Photo: University of Delaware/Evan Krape

Dr. Oliver Yao, who was appointed dean of the University of Delaware’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics in 2023, says he’s excited at the potential he sees to put UD and Lerner on the leading edge of financial technology (fintech) and increased research productivity.

Yao came to UD after 20 years at Lehigh University, where his final role was overseeing graduate programs and graduate students. He was attracted to UD’s vision for collaboration on technological innovation, featuring researchers, industry and the community.

Yao sees UD and the Lerner College as a critical partner to the region’s economic growth. He says the College has a responsibility to the community to provide opportunities for economic development with startup companies and the ability to influence policy with cutting-edge research.

Lerner has 163 faculty members serving 3,300 undergraduates and 1,000 graduate students, with 17 undergraduate majors and 16 minors, nine master’s programs and four doctoral programs. Yao expects those numbers will grow quickly over the next few years. In the interview with Delaware Prosperity Partnership that follows here, he shares why.

We’re focusing on being innovative and entrepreneurial. We’re developing greater technology competency in our majors and minors in fintech, adding more experiential learning opportunities and more global perspectives. We’re also adding new workshops on topics around generative artificial intelligence (AI).

Our Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurship (CEEE), Office of Graduate and MBA Programs and a cluster of faculty members has relocated to the FinTech Innovation Hub, which is located on the STAR Campus. We’re going to move the Ph.D. program to that building as well.

Fintech is interdisciplinary in our field. We have faculty from management information systems, finance and management to collaborate on research. We can also collaborate with our College of Engineering colleagues who are on the same floors with us and with companies on the STAR Campus. CEEE has access to resources to grow our economic education and financial literacy programs for K-12 schools in Delaware.

They don’t really get into the curricular issues, but they want to help. We hope to introduce more leaders to our Executive Mentoring Program and Lerner Edge programs, which support professional and career development guidance for our students. They also are reinforcing the importance of being at the forefront of cutting-edge technology.

Everywhere I go, I hear businesses say they need people with generative AI skills. One executive said, “If you graduate any of them from Lerner, I’ll hire them.” So that’s a clear message to us. We need to revise our education to include high-demand market skills, including people and leadership skills.

I want to move Lerner’s research forward. Finding more grants and donations will be very important to support faculty research. I told my internal Dean’s Advisory Council that I want research to be the first thing we talk about when we meet, before we move on to other topics. That’s how I can show that this is my top priority.

In general, I cannot tell our faculty what kind of research they need to do. But I can invest in grants for specific topics. For example, we’re going to appoint six FinTech Scholars and move them to the FinTech Innovation Hub. I do encourage our faculty to do more high-impact research that addresses grand challenges today. For example, I attended a research symposium about gender equity and equality where our researchers and faculty talked about their work.

Continuing to contribute, give back and being a partner with the local community. CEEE is a valued resource to the Delaware school system and in the state with programs such as Teach Children to Save Day.

The Lerner Diversity Council focuses on curricular and co-curricular transformation and strengthening community outreach and improving engagement. It partners with the Delaware LYTE program to familiarize high-school students with the University and the application process.

We are also partnering with the new Center for Accelerating Financial Equity (CAFÉ) in the FinTech Innovation Hub that supports early- to growth-stage fintech companies creating innovative solutions to advance financial wellness for underserved and low- to moderate-income communities. The first cohort of companies will arrive in early 2024.

And we plan to use more adjuncts from local businesses, particularly for special topics that our faculty may not have expertise in and those that expose our students to an entrepreneurial mindset.

Redefining creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship is a core part of UD’s strategic plan and central to expanding experiential learning at Lerner. The Geltzeiler Trading Center enables finance students to use the same commercial software that Wall Street traders use to analyze stocks and make transactions. The Blue Hen Investment Club allows 50 students to manage a real-dollar investment portfolio. They have continued to achieve their goal of outperforming the S&P 500 Index for a long time.

Vita Nova is a student-operated and -managed restaurant on campus. We offer hands-on hotel management experience in the Courtyard by Marriott hotel and teaching facility on campus. The top-ranked Horn Entrepreneurship program is the creative engine for aspiring innovators and entrepreneurs with its pitch competitions and much more.

