If you’re looking for three cheap hours in advanced management, you’ve come to the wrong class,” Allen Engle, Ph.D., tells his students. “It is labor-intensive work.”
Roberson added, “They leave here and know they’ve been through one of the most rigorous programs they can imagine.”
Engle and Roberson, professors of management, are the primary faculty members in the HR program. Of the 111 graduates in the HR option’s history, 34 have graduated in the last four years. Many of the 407 management majors in the same time period took advanced HR courses.
“This is an indication of where we are today and what we expect the next few years to be like,” Roberson said.
The EKU professors combine theory and application in each course. They update content on a regular basis.
“We constantly ask ourselves, ‘What is relevant for today’s students?’” Roberson said.
For many years, a human resources manager was “a smart person who got along well with others,” according to Roberson. As the field grew in complexity, so did the need for formal training.
“The international aspect is becoming bigger and bigger,” Engle added. He and Roberson have made presentations at academic conferences in Europe, China and other countries, and each has written for numerous scholarly publications in recent years.
In Lexington, Louisville, and Fort Knox in Kentucky, Sullivan University offers bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in human resource leadership, through an e-learning program that began in 2008.
“The future is online; that’s where people are learning,” said Teresa A. Daniel, Ph.D., dean of the program. “We cater to a working student.”
The HR leadership department has close to 300 students, with the largest concentration enrolled in the doctoral program. Daniel’s courses involve weekly reading assignments, videos and discussions via WebEx or Skype, plus occasional one-on-one phone conversations.
“The technology is so good now you can virtually be anywhere,” she said.
A lawyer by trade, Daniel worked for Ashland Inc. for 15 years when the company’s headquarters was still in Ashland, Ky. She was transferred as a divisional vice president to the HR department because that field was becoming so regulated. Then she went back to school for a doctorate in human and organizational systems and has led the Sullivan HR program since 2010.
She has seen a couple of changes in the field of human resources, from the need to possess strong business skills to being able to interpret data.
“Sullivan is one of the first programs in the nation to have a course devoted entirely to analytics,” she said. In the master’s and doctoral programs, the course centers around data-driven, evidence-based management.
“In some organizations, it’s still very administrative and transactional,” Daniel said of human resources — hiring people and processing benefit claims, for example. There are other companies that really understand and embrace what an HR professional can do: “Projecting needs, getting the right people in, doing things that keep the organization flourishing, continuing to update people skills and creating a culture that makes people want to be there and be more productive,” she said.
Sullivan’s courses undergo constant review, and each one is redesigned intentionally.
“We take it apart every three years, to deliver content that keeps students up to date,” Daniel said. “We’re delivering people who can hit the ground running when they get hired and know what they’re talking about.”