Faculty Spotlight: Matt Piszczek

The Mike Ilitch School of Business welcomed Matthew Piszczek, assistant professor of management, to the faculty in the fall semester.

Piszczek earned his Ph.D. in industrial relations and human resources from Michigan State University and previously worked as an assistant professor of human resource management at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. 

“I grew up in Warren so this is a return to home for me,” he said. “I’m very excited to be in Detroit at such an exciting time, and particularly to be downtown when the school moves to its new location in District Detroit.” 

Piszczek’s research mainly focuses on human resources policies and work-life balance.

“Primarily I'm interested in work family balance and workforce aging,” he said. "I have two separate streams of interests – individuals and organizations – but I look at them both from an HR policy perspective.”

Piszczek said his teaching style is focused on bringing the real world into the classroom.

“It's important to apply what you learn to a real-life work scenario,” he said. “I do a mixture of lectures and case studies and student presentations, and I think it's important for students to have a voice in the classroom, so I use anonymous feedback surveys.”

“I try to treat the classroom like a workplace itself,” he added. “For group work, I have a formal progressive discipline policy so you can fire groupmates. Those kind of stick really well, when you can draw parallels from the classroom to the business environment.”

Outside of the classroom, Piszczek enjoys running marathons and spending time with his fiancée and cats Sheamus and Elliot. 

“I’m a big runner,” he said. “I have ran at least a mile every day this year. I like to go hiking and traveling, too.”
 

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