Kelley School of Business

Full-time MBA Program


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End of an Era: Celebrating 30 Years with Allyn Curry

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Over the past month, we have celebrated Allyn Curry in his upcoming retirement. Allyn Curry has been a staple in the Kelley School of Business for 30 years by creating and enhancing countless diversity initiatives at Kelley. His commitment to The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, its alumni, and current students go unmatched and we are honored to have had the opportunity to have him. You can view Allyn’s montage video here.

 

In early April, we shared with the Consortium Alumni and current students how much it would mean to Allyn to honor his retirement by making a gift to the Allyn Curry MBA Fellowship Fund. This Fellowship supports underrepresented MBA students who demonstrate a financial need and remain in good academic standing. (more…)

Life with a Kelley Canine

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Stephen Schenk
MBA’19

Last Valentine’s Day, I received something I had been wanting for years… the go-ahead from my wife to get a puppy. The excitement of finding the right breed and reserving the pick of a future litter came with some reservations. I would soon be starting my first year at Kelley and had no idea what life would be like with a postgraduate pup. Now, I can look back on my first year at Kelley and provide the following guidance on bringing a dog to Bloomington:

Outsource the walking
Our new dog’s first month in Bloomington was right in the middle of finals and internship recruiting season, and it was difficult to get home regularly for walks. I suggest utilizing one of the many dog-walking services in Bloomington. Rover and Wag! are smartphone apps which allowed us to quickly and easily get a trustworthy dog walker (ours ended up being an IU student herself). Daycare is also available near campus. We take Grizzly to BloomingPaws a few times a week to get his puppy energy out and to allow for extended time on campus for classes and meetings. The costs for these services range from $10-$15 for a walker and only a few bucks more for a full day at daycare. The cost is well worth the freedom and peace of mind. (more…)

Spring 2018 Program Update for Kelley MBA Alumni

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Rebecca Cook
Executive Director

I’ve been the Executive Director of the Kelley School of Business’ MBA program for the past 18 months, and I’m thrilled for this opportunity. Since my graduation from the MBA program in 1996, I worked in investment management for about 14 years at a variety of sell-side and buy-side firms. I came back to Kelley in late 2009 and worked in Graduate Career Services for the seven years prior to my current role. I am grateful to Kelley for how it shaped my career and provided me the skills and networks to excel, and it’s been awesome to be back working here.

The past 18 months have been an exciting time of investment and change in the program. This fall we welcomed 204 new students with the highest average GMAT and GPA scores we’ve ever had. Of course, as always, we admit students based not only on their strong GMAT scores and high GPAs but also on their interpersonal skills and their projected employability. Our students are exceptionally talented and it is a great honor to work with them. I hope you get the chance to meet them—and of course, I hope that you look for opportunities to hire them! If you have any opportunities (internship or full-time), please email Nina Camfield at ecamfiel@indiana.edu.
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GLOBASE China

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Stephanie Simon, MBA’19

For most Kelleys, the MBA is not complete without a global component. Learning abroad and doing business with other cultures was high on my to-do list when I came to Bloomington. One of the things that makes Kelley special is the GLOBASE (Global Business and Social Enterprise) program. It’s a global consulting experience that involves 7 weeks of in-class preparation and group work with a client before a week-long in-country experience over spring break. While it’s mostly first-year MBAs (and some School of Public and Environmental Affairs graduate students) who participate, second-year students can develop their leadership skills by leading the trips and managing the consulting teams.

This year I participated in the first-ever GLOBASE China trip. Our team of five students was paired up with a hotel in Yunnan province, a beautiful region in rural, southwestern China. Our client, an American ex-pat, has built a successful business thus far. He’s very committed to showcasing local Chinese culture, and he’s done it in a way that has enabled the local community to prosper. His goal is to expand to more locations across China, and he needed a marketing plan. Enter our project. Each week we had late-night calls (gotta love the 13-hour time difference!) with him and his team to better understand their value proposition and challenges. Then we would go to work researching, analyzing data, researching, conducting interviews, and researching some more. (more…)

Develop Your Mindset to Allow Personal Growth

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As an executive coach, I’m in the business of personal development and growth-helping others achieve their goals and aspirations through positive yet challenging techniques. It is an amazing experience to watch someone grow along their own developmental axis, pushing their “learning edge” in ways that they may not have believed possible before.

What I notice in successful clients are three mindsets that are critical for anyone seeking personal growth: intentionality, presence, and perspective.

Intentionality
Personal development requires intentionality. You must be intentional in your desire to grow, and specific enough in your goals to know where you should focus your limited growth energy. While there are always chance opportunities for personal growth, the lack of intentionality hinders progress because you can’t really understand your progress towards a known goal. When I work with clients who believe in the power of intentionality it allows us to focus on clear visioning of a desired state, followed by goal creation and pathway mapping. All of these are critical tools for personal development and, interestingly, the same steps that positive psychologists use to study hope. Intentionality helps hope come to life.  (more…)

Four Bloomington Spots to Get Away and Recharge

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Dan Caron
MBA Student

Coming to Kelley for my MBA, I knew a lot of my time would be spent in a classroom; however, sometimes you just need to get away from schoolwork. Although I’d already checked Assembly Hall off my bucket list, I didn’t know much about what else Bloomington offered. Were there any good hiking trails? Were there any good breweries or wineries? Luckily, I’ve discovered there are quite a few great spots just a few minutes from campus!

