Faculty Honored for Innovative Teaching: VR, Cutting-Edge Tech, and Entrepreneurship
In the business world, innovation is critical to an organization’s long-term success. The same is true of the business classroom. Just as successful companies adapt to meet the needs of changing markets, effective educators adapt how and what they teach to meet the needs of modern learners.
At Bentley, we’re fortunate to have faculty who embrace creativity and cutting-edge technologies. Who draw upon experience, research and imagination to create dynamic learning environments where students are actively engaged and emotionally invested. Who inspire their students to think bigger and more boldly about the future of business — and their own place in it.
Each year, the university recognizes faculty members who are going above and beyond to transform their classrooms and empower the next generation of business leaders. Read on to learn more about the recipients of our 2024 Innovation in Teaching awards:
Laure Astourian had a clear vision for her experimental French language course, Francophone Entrepreneurs (MLFR 398). “I wanted to give my students an opportunity to improve their speaking and listening skills while also connecting them with New England’s substantial Francophone entrepreneurial network,” she explains.
Astourian achieved this by inviting members of the local business community — including Ludivine Wolczik, director of the French American Chamber of Commerce of New England (FACCNE) and Anaïs Lambert, chef/owner of Boston restaurant Café Sauvage — into her classroom. She also partnered with Bentley’s Entrepreneurship Hub to create a first-of-its-kind podcast competition, where students explored business themes through interviews (in French) with successful Francophone entrepreneurs. (You can listen to their podcasts here.)
“I was deeply impressed by their projects, the preparation of which was no easy task,” Astourian shares. “In addition to securing interviews, they had to pick the best excerpts and edit them into a cohesive episode with an overview and commentary. Their personalities came through in each episode which, to me, is the ultimate sign of success: When a student can speak in a foreign language yet still come across as themselves.”
The students were equally impressed by Astourian’s approach. “This project taught me the importance of taking risks, casting a wide network, being proactive and thinking creatively, all of which are essential traits of an entrepreneur,” says Brad Barzanji ’26, a Finance major who decided to minor in Entrepreneurship Studies after taking the course.
“I appreciated the opportunity to learn from distinguished guest speakers with proven success in the French business space,” says Zoe Grondin ’27, an Honors Program student and double major in Finance and Language, Culture and Business who landed an internship with FACCNE after connecting with Wolczik during the class.
“My goal was to create a French-language course that would be genuinely valuable to Bentley students and aligned with their professional goals,” Astourian says. “I’m deeply gratified to see this mission accomplished.”
Ahmet Kurt is committed to empowering the next generation of business leaders through cutting-edge technologies.
“To succeed in accounting, having strong data analytics skills is no longer optional; it’s a must-have,” he says. “I tell my students that being a CPA opens many doors, but being a CPA with proficiency in data automation and visualization tools will maximize their career opportunities.”
That’s why Kurt incorporated Alteryx, one of the industry’s leading data analytics platforms, into his Advanced Accounting (AC 412) course. “Typically, this class focuses on journal entries and financial statement preparation rather than data analysis,” he explains. But with firms increasingly migrating from legacy systems to cloud-based technologies, Kurt knew Bentley students would benefit from guided, hands-on instruction.
Alteryx allows users to quickly and easily prepare, merge and analyze data from multiple sources without having to learn advanced programming skills, he explains. Businesses currently use the platform to automate tasks like data extraction and reconciliation, perform advanced sampling techniques and identify anomalies or patterns in financial records — processes that save time and improve accuracy and transparency.
After introducing students to Alteryx, Kurt made micro-credentials (also known as digital badges or certificates) a course requirement. These short-term, specialized programs validate specific skills within the Alteryx platform, such as data preparation and workflow automation. Recognized by top companies and industry leaders, “micro-credentials offer students a practical way to build their data analytics résumé and show employers they’re ready to apply technology to real-world business challenges,” he shares. Kurt has since introduced Alteryx in other courses, including Accounting Information Systems (AC 340); to date, more than 100 students have earned Alteryx certifications.
Non-Accounting majors have benefited, too. As one of Bentley’s inaugural Presidential Faculty Fellows, Kurt expanded access to micro-credentials beyond his classroom, developing a series of asynchronous certification modules in Alteryx and two other cloud-based data analytics platforms, Microsoft Power BI and Tableau. Any student can access these programs through Brightspace, the university’s learning management system (LMS). Currently and collectively, he notes, these modules have more than 600 users.
