On Nov. 18, Hy-Vee Inc. President Ric Jurgens will spend a day at Iowa State University as the school’s Executive in Residence for the fall term. The Business Record took a few moments last week to speak with Jurgens about his plans for the day, and how school has changed since he graduated from ISU in 1971.

Q: What does it feel like to be on the other side of the lecturn at your alma mater?

A: It’s always exciting to have an opportunity to talk with students. I have long been an advocate of involving business executives in the education process. Sometimes, it adds credibility to what professors are teaching. I could do it more often. It’s a very gratifying experience. Young students today are very bright and very excited about the business world and it’s a lot of fun.

Q: What will you be doing at Iowa State? Do you have other involvement at the school?

A: I’ll spend the whole day at the college, interacting with faculty at various levels and will address students separately. Then I’ll teach a management course. I am one of the governors on the school’s foundation. And I serve on the dean’s advisory council for the business college. We work with the dean and his faculty to examine everything from curriculum to fund raising to finding ways to attract students and staying in touch with students after they graduate. We’re there to help the dean in any way to make college more beneficial for the students.

Q: Your public lecture is about how technology is changing the retailing business. Can you give us a preview?

A: My hope will be to leave the professors with some of my attitudes about the importance about what they do and to challenge them to spend more time in the private sector. I’ll also be talking with students and share with them some of my convictions about leadership and some of my what I’ve learned through the years about the retail business. I am also going to talk about the complexity of the retail world today. Sometimes, I think, people think about retail only as being about buying, selling and waiting on customers. It’s a very elaborate, detailed, technical business today. The price of admission to being in the retail business today, at a big scale, has gone up quite a bit. If you aren’t able to use technology to be more efficient and to produce and distribute goods at a lower cost, you will not survive. The old ways of doing business are leaving us quickly. The largest retailer in the history of the world is expanding, particularly in the Midwest. And they happen to have great advancements in technology. You’d better be pretty strong technologically, or you’re not going to be around.