Brown County State Park

Brown County State Park is a must-see when you visit Bloomington, especially when the leaves change in the fall. Only a 30-minute drive from Bloomington in the small town of Nashville, IN, Brown County State Park is a great way to spend a weekday afternoon. There are plenty of great hiking trails and mountain biking trails. While it took me a fair amount of time to accept there was a Nashville outside of Tennessee, this very quickly became one of my favorite spots around Bloomington.

Griffy Lake 

While Griffy Lake receives less publicity than Brown County State Park, it’s a lovely natural space only two miles away from the Kelley School of Business. Griffy Lake offers a great opportunity to get out into nature. Given its proximity to campus, I thought this would be a well-known destination, but even amongst my fellow MBA students, it flies way under the radar. If you like to hike and or you just need to get your mind off school for a bit, this is a place you need to check out!

Oliver Winery

Less interested in hiking and more interested in tasting the local red? Oliver Winery has you covered! Travel and Leisure ranked Oliver Winery at #22 on their list of top wineries in the United States. For $5 you can taste eight of their wines, and afterward, you can sit out on the patio to enjoy some great company. I took advantage of the patio with some fellow MBAs during Parent’s Weekend in November 2017.

Monroe Lake

Roughly ten miles southeast of Bloomington, Monroe Lake gives you the opportunity to do anything from swimming, to boating, to camping.

Next time you find yourself in Bloomington, be sure to keep some time open in your schedule to visit these great spots. They are destinations all full-time Kelley MBAs should check out before they graduate!

The Beauty of Adaptive Leadership Challenges

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When I work with high-performing leaders, they often ask how they can accelerate their own leadership development curve, what they can do to improve. They have a strong desire to know the right approach, the best method, or the most effective way to accomplish more—ultimately so they can “win” by some metric.

On one hand, this attitude benefits their ambitions, but it can be a double-edged sword when the focus is solely on metric-based results or a single “right” approach. From an executive coach’s perspective, this is where working with high performers can start to become more complicated because there is so much more for the client to consider and understand. For instance, how have you shown up as a leader in similar situations? What’s your track record with driving change for yourself? How do you handle adversity? These are relevant questions for a coach to help you understand the adult development curve.

It also helps to work with the leader on what type of challenge he or she is facing. Is it a technical problem or adaptive challenge? And, most importantly, do you understand the difference?
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My Home Away from Home

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Namrata Rao
Kelley MBA’19

Pursuing a business degree is a tough decision to make, especially when you plan to pursue it in another country. Nothing can be a polar opposite from my previous chaotic lifestyle in India than my structured and composed life in Bloomington. When I decided to seek an MBA, I wanted to make sure that I made my new city and the people, my home. Kelley is exactly that!

 

My first day, I walked into the atrium feeling nervous and excited. I picked up my Kelley bag with the details of Me, Inc.(a unique Kelley program that enables students to develop their personal brand) and was approached by classmates who were eager to know me and my story. Me, Inc. is structured to make you open up to those around you. Because of this program, I was able to make friends the very first week of school. From your teammates’ high-fives to small words of appreciation, I realized how fortunate I was to spend the next two years with people who would become my family in America.

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Four things to consider when visiting full-time MBA programs

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Andy Pyon 
MBA’19

Having taken the GMAT, you know you’ll have to make decisions with incomplete, and often imperfect, information. The same holds true when selecting a full-time MBA program. You’re not going to know everything until you jump in, but to aid your decision, here are four questions to consider during your visits.

What is the quality of the faculty? 
Top business schools will naturally be the home to top faculty. Before visiting, research the instructors who will transform you into a business leader. Do the top faculty teach MBAs? More importantly, do you get the sense they enjoy teaching MBAs?

While visiting, talk with the professors and see if they’re just as excited to be there as you are. You want to find a program where the professors are willing and driven to invest in your success, like John Hill, Clinical Assistant Professor of Operations and Decision Technology at Kelley, who happily dedicated his time to help a business analytics major in the Consumer Marketing Academy nail a supply chain internship offer.

Does the school embrace different personalities and learning styles?
You know yourself best, and finding an MBA program where you feel accepted and comfortable is most important to your success. For example, I knew I didn’t fit the mold of a traditional business student. They all seemed outgoing, charismatic, and super confident. But when I first met Jonlee Andrews, Clinical Professor of Marketing, at an event in Indianapolis, she saw my insecurity struggles right away and said she’d help remove any barriers between me and my goals. I realized right away that Kelley isn’t going to ask me to change who I am, but would embrace and enhance my strengths through coaching and development. (more…)

The Power of Self Observation

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Ray Luther
Executive Director
Partnership for Coaching Excellence and Personal Leadership

Many years ago, I led a small team at a large firm-a spoke in the wheel as they say. While I came from a military background, this was one of my first opportunities to lead in a corporate environment and I was excited. My team of five young, capable leaders was responsible for providing strategic insight to a $1 billion-plus business. It was a great opportunity for me to prove myself as a leader.

When I first took over this group our division had just launched a major new product, and by all accounts, it was not going well. Not at all. Our volume was off and we were missing across most key metrics for success. A young manager on my team, let’s call her “Sarah,” was responsible for the business tracking and strategic insights for this new product launch. She regularly reported results to senior management, and she felt the stress of the situation.

As I coached Sarah during our one-on-one meetings, I would try to provide my best advice, make suggestions on how to analyze data in different ways, and be as supportive as possible. I thought I could be a source of humor to relieve some of the daily tension from all the senior management “help” we were getting. I would often try to laugh at the absurdity of the situation with her, which for me included a bit of cynicism at what was happening around us. I figured if anything she would know that I had her back and we’d be a team in getting through this.

Man, was I Wrong

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