We must provide enough opportunity for all students to have these experiences. That’s the challenge I’m going to take on over the next few years.

On a broad scale, I would say generative AI. Our management information systems (MIS) faculty are the most familiar with this technology. However, all your faculty and students need to know what generative AI can do because it impacts all facets of business and the economy.

We’re in the process of creating a graduate certificate focusing on generative AI for business. We’re starting new courses, and we’re going to do more workshops on generative AI to make sure our faculty, staff and students are familiar with the technology.

In the past, our students have used Excel and Python to create models to solve business problems, but those applications may soon be obsolete. When students graduate, employers won’t be looking for Python and Excel skills. They’ll be looking for generative AI modeling skills. I want our students to be able to list those skills on their resumes.

I want us to have three to five fields – we’re not large enough to cover everything – where people point to us and say we’re the authority. We have some great researchers, but I want Lerner’s research profile to rank among the most productive in the country. During strategic planning this spring, I’ll be asking our faculty to help me decide on areas beyond fintech. That could include finance, economics, leadership, corporate governance, supply chain management, accounting and compliance.

I would like executives from at least Boston down to Washington, D.C., saying they must go to Lerner and the University of Delaware to hire students. And we want a reputation that will attract more great professors, great faculty, great staff and great researchers to the University.

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January 11, 2022 –

It’s been well documented that employers are struggling to find qualified workers or help existing employees get better jobs. That’s why states and municipalities focusing on the intersection of education and workforce development are seeing economic development success.

Forward-looking states see an aging workforce in key industries and students with skills that could translate to the changing needs of the workforce. They focus many of their efforts on middle and high schools and on retraining the existing workforce.

As Delaware eyes one of the biggest capital budgets the state has ever seen, Luke Rhine, director for career and technical education and STEM initiatives with the Delaware Department of Education, predicts that with a federal infrastructure bill in place, “connectivity, cybersecurity, those types of things are all going to be underlying infrastructure issues, which means we’ll see a lot of IT jobs directly connected to the expansion of that infrastructure.”

Rhine’s area is already supporting the change in the environment with:

• College and career-ready programming in middle grades. “Our middle grades focus is really around student identity development, helping young people establish confidence and develop an identity within their schools, their communities and their future workplaces,” he says.
• High school, which is centered around the state’s Delaware Pathways strategy. “It’s helping students determine what kind of post-secondary path is right for them – the job that they want to hold and the career that they want to pursue or whether they want to move into a two-year degree or a four-year degree or a credential program.”
• Post-secondary education. This includes support of the state’s Registered Apprenticeship system and an increased focus around stackable credentials that count toward the pursuit of higher-level credentials and degree models.

“All of our initiatives are essentially employer-driven, which gives them substantial influence over education and training models,” Rhine says. “And then we work with post-secondary institutions and K-12 institutions to think differently around how we structure relationships. And that helps us recruit young people who see themselves in Delaware and as part of a community.”

Rhine says the state’s work in the higher education space is really an adult career pathway strategy that helps adults move as quickly as possible through higher education to pursue gainful employment.

For the credential model, the state is primarily working with four institutions, including the three vocational-technical (vo-tech) schools – Polytech, Sussex Tech and New Castle County – which each have an adult education division that runs the state’s Registered Apprenticeship program and short- and long-term credential programs.

“We want to ensure that a person who acquires a licensed practical nurse (LPN) credential is able to move immediately into employment and then that LPN credential allows them to navigate higher levels of education,” Rhine says. “The LPN’s credential also carries credit so a student can, with an LPN certificate, take less time to complete their associate’s or bachelor’s degree in nursing.”

