Chaminade business class tunes in The Donald's tips

By Zenaida Serrano
Advertiser Staff Writer

'The Apprentice' Season finale 8-10 tonight NBC

In fact, Schroeder — director of the business school at Chaminade University — probably will require his students to tune in weekly.

The show's popularity heading into tonight's power-packed two-hour finale has reached beyond living rooms and water coolers, finding hard-core fanatics in collegiate academia.

Schroeder incorporated the popular show into his Leading People in Organizations class, a core course for Chaminade's MBA program.

"I think it's the greatest tool that I've ever run across in 20 years of doing this type of teaching," Schroeder said, "for really getting people connected with the tasks that these folks are up to and really getting to see in a very live way what ends up helping people out and what gets them in trouble."

The purpose of the class is to help students identify characteristics required for people to be effective in leadership positions and have the students look at those traits relative to their own strengths and flat spots so they can develop their own capacities for leadership, Schroeder said.

Tonight's finale starts at 8 p.m. and comes down to Bill Rancic, a Chicagoan and owner of a cigar business, and Harvard MBA Kwame Jackson of New York.

They began their respective projects on last week's episode, with each supervising a team of fired former adversaries — whose drive and loyalty in the service of their vanquisher is suspect.

By the end of the partially-live finale Rancic or Jackson will run one of Donald Trump's company's for year, earn a $250,000 salary, and be the only apprentice to be told "You're hired."

"It was very interesting to see how a group of people with varying backgrounds and skills worked together," said 34-year-old Rich Lee, one of Schroeder's students and owner of a small business.

Accountant Tammi Watson, another one of Schroeder's students, said she'll miss watching the weekly dynamics among the candidates.

"What I learned is it doesn't just take skills, but you also have to have the ability to network with other people," said Watson, 34.

What enabled the two finalists to make it this far is a combination of characteristics, Schroeder said.

"People who have ended up being successful on the show are able to combine both a strong people orientation — they're able to work well with other people — as well as a strong task orientation — they're able to get things done," he said.

Creativity and emotional stability were other leadership qualities Schroeder's students observed.

As for who Schroeder thinks will win, he's learning toward Bill.

"Earlier on in the show, my prediction was that you were very likely to see Amy (Henry), who's now off, or Bill, as the person who ends up getting chosen at the end," he said. "... they seem to demonstrate the (positive) characteristics that the class picked out week after week."

The Associated Press contributed program information to this report. Reach Zenaida Serrano at zserrano@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-8174.