What's Their Secret A look at Professor Rick Schell's path to passion

By Chris Chan     11/29/11 6:00pm

Since the start of the Undergraduate Business Minor program at Rice University in 2009, Business Minor Program Director Rick Schell has increasingly won the attention of students eager to enroll in his popular and practical BUSI 296: Business Communications class.  

While Schell often introduces himself as being "bookended" by Rice, the university where he earned his Ph.D. in English 35 years ago as well as his employer and workplace today, the path that took him full circle was abound with circumstantial detours and enduring lessons.  

In his journey from English to business, Schell's personal experiences have equipped and refined the expertise and values that have brought him success and his current role at Rice University.

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One of five children, Schell grew up in Battle Creek, Michigan among the postwar generation.  After attending Columbia University, Schell drove to Houston in 1971 to continue his education at Rice. He clearly remembers his first day upon arrival.

"I had never seen so many big water bugs," Schell said. "I thought, ‘I'm in the jungle; human beings cannot live in this climate!' But I got used to it."

Schell originally started as a Chemical Engineer at Columbia.  

"When I got into the theoretical math, I hit the plateau, and I literally did not understand what was going on," Schell said.

According to Schell, his decision to go into business was affected by a series of unexpected events.  Originally accepting an offer for a teaching position at Sam Houston State University, Schell drove to Huntsville only to find that he had been disqualified on the grounds of being the only candidate for the job, and his offer had been rescinded.  

At another interview, he was told that he had successfully made it from the pool of 3,000 to the top 15, but he was not going to get the job.

Upon making the decision to do something else, Schell applied to an array of jobs, and IBM quickly requested an interview.  

"I told [the interviewer], ‘this all looks very attractive to me, but I don't think I'm qualified.'  He said, ‘You mean, someone with an advanced degree in engineering can't fix a circuit board?'  He looked at my resume again and said, ‘Oh, this says English!'"  

Schell was directed upstairs to the sales office and met with the regional director who hired him as a salesperson for IBM.  "They said, ‘We can teach you everything you need to know. We just need people who can absorb a lot of information and communicate it back to customers.'  Turns out I could do that."

As a result, Schell spent 30 years in sales and marketing between IBM, Amdahl and Fujitsu.  According to Schell, sales and marketing became increasingly challenging as he rose through the ranks.  

"The challenge was that being a senior manager in sales didn't match what I really liked to do, because I really didn't like to achieve through others," said Schell, "I had a lot of individuals who worked for me saying, ‘You're a terrific guy; we like you, but you're a crappy manager.'"

Schell found it difficult to make others perform as well as he was.

"It was clear, I'd rather be doing it myself," he admitted.  

As soon as he moved into marketing, Schell became much happier as an individual contributor, ultimately becoming the Vice President of Strategic Marketing, a long title for the CEO's Chief of Staff, according to Schell.  

"I was an individual contributor with a title, and that was a delight," he said, "And I would say to myself, where could I get this same kind of satisfaction?  The answer that always came back was, in the classroom."

Even though Schell achieved remarkable success in his business career, he never neglected his true passion, continuing to teach English at night late after work to undergraduate students.  

"All the time that I was in industry, I knew that I really wanted to teach, and I just didn't act upon it," Schell said. "Actually the impetus that acted upon it was that I got a retirement package from my company when they were downsizing."

Schell finally felt free to look for teaching jobs, rejecting an offer from Princeton University to join the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice.

When advising career-minded students, Schell often speaks of a Venn diagram between "what you're really passionate about" and "what you're really good at."

"Find the intersection, where are the things that energize me, and basically I would do for free if I could.  Then, you say, how could I make a living doing that?" Schell explained.

He advises students to focus on what they are passionate about.  

"I was very good at sales and marketing but was never particularly passionate about it," Schell said. "I was passionate about teaching."

The professional pursuit and achievement that echos in Schell's experiences ring clearly in the ears of students looking toward their own futures.

"In Steve Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford, he made a point that you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards," Schell said. "And what you've got to do is have confidence and believe that you're doing the right thing."

 

 "What's Their Secret?" is a weekly feature that highlights a faculty member who has had a significant impact on Rice students.

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