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MBA Office Updates - August 4, 2005

Filed under SOM MBA Office
Posted by , August 04, 2005
View all posts for August 2005

GRADUATION
Graduation is Friday, August 5th at 10:00am in the John Hancock Hall at 180 Berkeley Street. It is a wonderful ceremony and all current students are invited to attend. You will be out by noon at the latest and it is often a wonderful motivator for next year and a great reminder of why you chose the SOM!

ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE DEAN
I am delighted to announce that Susan Hass has accepted my offer to serve as the next Associate Dean at the SOM. Susan brings extensive faculty experience and strong administrative skills to this position. She has served as a very effective Chair of the Curriculum Committee for numerous years and did an excellent job with Debbie Kolb serving as Co-Faculty Director of the MBA Program this past year. Susan, with more than 20 years of experience at the SOM, is one of our most senior faculty members. Susan’s experience and skills complement mine and I believe that we will work very well together in service of the School. I have reconfigured the Associate Dean position to focus on curriculum and faculty issues. This draws on Susan’s core areas of expertise and will allow me to focus more on institution-building, expanding our external relations, and fundraising. While this is still a work in progress, we have identified Susan’s primary responsibilities to include:

· Provide faculty oversight and guidance for MBA and Undergraduate Management programs, with particular responsibility for curriculum and new curriculum development; ensuring excellence in teaching; implementation of assurance of learning; supporting Program Directors in hiring of part-time “supporting” (adjunct) faculty; and representation with students as required.

· Faculty management – overseeing search processes for new faculty; organizing new faculty orientation and mentoring; supporting faculty development; and managing faculty deployment and workload. Serve as the “go-to” person for faculty and monitor progress in implementation of faculty development plans.

· Participate with Dean in hiring of faculty and manage search processes.

· Serve on the Curriculum Committee and Promotion and Tenure Committee and serve as liaison with the Dean’s Office.

· Manage the Swahnberg/Novotny fund and other funding mechanisms for faculty research and development, including oversight and management of research contracts.

· Serve as “right hand” to the Dean in terms of strategy development and implementation, program management, and monitoring of organizational performance.

· Managing special projects within the Dean’s Office as required.

Susan will start in her new position on September 1st. I am very grateful that she has agreed to take up this leadership role. I think we are very fortunate to have her. ~ Deborah

NOTE FROM MARY D. TO NON GRADUATING STUDENTS
Congratulations to all of you!! Some students have finished their 2nd semester, others are finishing their 3rd, 5th or 8th semester!! As you watch all the graduating students prepare to get their degrees tomorrow, there are usually a variety of reactions ranging from “I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel” to “the end of that tunnel doesn’t look very close to me right now!” But, each semester is a major milestone and you need to celebrate it, and reflection is a good way to celebrate things!! Think about how you approach problems or situations vs how you did 6 months, a year, two years or three years ago. Think about how you read the newspaper or react to financial or world events. Think about how your confidence levels have risen as a result of your experiences in the classroom. Think about class participation and what you did well, whether it was just having the confidence to to try, if you took a stand on a issue, encouraged someone else to get involved in the conversation, or presented as part of your BGGE, Leading or Marketing presentations knowing it was really difficult and would have been easy to defer to your colleagues that are comfortable speaking in large groups. Think about your grades and how pysched you were to get a grade on a paper or exam that reflected all of your hard work and effort. Think about how you helped or saw someone else help a classmate struggle through a concept and then watching the lightbulbs go on. Think about the things that excited you intellectually. Think about how you balanced all the other competing priorities in your life with school, and how you have learned to juggle them all! Think about next year and what you want to do, try, continue or change. But for the next 5 weeks, relax and have some fun!! Go to the beach, read Harry Potter, go out to dinner with friends and family. September will be here befor you know it and we will be thrilled to see you all back again in a few weeks!!

NOTE FROM MARY D. TO GRADUATING STUDENTS
Tonight is the Dean’s Reception and degrees have all been voted and are waiting for each of you tomorrow!! As I have talked with many students over the last month about their experience at the SOM, I am struck by how articulate you all are about your experiences, and what being at the SOM has meant to you. I have been struck by the strong respect and admiration you have for the faculty who have taught you, how challenged you were by the coursework, how impacted you have been by your classmates, and how your confidence level has increased over the time you have been here. I am so proud of each of you and know that great things lie ahead of you. Many people will say to you “good luck” over the next few days. Remember my favorite definition of luck, which is “”luck is when preparation meets opportunity”. We have prepared you, and the opportunities await you. Graduation is just the beginning of another great chapter in your lives. We are proud to have worked beside you and with you during your MBA program and will miss you. But know that a warm welcome will aways be here when you come back!!

THANK YOU TO THE SAC
Mary D. would like to thank all of you who served on the student academic council this past year. This group serves as an advisory group to the MBA office and helps us out tremendously as we contemplate new policies and procedures, or want feedback on a particular issue. What is so wonderful about this group is that no matter what the issue was, we would get honest, thoughtful feedback that helped us refine, revise, or inform us as to what the student reaction would be. As you can imagine, we had some lively exchanges, but we are a much stronger, more thoughtful program as a result of all of your efforts. Some of the issues they dealt with this year included new building and space considerations, the 419 move, coursepack feedback, graduating student priority in registration, bookstore hours, electives on Friday night, early am, and Saturdays, moving classes to the main campus, FAQ’s for Foundations, the schedule, new electives, pay phones, and a variety of other topics. Thank you very much!!

QUOTES OF THE WEEK

For Graduating Students (From Meegan Neils, ‘05):

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” - Semisonic

For Non Graduating Students:

“Achievement is largely the product of steadily raising one’s levels of aspiration … and expectation.” - Jack Nicklaus