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| By Jonlee Andrews Faculty Chair of the Kelley Full-Time MBA Program Kelley School of Business |
As a Kelley MBA alum, you are a valuable part of the Full-Time MBA Program and our Kelley network. Your success is our success and vice versa. Our commitment to your future—and your relationship with Kelley—continues long after you receive your degree.
In this letter, I will tell you about some recent changes to the MBA program. I hope it will give you a new perspective on the program and what’s happening in Bloomington.
My Goals
My goals as chair are to bring in and train the absolute best MBA students; to support them while they’re here at Kelley, and to continue the relationship once they graduate. Our biggest measure of success is the success of our alumni—like you. These goals have resulted in a number of positive changes to the program (and many wonderful traditions remain). I’ll tell you about two of them below.
What’s New?
We mentioned in the MBA Alumni Newsletter that Graduate Career Services has added a terrific alumni career coach named Kendell Brown (you can read her blog about networking here). In addition, we’ve had some significant changes to the MBA program in the last few years. A couple of big changes include the growth in Global Business and Social Enterprise Program (GLOBASE) and Me, Inc.
About 70 percent of first-year MBA students participate in a GLOBASE trip. It’s a global experience where students work directly with small businesses and nonprofits all over the world. This year, student teams worked in Vietnam, Ghana, Guatemala, India and the U.S. (with Native Americans). I’m sure those of you who participated in GLOBASE will agree that it’s a valuable—and eye-opening—leadership experience. We’ve also continued our business study (KIPs) trips. This year we visited companies in Paris, Brussels, and Berlin. Next year, we head back to China!
Me, Inc., the brainchild of our Graduate Career Services coaches, enables our students to identify their strengths and clarify their career goals, even before classes begin. In Me, Inc., students start to develop their personal brand and how to connect past experiences to future goals. Remember your first semester in the MBA program? It was intense! Without Me, Inc., when you got internship interviews in January, you may not have had the time to learn how to best tell your story. Like many of you, most of our students are career switchers, and they need to know how to say, “Here’s what I used to do, here’s what I want to do in the future, and here’s why I’d be good at it.” Me, Inc. prepares students for those conversations with prospective employers.
There’s so much going on here! I look forward to sharing more updates about the program, our students and our alumni. Please contact me with any ideas. I’m always eager to listen.
With Kelley pride,
Jonlee Andrews
MBA Program Chair
Clinical Professor of Marketing and Nestlé Faculty Fellow