A year later, she’s a Target insider. Harned’s story — a quick climb from student to intern to executive — is just one byproduct of a benchmark partnership between the Fox School

and Target that has connected college and corporate.

The Fox School has designed an experiential learning course with Target that gives undergraduates the chance to get into stores and interact with employees and executives through research assignments.

Led by Human Resources Management Professor Katherine A. Nelson, students in HR on the Ground get to work on real issues presented by Target. They interview employees, conduct focus groups, brainstorm solutions and present their results to the company. In turn, Target gives a portion of the grade.

To Nelson, the course is a way to give undergrads real world experience — they basically act as pro bono consultants — and to expose them to some of the tools organizations use to measure and
influence employees.

To local Target recruiter Nicole D’Ambrosio, it’s a chance to solve pressing issues and to see leadership in action from students who could be the Target managers of tomorrow. To Temple students, it could be their break into a retail giant that made job offers on 295 undergraduate
campuses in 2008-09, according to BusinessWeek. Since fall 2005, local Target recruiters have hired 36 graduating seniors from Temple as executives and an additional 28 interns — 20 of whom joined the retailer as executives after graduation.

Nelson designed HR on the Ground after Dave Caspers, Target’s Northeast regional vice president
for stores human resources, visited a class of hers in 2008.

In Nelson’s words: “He said, ‘I would love if you could bring students into my stores and help us
solve problems.’ And I said, ‘Done.’ ”

In less than a year, HR on the Ground transformed from concept to reality. The course is built on a consulting model where students, primarily juniors and seniors, sign a confidentiality agreement, track time with their “client” and get graded on a rubric based on the one Target uses with its own employees. Their modest $100-an-hour consulting fee is paid with Monopoly money.

Students rate and analyze Target stores on everything from layout and lighting to cleanliness and customer service, and company executives visit class to discuss Target’s culture and the issues they are facing.

The course, generally limited to about 15 students, aims to provide insight into how human resources
management can drive company performance and to help students understand the link between employee engagement and financial results.

This semester, students are examining “Reputation Management in the Age of Facebook.”

The company’s partnership with the Fox School has been so successful that local recruiters have presented it as the model for “what we want the rest of the recruiters on the East Coast
to look for,” D’Ambrosio said.

“Some of our biggest frustrations with campus recruiting is that sometimes we don’t think that faculty in general teach what students need to be successful in the workplace,” D’Ambrosio said of Nelson, who has more than 30 years of experience in management, business ethics and strategic communication. “What she was proposing was the answer to all of our frustrations.”

Harned, president of the Fox School’s College Council, is set to graduate in May. After attending
a six-week business college taught by Target, she’ll join a team of store executives responsible for day-to-day operations, including sales goals and customer service.

“They throw a lot at you, and you do all the research and development,” she said of HR on the Ground. “But it prepares you more for the situations you’ll face in your career.”