For over a decade, I’ve been a regular guest speaker at Skidmore College in the classroom of Professor Christine Page.

I’ve offered my POV on creativity, advertising, branding and marketing and have done ideation workshops with the students. I really enjoy working with Christine and her students because it’s fun and rewarding to share my years of experience. It feels good to give back, and I’ve learned a few things in the process too.

Then Skidmore scared the crap out of me.

How? They offered me the F. William Harder Chair of Business Administration. This is an endowed professorship, a great job, at a great school and an incredible honor. It made my knees shake. It’s one thing to drop in a few times a year and quite another to walk into a room full of bright young minds twice a week with the goal of imparting a kernel of knowledge.

Teaching is not easy work, and I love the work I’m doing with Brandforming; so why add this to the mix?

As Albert Einstein said, “Once you stop learning, you start dying.”

I love learning. It’s one of the things I love most about advertising; the need to keep learning to solve client marketing problems. To work alongside these students, to challenge them to dig for insight and generate ideas together will be a great experience.

Teaching is learning; and I’ll be learning right alongside these millennials, post millennials and Gen Z-Centennials. They have as much to offer me as I do them. I’m routinely impressed, not only by their intelligence but also by their willingness to write their own rules. This is not ambivalence on their part, it’s creation. Bingo.

This why I’m now the F. William Harder Chair of Business Administration at Skidmore College…or if you prefer, Professor.