Rebecca Cianci

HPA 808 – Human Resource Management in Health Care Organizations

This course is designed to provide students with requisite knowledge and skills for leading and creating the organizational and cultural structure that will positively support the management of human capital. Students will explore the human capital theory of people management, and will apply the principles. Concepts will be placed into operational context using case situations and reading materials. Students will explore the principles of human resource management including; workforce development, succession planning, employee development, selecting the right members of the team, and supporting those team members through effective leadership and management techniques, and will have the opportunity to apply the tools to their own unique organizational situations.

LHR 305 – Human Resources Fundamentals

This course will provide students with an opportunity to understand and apply important concepts concerning human resources in the workplace. Students will learn to think of the issues in the class from both the employees' and organizations' perspectives. The course begins with a description and analysis of the role human resource managers play in supporting employees' personal needs as well as an organization's strategic objectives. The discussion traces the changes in that role historically, as well as the contemporary understanding of HR's part in helping stakeholders succeed. Against this backdrop, students will study three critical variables affecting HR's involvement in management: the individual; the organization; and, the law. Each of these foci illustrates variables with which HR managers must contend. The course presents these variables through a variety of lenses: law, psychology, sociology, history and literature. Students will also spend considerable time studying the various functions HR plays in recruiting, selecting, training, evaluation, compensation, labor relations and safety. In these portions of the class, students will learn to understand the functions not only from the organization's, but also from the employees' perspective. The discussion of functional areas will end with application of the concepts studied to the global business environment in which HR increasingly operates. Throughout students will not only learn the mechanics of, for example, the selection process, but how processes support an organization's and individual's pursuit of their unique purposes. Consistent with the liberal arts environment in which LHR students enroll, the final project requires students to apply the concepts learned concerning the HR function to their everyday lives, helping students to reflect on the difference HR processes can have on both the organization but equally important on the employee. As a Gen Ed course (GS), the course qualifies as a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) course consistent with the B.A. Fields category.

LHR 480 – Current Issues in Human Resources

Identity and race, gender and heritage, centrality and marginality, self and other, as expressed in literary works from around the world. Students will study current trends that are shaping human resources management. These trends include information technology, internationalization, new organizational forms, changing demographics, and competitive landscape. Examples of topics include use of social media in human resource management, virtual work, managing an aging workforce and working across international boundaries. The course is case based and as such explores experiences of actual companies. Students will study and discuss the strategies, successes, and failures of companies and how these issues and challenges relate to the human resources function. Timely readings that expose students to theoretical structures underlying these changes will be part of this course. In addition, because this is a current issues class, students will be expected to actively follow trending news in the business world through news media and critically examine how it is shaping the human resource management practices. This course will serve as a complement to MGMT 100, 341, 441 and LER 100, 201, 401 and 434.