Every Tuesday this fall, Geetika Jaiswal, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences' fashion merchandising and design program, teaches the 22 students in her senior-level fashion marketing course herself.

But most Thursdays, her students' attention is drawn to a classroom guest who's not even in the same time zone as N.C.A&T.

For those Thursday sessions, Timothy McClure of Claire’s Inc., a corporate leader with more than two decades of high-level retail experience, joins the class as its executive-in-residence, bringing his stories, insights and real-world examples to the classroom. This arrangement, common in business schools, is brand new for the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences’ fashion merchandising and design program – but it is already paying big dividends.

“Our students are benefitting because they are getting a real-world project to work on,” said Jaiswal. “And it’s been beneficial to Mr. McClure because he’s getting ideas from the students, which Claire’s may find useful in developing future retail strategies.”

Meet the executive

Timothy M. McClure spent Black History Month posting interesting facts about Black history on his social media accounts. But this project left him wanting to channel that energy into giving back to others.

He enjoyed teaching, which he had done briefly years ago in Atlanta when he was a vice president at K&G Fashion Superstore. But McClure had to give up teaching in 2014 when he joined Claire’s Inc., the retail chain that sells jewelry, accessories and toys primarily to teenagers and pre-teens, and is famous for its ear-piercing business. Maybe he could teach again. But where?

So McClure looked online for fashion merchandising programs at historically Black universities. He emailed a couple of schools and heard back right away from Elizabeth Newcomb Hopfer, an associate professor of fashion merchandising and design.

Impressed by McClure’s resume — the Morehouse College grad had worked at Macy’s and the former Famous-Barr department stores and was now the global senior vice president of buying at Claire’s — Hopfer had him give tips last spring to students about to start summer internships. The presentation went well, Hopfer said, and students reacted positively.

Program faculty, meanwhile, had been talking about having an executive in residence, Hopfer said. Professors saw value in connecting their students with professionals who had real-world insight and expertise.

When the FMD program received a $100,000 grant last summer from Gap Inc. and ICON 360, a nonprofit started by Harlem’s Fashion Row to support designers of color, there was money available to award a small honorarium. Faculty already had someone in mind for the job.

“There couldn’t be a better first executive in residence for our program than Tim,” Hopfer said.

"This is an invaluable experience for our students, and one that will set them apart as they go forward in the industry," said Valerie Giddings, Ph.D., chairwoman of the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences. "We are so pleased that our students will be able to benefit from Mr. McClure's insights."

In the classroom

Fashion Marketing and Merchandising, a core course of the FMD curriculum, explores the fashion retailing industry world where apparel, accessories and other related products are sold. Program faculty decided McClure’s expertise fit best with this class.

On a recent Tuesday, Jaiswal covered the basics of customer behavior — the factors that affect what people buy, the strategies that retailers employ to sell their goods and how retailers develop those approaches.

Two days later, McClure, who lives and works outside Chicago, walked students virtually through a number of related topics, including how Claire’s selects its store locations, how Claire’s classifies its merchandise, how Claire’s uses demographics to determine the type of products to sell in specific stores.

“Those are all the things I try to bring to class: the real-world application to the text they’ve just reviewed,” McClure said.

Senior Lauryn Sneeze said McClure was impressive when he spoke to her pre-internship professional development class in the spring. She said she was glad to learn that he would be the program’s executive in residence this fall because he explains things well and has lots of great insights into the retail industry.

“I’m such a hands-on kind of learner,” Sneeze said. “To connect all of the concepts we’ve learned in class to an actual business and see it applied in a real-life situation has been amazing.”

A win-win

Professors routinely bring guest speakers to their classes. But Jaiswal noted that these one-off events can be superficial because of time.

By having McClure speak most every week, Jaiswal said her students are getting deep and detailed insights on how a single company operates that they’ll be able to apply to other businesses as they launch their careers.

There’s another bonus, she added: “When students are able to connect to the speaker, they pay attention and retain information.”

The executive in residence program is good for McClure, too. The students in FCS 484 are a little older than Claire’s typical tween-and-teen demographic. But many of those students used to shop there and know the chain well.

“I tell them, you guys can be perfectly honest about your thoughts on the business and the things we can improve on,” McClure said. “They’ve suggested and/or challenged things that we are currently having debates internally on.”

McClure also might get some good ideas from an upcoming class project. Claire’s has brand partnerships — meaning it sells its goods in other stores —with Walmart, CVS and European and Canadian retailers. For that project, students will have to lay out the business case for other potential Claire’s partners.

McClure gets much more out of this arrangement than just some business intel.

“It feeds me personally,” McClure said. “I love interacting with future retail leaders.”

McClure will get to interact in person with his students soon. He’ll be on campus Oct. 14 to teach the class and hold an in-person meet-and-greet with other FMD majors who aren’t enrolled in this course.

“I’ve been really pleased with how the partnership has developed,” McClure said. “I’m excited for what we can continue to do.”