The recipe for a good book includes almost 3,800 haiku poems written by 2,060 university students over a period of 12 years, juried by 6 university, community and business leaders for 1 professor whose sections of Foundations of Business Thought those students took. The result was a book entitled, Haikus on Business.
Professor Cal Boardman initiated the Foundations of Business Thought course as a part of a University Professor award in the early 1990s. The class introduces students to the world of commerce through the insightful words of business leaders, economists, explorers, historians, poets, sociologist and many others whose lives are not easily classified into a single category. The course is designed to challenge students to consider how his or her own existence interacts with the ebb and flow of commercial activity.
In early 2000, he began requiring students to write haiku poems as the final project as a way to concentrate their feelings and thoughts about commerce in general or any aspect of it in particular within the constraint of 17 syllables.
Boardman told his students that if they wished to sign an agreement allowing him to consider publishing their poems, he would do so once he retired. After 36 years at the University of Utah, he retired in 2013 and began the process of producing this book. He was aided in this process by the talented and very insightful work of six panelists who assisted in the reduction of the population from almost 4,000 poems down to 166 of the very best. Haikus on Business was published in late 2015.
More than 100 alumni whose poems were included in Haikus in Business, along with their family and friends, came out to celebrate the book’s publication and get their copies signed by Boardman. It was an incredible night of networking and reminiscing. You can view a photo gallery on Facebook. 
Since this has been a student-focused project from the beginning, all royalty proceeds from the sale of the book will be directed to help fund undergraduate scholarships at the Eccles School. Books may be purchased at the University of Utah Campus Store, Kings English Bookstore, and Amazon.com.
When speaking of his students, Boardman concluded that “Their levels of creativity and insight were impressive, and it was an honor for me to share a classroom with them.”