FACULTY PROFILE
Name: Barbara Burgess-Wilkerson
Position: Associate professor of management
College: Business Administration
Department: Department of Management and Marketing
Thompson Scholar Barbara Burgess-Wilkerson observed in her business classes that millennial students may be very social on social
media but have a tougher time dealing with face-to-face interaction.
Burgess-Wilkerson, an associate professor of management and director of student professional
development in the College of Business and Technology, wants to help this generation of students to prepare for their professional lives
and to work with people of all ages. She will spend the next few months developing
an emotional intelligence project to help millennials identify their areas of strength
and weakness.
She has found that millennials are receptive to coaching and don't see advice as a
weakness but as a path to greatness. They also look to their professors to guide them
and act as mentors who talk with them about their futures.
Meanwhile, employers say that coaching develops the skills of top talent, minimizes
conflict, creates loyalty and improves employee engagement. "With a trend toward career
advising, universities are better served when faculty and staff are armed with skills
to assist students in understanding how emotional intelligence impacts academic and
career success," Burgess-Wilkerson said.
She administered a prototype test for students at Winthrop in 2014 called the Wilkerson Emotional Intelligence Test for Academics and Careers (WEITAC). She is working to refine it to create a database to store, manage and analyze
data and to generate student summary reports from the revised prototype.
As part of her Thompson Scholar work, she wants to create a comprehensive student report with more specific strategies
for development and then train other faculty/staff members on campus.
Her project also may be shared as a template for strategies for student academic and
career success for other institutions of higher learning.
Burgess-Wilkerson came to Winthrop in 2006 and has worked on emotional intelligence
research since 2009.
She earned a B.S. in social work-psychology from Edinboro University, an M.S. in educational
administration from Gannon University, and a Ph.D. in administration and policy studies-social
and comparative analysis from the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to coming to Winthrop,
she was an organizational consultant for 18 years serving the greater Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania and surrounding areas.