“This data analytics certification series is one of the most rewarding projects I have worked on,” Kurt says. “By earning these certifications, Bentley students aren’t just building technical skills — they’re also developing the kind of analytical, data-driven mindset that modern businesses demand.”
In Tamara Ledley’s Global Climate Change (NAS 348) course, students aren’t just learning about the effects of rising temperatures and shifting ecosystems — they’re helping shape how the world understands them.
Ledley, a founding member and former chair of the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN), was looking for a way to engage business majors in conversations about global sustainability. Then she discovered the Wikipedia Student Program. Run by Wiki Education (Wiki Edu), a nonprofit arm of the influential online encyclopedia, the program works with colleges and universities across the United States and Canada to enlist students as content editors. Guided by their professors, students learn how to conduct research using reliable, verifiable sources, then share their findings publicly by editing Wikipedia entries.
For Ledley, it was essential that students understand the business case for climate action. “I have students select a company from the S&P 500 and task them with exploring how the company is impacting climate change, how climate change is impacting the company, and how the company is addressing those impacts,” she explains.
A primary source for their research is the Bentley Trading Room, which features 24 Bloomberg terminals. These powerful databases give students access to real-time financial information and analysis related to corporate sustainability, including individual companies’ greenhouse gas emissions, climate risk disclosures and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings. Students are also required to meet with one of Bentley’s research librarians to identify and evaluate source materials.
Beyond updating Wikipedia, Ledley asks students to complete a final paper and presentation based on what they’ve learned. “For the paper, I ask students to offer opinions about specific actions their company could take to adapt to climate change risks and opportunities,” she shares. “This helps them understand the importance of integrating climate change information into a company’s decision-making processes.”
The presentation challenges students to consider their personal and civic responsibilities as soon-to-be college graduates, she notes. “I ask them to think about the kinds of companies they want to work for and what they can do, as entry-level employees, to contribute to the conversation on corporate sustainability.”
Betsy Stoner spends a lot of her time in Florida and The Bahamas, engaging in research to assess how climate change is affecting diverse marine environments.
In 2022, she decided to offer her students a firsthand look at these aquatic habitats. Collaborating with the Cronin Office of International Education, she developed “From Shore to Sea: Understanding Caribbean Ecosystems & Their Services” (NAS 444), an 11-day faculty-led course in The Bahamas where students learn about nutrient pollution, overfishing and other human-induced environmental stressors that affect local biodiversity — a focus of Stoner’s National Science Foundation-funded study on ecological memory in sub-tropical seagrass beds.
Providing intensive, hands-on learning activities like this “helps students engage more deeply and meaningfully with the course material than they ever could with a textbook,” Stoner explains. Although her course was open to any Bentley student, she understood that financial, logistical and physical concerns can keep many from participating in study abroad programs. Since she couldn’t bring every student to the Caribbean, Stoner opted for the next best thing: bringing The Bahamas back to Bentley through VR-mediated undersea explorations.
Assisted by Bentley colleagues Jon Ericson, an associate professor of Experience Design (XD), Steve Salina ’91, principal engineer for instructional media and Gaurav Shah, senior director of Bentley’s Academic Technology Center (ATC) and User Experience Design, Stoner created fully immersive, 360-degree digital videos of three distinct marine environments: mangroves, seagrasses and hard-bottom habitats. She then shared the videos with students in her Oceanography (NAS 340) class — marking the first time in Bentley’s history that a virtual reality (VR) experience produced entirely by university faculty and staff has been used for classroom instruction. Stoner also enlisted Liz Paushter, director of education innovation and learning for Bentley’s Badavas Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning, to ensure the videos were deployed successfully in the classroom.
Stoner’s students found the VR experiences inspiring and engaging, according to a survey she administered after they’d completed all of the modules. “Overall, students felt that the visual and immersive nature of the experience made complex topics more accessible,” Stoner shares. “They also felt more emotionally connected to the material, with many expressing a desire to participate in similar VR experiences in future courses.”
Stoner believes that experiencing marine environments in such a unique and memorable way can empower students to advocate for climate change solutions. “I truly believe that businesses have the capacity to address the significant environmental problems facing our planet,” she says. “The majority of my students aren’t seeking careers in marine biology, but they are passionate citizens of the world who want to know how they can be a force for good in terms of environmental and social justice.”