Lawrence Aronhime, a senior lecturer in the Whiting School's department of Entrepreneurship and Management, brings a wealth of personal experience to the business and accounting classes he teaches at Hopkins.
A graduate of Hopkins, he spent several years in the private sector as a business consultant and an accountant before returning as a professor.
The News-Letter talked with Professor Aronhime this past Tuesday to discuss his time as a Hopkins student, his experience in business and teaching and his take on the current state of the U.S. financial markets.
News-Letter (N-L): Since you were also an undergraduate student here at Johns Hopkins, could you tell us a little about how the school was during your student days, how things have changed, and how things have stayed the same?
Lawrence Aronhime (LA): The thing that stays the same is probably the most obvious - people work really hard here. The students probably, at least from what I've heard, have the same complaints now that they had when I was an under[grad], that there wasn't a whole lot of fun here. You know, if you wanted fun, you went down to College Park at Maryland, or to the Naval Academy sometimes - but students here work hard. They've always worked hard.
One of the great changes that I've seen that's truly amazing is the incredible diversity of the campus now. It was obviously a much less diverse place in the 1970s than it is now. But it's marvelous to see people from all over the world, from all kinds of backgrounds here now.
Obviously that's a change. I guess that's one of them, the other is that when I was a young man, we actually believed we could escape the military-industrial complex.
You all are a much savvier generation, a much, if I can use that word, wiser generation - you have much greater exposure to the world, and a part of that is a function of the diversity of the campus. Just the sense of globalization, that sense of being a global citizen, and the sense of needing to care deeply about everything and everybody in the world, is a big change.
N-L: I understand that you pursued an English degree here, is that correct?
LA: Yes, for which I have no regrets.
N-L: So then could you speak a little about how you ended up in business, and what the connection is between that?
LA; I left here to be a school-teacher, and that is what I did - I had various types of different student experiences. When I was an undergrad I taught in a variety of environments, and I left here specifically to be a teacher. And I did that for eight years or so. And I left teaching for the simple reason that I couldn't even come close to paying my bills.
And so, if you want to pay your bills, you go into business, one way or the other. And I looked around, and it seemed to be that the easiest, simplest route into business, and therefore into the middle class, was through accounting. So I studied accounting and became an accountant. I spent maybe a year working as an accountant, before moving into consulting and the corporate side of life.
N-L: How did you end up coming back as a professor at Hopkins?
LA: When I was working as an accountant and consultant, I obtained a teaching job in a couple small schools actually, one of which was the evening college at Hopkins, and from there I ended up in the Whiting School, and that was 2000, 1999; and I taught at some other colleges around also. But once I came here, I basically left everything else.
And I've always taught a variety of subjects in the different places I've taught.
N-L: So then you've taught accounting classes as well.
LA: I've taught accounting, managerial accounting, management, and that has led to some other classes, such as entrepreneurship and of course Intro to Business, which dominates my life almost, as you can imagine.
N-L: So then, from your time in business, do you have any bit of wisdom that you could share?
LA: Well, there's no alternative [to going into business], which makes you a wiser generation than we were - you know you're going to end up in business. If you pursue medicine, one way or another, it's a business; academia is also a business; It's all business, and you all get that in ways we simply didn't when I was younger.
The only advice I would ever give somebody is you better chase what you love - life is just way too short for anything else, and you need to be passionate about what you do and love what you do, and that's worth any sacrifice to be doing day after day what you love, whether it's engineering, law, medicine or whatever.
N-L: On a different note, do you see any hope for American business in these very uncertain times, especially in light of the major financial crisis going on right now?
LA: Business never goes away; it will not go away. And while I think the American economy may present fewer opportunities in the big banks on Wall Street, there will be lots of new opportunities, clearly, in things like alternative energy, healthcare, public service - maybe it's possible that even government work will become more popular now as a career path for really talented people in ways that it wasn't in the past. There's no end of opportunities - because there are fewer jobs in one sector means there will be more in other sectors.
N-L: Now you have spoken about how you have a particular interest in the agricultural industries now as a professor - how did that play into your time in business?
LA: When I was a consultant, I met a banker from Farm Credit Bank, which was a semi-government bank that made loans to farmers and tried to help farmers - so through him I did a lot of consulting work for agricultural entities, and, combining that with a love of gardening, and it was just an industry that I came to love, and the people I met in it were just really good. So that's how I ended up there - it was funny, because it was through a banker that I ended up becoming involved in agriculture.
N-L: And even though you have not been directly connected to the industry for several years now, have you noticed any major changes to agriculture over the years? How has the industry been affected lately?
LA: Most of the farmers that I worked with - the world of people just entering farming without a college education is basically gone. Most of the people I worked with were graduates of schools of agriculture, Penn State, University of Maryland, colleges out west - very well-educated people, and they approached farming not just as something that they loved but also as a business. They ran it based on those core principles of business: resource allocation, profit maximization, efficient use of resources, all those things. They looked at P&Ls [profit and loss statements] all the time.
But they were in an industry that they felt passionate about, and even if they could have made more money elsewhere, again, it always comes down to chase things you love. Obviously you have to pay the bills, but chase the things you love.
So what I've seen is better educated farmers in the younger generation of people I was dealing with, and the other thing I've noticed is the consolidation; the ones who are successful are generally ever larger farmers, so [they make up] economies of scale, and on the other side, niche opportunities in organic farming and people who supply organic produce to restaurants, Whole Foods, things like that. So you see larger and larger farms and then also these interesting niche opportunities.
N-L: Could you talk a little more about the business minor?
LA: A minor in business makes a lot of sense, while a major, for an undergraduate degree, with a couple of exceptions, like accounting, does not, because the minor gets to do what you all should do - round out your education to prepare yourselves for the world you are going to enter: engineering and the world of business, or law and the world of business.
So the minor makes a lot of sense, and my guess is that the Carey school will try to create more and more opportunities to build on to [its connections with] the other schools at Hopkins.
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