MOD program at BGSU under new leadership

Jane V. Wheeler has accepted a two-year appointment to direct the master of organization development program at the University.

Jane Wheeler

The first university to award a degree in the field, Bowling Green offers an 18-month executive MOD program as well as a program for full-time students through its College of Business Administration.

Accredited by AACSB-International, the Association to Advance College Schools of Business, the program is widely known for pioneering the concept of empirically based change and sponsoring a “best practices” conference that attracts participants of national stature each spring.

For the past two years, Wheeler has headed Bowling Green’s Institute for Organizational Effectiveness, which provides expertise in managing and improving organizational performance to business firms, governmental agencies and not-for-profit organizations. She will continue in that role as well as continuing her teaching duties.

The new MOD director spent more than a decade working in the telecommunications industry before moving into higher education. The first woman to lead Bowling Green’s MOD program, she replaces Steven Cady, who is on leave this year.

Wheeler joined the University’s management faculty as an assistant professor in 1999, the same year she finished her doctorate in organizational behavior at Case Western Reserve University. The Mount Holyoke College graduate has an MBA from Boston University and a certificate of special studies in administration and management from Harvard University.

In addition to holding a series of management positions with AT&T and, later, with NYNEX Corp. in Boston, she has done consulting for such clients as Key Bank, Alcoa Forged Products, Catholic Health Care, Merrill Lynch and the Cleveland Children’s Museum. She also has experience as an executive coach.

For her dissertation, Wheeler examined the impact of interactions between the individual and the social environment on self-directed change and learning. She also has studied and written about managing self-managed work teams, using emotional intelligence, and teaching effectiveness.

“What brought me to Bowling Green is how the (MOD) program integrates theory and practice,” says the new director. “We’re working hard to bring students out into the field to apply what they’re learning. For those in the executive level, we ask them, ‘How can you take what you’re doing in class back to work with you?’”

Wheeler has more than a half-dozen projects under way to add knowledge to the field of organizational development. They range from a study of the effectiveness of traditional motivational theory and practice in today’s changing workplace to an examination of the potential impact of age and gender on corporate training initiatives.

Juried articles about her research findings have appeared in the Academy of Management Journal, the Journal of Management Education and Sloan Management Review, one of the field’s leading journals.