Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Skylar Rolf, College of Business

Growing up near the small town of Tarkio, Missouri, Dr. Skylar Rolf, assistant professor of management at UHCL, experienced the business world on a personal level.  

"I'm very familiar with small business due to living on a family farm throughout my childhood," Rolf said. "It covered about 1000 acres of corn and soybeans and also included a small herd of cattle. During my formative years, my siblings and I engaged in several small business operations, including hog farming and selling sweet corn in our community. It was a lot of work."

While his classmates voted him the most likely to remain living in the local area during his senior year of high school, Rolf found education to be his calling, and that has taken him to new places. 

"When I came out of college, I was like, 'What do I want to do?'" Rolf said.  "And one of the things I noticed was that I liked college a lot. I liked the schoolwork a lot more than my friends, and so I made the comment: ‘Hey, if I stay working at a university, and they paid me for it, you know, I would do it.' And that's when I started thinking about an academic career." 

So, following his undergraduate degree at Northwest Missouri State University in management and marketing, he pursued a master's degree from John Brown University, which took him into the world of nonprofits. 

Rolf became the Chief Operations Officer of the Institute for International Medicine (INMED), a nonprofit organization that equips healthcare professionals and students to serve under-resourced communities around the world. While there, his role focused on logistics and the business side of the nonprofit. He worked for INMED for 6 ½ years.  

"It was a great opportunity to gain valuable experience in managing an organization and has served me well in my academic career as I try to integrate my industry experience with my academic expertise in the classroom," Rolf said.

During that time, he also tested the waters of teaching at Longview Community College where he taught as an adjunct instructor for two semesters. The experience solidified his desire to become a professor and led him to apply and earn his PhD in business administration from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. A 3-year stint at Pepperdine University preceded his application for the assistant professor position in management at UHCL.

"I was part of the hiring committee to hire Skylar," said Dr. Vanessa Johnson, associate professor of legal studies. "I was the professor who had to pick him up from the airport and take him to dinner. It was just the two of us, so we had this really good conversation. I could immediately tell that he was a fit for the management department. He seemed like he had the same sort of attitude as others in the department—just generous, collaborative, just a good guy."  

Dr. Kevin Wooten, professor of management, was Rolf's first department chair after his arrival to UHCL. 

"I've received thousands of application letters from potential faculty, and his was very, very clear about why he wanted to be a professor," Wooten said. "He had an incredible clarity about who he was."  

That clarity is evident in his classes as he focuses on accessibility, student engagement and retention. After midterm evaluations from students, he revises his courses and lets students know how valuable their feedback is to making the class a success. Interim Dean of the College of Business, Dr. Troy Voelker says that is one of the reasons why students would take Rolf's courses, even if they were at 2 in the morning, even though he would never offer classes at that time. 

"Students want to take his classes, not because they're easy, not because he grades high," Voelker said. "But because they feel like they got something out of the class, and that's the thing that I think matters. He's very thoughtful about the design of what he's doing and whether or not it works for students, that it helps them make progress. He uses his classroom in a way that helps make it worth the student's time to come to class in a world where the student doesn't necessarily perceive the classroom as a place worth their time." 

Using his industry experience from the nonprofit sector in the classroom has meant that his management classes integrate theoretical concepts with practical application using case studies, group work, and other activities, such as the Uber driver online simulation he incorporated into his Spring Management Theory and Practice class session that focused on decision-making.

"I always try to find something that engages them and is applicable to the content for the day that can kind of give us a launching point," Rolf said. 

Even though Wooten didn't attend the March 17 class, he understands how Rolf's non-academic experience and student focus impacts classes. 
"He has that perfect blend between practical experience and academic experience," Wooten said. "He worked in the real world prior to being more academically-trained and that gave him, I think, the ability to communicate application of concepts to the students and make them real as well as speak in terms of his own experience as opposed to reading off a PowerPoint." 

But in the end, it's Rolf's personal values of inclusivity, flexibility and focus on students that drive what he does in his research and in the classroom. 

"One of the things I appreciate about my students at UHCL is that many of them have industry or on-the-job experience, so what I teach is relevant to them," Rolf said. "I don't get a lot of ‘This class had no meaning for me because it's not anything to do with my life.' because they make connections between the theories that I teach and their own experiences." 

UHCL may be far from Rolf's upbringing in northwest Missouri, but Rolf, his students and his colleagues believe that he has found his calling. 

"My philosophy is you're going to perform well when you feel like your institution aligns with your strengths," Rolf said. "I felt like I would fit best at a university that empowers me to leverage my industry experience and academic interests, so that's why I'm here."