UPDATE: December 5, 2024
Originally published in Carroll Capital, the print publication of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. Read the full issue here.
Rebecca Michaels ’24 ended her time at Boston College the same way she started it: in a Portico classroom. With space in her spring schedule for an elective course, she opted to take a reading-intensive, discussion-based Portico class for seniors.
Since 2008, every first-year student in the Carroll School has taken Portico. As an entry point into a school of management, Portico asks these students to examine business from global, multidisciplinary, ethical, and social perspectives. Now, a slate of electives with the same DNA as Portico, and exclusively offered for seniors, has emerged.
Michaels chose to take a course that would enrich her Boston College experience rather than coast her way to graduation. “As a senior, you can take classes where you might not have to put in as much effort,” she says, “but I think taking this kind of class is the best way to get the most out of the semester.”
With the real world just months away, these classes build upon the foundation of Portico and highlight issues students may face as they enter the workforce. “The courses have a thread of reflection and meaning with an eye toward post-graduation life,” says Ethan Sullivan, senior associate dean for undergraduate programs. “It’s an academic experience in their last semester that meets them where they’re at.” The classes come in response to students expressing interest in Portico-like opportunities after freshman year. Recently, these Portico classes for seniors became part of the University capstone offerings and are now open to second-semester seniors at other schools as well.
“The Ethics and Politics of Capitalism,” taught by Portico faculty Michael Smith and Jeremy Evans, was launched in 2016. Since then, four Portico electives have been added to the course catalog, including: “Free Markets, Faith, and the Common Good,” “Leading Others and Leading the Self,” "Happiness in a Commercial Society," and, new in 2024, “Everybody’s Working for the Weekend: Ambition and Alienation,” taught by Christine Rojcewicz, assistant professor of the practice. All five courses are offered in the upcoming Spring 2025 semester.
Assistant professor of the practice Christine Rojcewicz
Rojcewicz’s class examines modern workplace issues like isolation and burnout and compares them to philosophical readings from authors like Karl Marx and Max Weber. Rojcewicz encourages her students to speak openly about their personal connections to the issues. “These students have one foot in academia and one foot in the working world. Their future is looking them in the face,” she says. “We’re giving them a space to reflect on what they will be doing in the workplace and anticipate any moments of alienation that they might feel in their own futures and jobs.”
For Michaels, who studied information systems and finance and minored in philosophy, the readings and class discussions helped to expel anxieties about problems like burnout. Headed toward a job in investment banking, she says that working through these issues as a class made her feel better prepared to navigate them.
“Some of the best classes you take at BC are ones that aren’t required. They teach you things you didn’t think you needed to learn,” she says. “It’s good for us to have these scary conversations now, in a classroom setting, rather than be unprepared to face them in the workplace.”
