Joan Shapiro Beigh

Dr. Joan Shapiro Beigh joined UWM in the fall of 2023 as teaching professor at the Lubar College of Business. She previously taught management, organizational behavior, organizational change, creativity and entrepreneurship courses at Loyola University Chicago and DePaul University. At both schools, she received awards for teaching innovations and for a teaching style that is inclusive, respectful, and sensitive to students’ needs. She has published papers in Personality and Individual Differences and the Journal of Business Management & Change and has delivered professional development workshops and presented research papers at the Academy of Management Annual Conference, the Academy of Management Teaching and Learning Conference, the Management and Organizational Behavior Teaching Society, and many others. Prior to academia, Joan had a successful consulting practice in organizational communication and stakeholder feedback research. She holds a doctorate in business administration from DePaul University, a master’s degree in organizational communication from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, an MBA from Northeastern Illinois University, and a bachelor’s degree in English, also from Northwestern University.

TEACHING AND LEARNING PHILOSOPHY

In teaching face-to-face, hybrid, and online courses, I endeavor to ensure that every student is engaged, informed, challenged, and receives teachings and material they will find useful and applicable in the workplace, in life, and in future academic pursuits. I build ethics, respect, and sustainability into every course I teach and strive for an atmosphere of psychological safety. I also care about the whole student, connecting students who reach out to me with university resources as they need them. My courses teach and role model the value of celebrating individual differences and their contributions.

To accomplish these goals, I focus on developing students’ course content knowledge through evidence-based lectures and colorful slide presentations that are punctuated by exercises, activities, role plays, reflective questions for students to wrestle with in groups or individually, and occasionally, guest speakers. My teaching philosophy rests on experiential, active learning and the constructivist ideology of building on what students already know. I also believe in harnessing the power of divergent views to help students learn from each other and develop mutual respect and openness to ideas different from their own. I also use gentle techniques to help introverts feel comfortable expressing themselves in class, such as through small-group discussions with report-outs and low-pressure perspective taking.