Meet the iSchool Professor Honored as Undergrad Teacher of the Year
spent nearly 30 years climbing the corporate ladder, working his way up to a director-level role that took him traveling the world.
So, when he arrived at the University’s in 2011, he found himself learning the rhythms of academia from a new post in the iSchool’s IT department.
And when, a decade into that role, he was asked to teach a course, he was initially hesitant to accept. That one iSchool course soon became two, and before he knew it, he was teaching full time.
His industry background saw him become the professor of record for project management, the discipline he now oversees for the iSchool, alongside a capstone course built around real-world case studies with companies like Accenture and IBM.
His experience and his passion for teaching has resonated with students.
This year, Corsello, an assistant teaching professor, the Undergraduate Jeffrey Katzer Professor of the Year, nominated by students for his approach to bringing real-world experience to the classroom and fostering a supportive, but challenging, environment for students focused on practical application and professional development.
The impact of his relationship-driven teaching style is evident well beyond graduation: many former students return years later for career advice, and alumni consistently volunteer to help with his capstone case studies when he asks.
“I love the students,” he says. “Getting the award, it confirmed I’m doing the job I want to be doing.”
Below, Corsello shares more about his approach in the classroom and why he loves teaching undergraduates.
Totally grateful. Awed. I was at a loss for words, which was kind of crazy for me. You go to class every day and you really try. I have three children who went through college, and I have some grandchildren in college. I understand what it’s like from their perspective. It’s not an easy thing, so I try to be a human being. I try to be flexible. There’s certain rules that I have to follow, but I try to be a human being too.
I like to get to know them. Oftentimes they’ll come to me with a problem. It could be a course-related problem, it could be related to them looking for a position, but I really try to make myself available and accessible.
I like that I can help them go through their college career, and at the end, I see them as seniors and they’ve grown up into men and women. It’s just an enjoyable thing.
Grad students are different. They’re older, some of them have been in school for a few years, and they have different goals. Undergrads—they’re anxious, they want to learn.
I love teaching undergraduates too, because it keeps me current in the IT world. There are things that if I wasn’t involved with the undergrads that I wouldn’t even be aware of anymore, Bitcoin, things that are out today that would pass me by. My grandsons say to me, “Oh, Pop, do you know about Bitcoin?” Of course, I know about all that, because I teach it. I see it every day.
Working in corporate for 30 years, I saw the good, the bad, the ugly. And I rose up to a director level, so I had a lot of people working for me over the years, and it was mostly always in the IT area. So what I do in all my classes, in the conversations and lectures, is I give them my real-world experiences. I’ve had some very positive things happen to me, and I’ve had some very negative things happen to me. I try to alert them to certain things they could face.
We talk about case problems working in the corporate world. For example, having a manager and maybe they’re only worrying about themselves and they’re using you to get up the ladder of success and don’t really care about you at all. Then you have to really make that work for yourself or get out of that situation. So I try to give them those things to look for when they get out there, where you have to kind of watch out for yourself and do all the things that you need to do to keep yourself current.
I learn every day. They don’t even realize that they’re teaching me as well as I’m teaching them. I’ve learned a lot from them in the sense of what’s going on today in the world. In IT, it changes hourly, so we have to keep up.