Accomplishments in Workforce Development

During his seven years in his current role, Rhine says he’s most proud of three accomplishments:

1. Broadening the definition of career and technical education (CTE). “People often think about CTE as areas like carpentry or cosmetology,” he says. “We are still focused on skilled trades and human services but have also diversified the types of industries and occupations that we support from a college and career-ready standpoint. It’s amazing what young people are doing in terms of their ability to code or automate or even use a drone to collect data for agriculture or construction. It’s very interesting how young people are translating their skills into data science. They’re asking themselves what they want to become and what steps they need to take to get there.”
2. Student outcomes. “There are two outcomes that I’m most proud of,” Rhine says. “The first is the percentage of students who demonstrate college- and career-readiness, who are completing advanced coursework while still in high school. That can be a student who is part of a youth apprenticeship program, they’re taking college courses while still in high school, or completing AP, they’re in a paid work experience. Prior to last year, that number had increased to 58% from 38% over three years. The other thing that I’m really proud of is placement. More than 75% of our students are seamlessly entering higher education, with an increasing percentage who choose to simultaneously work, essentially working while upskilling.”
3. Expansion of instructional programs. Rhine says more than 70% of youth in grades nine through 12 are enrolled in any given year in a career pathway, with two-thirds of graduating classes completing the program. “These are young people who have college credit, who have credentials, who have work experiences in the industry that they want to move into,” Rhine says. “These experiences help to shape who they are and accelerate their trajectory and network. And it’s a great way in which we can help to meet the future needs of Delaware employers at scale and across the state.”

But Rhine believes something else also has spurred greater interest in the state’s post-secondary programs.

“The last 18 months have caused adults to reflect on whether they’re on the right trajectory, if they have the relationships they want and if they have the relationship with their employer that they want,” he says.

Rhine’s team, working in partnership with the state’s technical school systems, are ready to do a full rollout of the youth apprenticeship program, with high school seniors sponsored by an employer and paid a living wage – the average is $17-plus an hour, with wage increases as they progress through the training program – while they’re simultaneously moving toward high-school graduation.

“We’re working with our three Technical School Districts as well as Delaware Technical Community College in partnership with the Associated Builders and Contractors, Delaware Contractors Association, the Delaware Restaurant Association and Tech Impact,” Rhine says. “We want employer-facing groups to recruit employers, and we want educational institutions to prepare more young people to this level of standard and then meet in the middle. So lots of young people, lots of employers, lots of talent. Marry that, away we go.”

Rhine also believes more people will be choosier about the jobs they want.

“I think you’re going to see increases in experiential learning models in higher education, or residency-type models in higher education, because people want to know what’s on the other end of that training program,” he says. “If you want to be a doctor, you do a residency. If you want to be a nurse, there’s a clinical experience. We’re seeing this in education as well. We launched a residency model where we’re actually paying students who want to move into education as resident teachers to work under the wings of a teacher mentor for a much longer period of time than was traditionally associated with student teaching.”

Rhine notes that Delaware schools like DelTech and Wilmington University found that a number of students in their programs needed remedial education, which don’t provide class credit. He said the statistics show that students who move into remedial courses are less likely to complete a credential or degree within a cohort graduation rate. So DelTech, as an example, has completely revamped its remedial education policy to simultaneously enroll youth and adults in credit-bearing math and language classes with the remedial programs and providing support to help the student get the credit toward certification or a degree.

Rhine says in-state schools are also embracing the idea of credit for prior learning.

“If credentials are gateways, then degrees and credentials should align,” he says. “If an older Delawarean enrolls in college with 20 years of work experience, our schools are trying to figure out how that work experiences translates into clock hours or credit hours so they don’t need to sit through things they already know how to do. That enables them to move faster in an apprenticeship program or earn a degree, and the research is very clear: Institutions that have more robust credit for prior learning policy see people graduate faster. It’s common sense.”

Rhine said his area is supporting other state agencies like the Department of Labor, which received funding to look at the H1B1 visa policy and a companion grant to expand IT training programs and a separate grant to expand Registered Apprenticeships. Rhine’s team also received an apprenticeship expansion grant focused on youth. There is great coordination across agencies, he says.

Rhine’s team also has worked to revise Regulation 525, which governs the administration of Delaware’s career and technical education programs.

“Regulations are like guardrails on a road,” he says. “What we’re trying to do with Reg 525 is to align the progress we’ve made with state’s college and career readiness agenda and how we think about CTE programs more globally.”

Rhine says Delaware’s size enables it to adapt and react quickly – and also provide scale.

“Every employer wants access to talent, and every school system with post-secondary institution that we work with wants access to employers who want to integrate into their community,” Rhine says. “Every single one.”

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