A couple interesting BusinessWeek articles

For those of you who might have questions about the newly-structured BBA Program, there are a couple of interesting and useful articles in BusinessWeek:

• “Big Changes for Michigan BBAs”, September 27, 2006: An interview with Michele Thompson, head of Ross Undergraduate Admissions.
• “A "Luxurious Position" at Michigan”, April 17, 2006: An interview with Al Cotrone, director of the Office of Career Development at Ross.

Taken together, these articles provide a lot of clarifying detail about getting into the program, about the program itself, and about getting a job after graduating.

While I don’t have anything to add to the articles themselves, I am going to take the opportunity and reply to a couple of the more uninformed comments at the end of the Thompson interview:

• We have lots of reasons for having a direct admit program, and copying Indiana’s program (or anyone else’s) was certainly not on the list. We added this because we wanted to provide attractive, high-performing high school students with another option. UM’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions had told us for many years that this would be an attractive option for high school students. They have the option of going to MIT and Wharton directly out of high school. We wanted to give the cream of the high school crop the opportunity to apply directly to Ross — given the quality of the applications that we received and the quality of the students who matriculated here this fall, I am happy to report that we have exceeded our expectations (in no small part due to the efforts of Ms. Thompson). Further, we are not going to be going to 100% direct admissions because we know that many students do not decide to go into business until after they get to college.
• As for the size of our courses: Core courses have 70 students, while electives usually have between 25 and 50 (usually around 40). I’m an associate professor and head of the BBA Program, and I have office hours twice a week for the students in my sections of the core.
• Related to the BBA and MBA: If you get a Ross BBA, then you may or may not need an MBA. It all depends on your desired employer. Some companies require that their employees get an MBA as a prerequisite to moving up in management. Others don’t care about it at all. For others, getting certified as a financial analyst or a CPA is what is really needed in order to advance. It just depends. A typical Ross BBA shouldn’t worry about this type of thing until several years out of school; he or she is very well prepared to succeed in his or her job immediately after graduating. The BBA is neither simply a preparatory degree for receiving an MBA nor a deterrent to getting admitted into an MBA program. It is simply an undergraduate degree that is also very good at preparing a student to succeed in business. Further, it is an excellent preparation for law school or graduate studies in public policy. We have an excellent track record at placing students in the best programs in the country in these fields of study.

So, that’s it for now. If you are interested, or if you have a friend or family member who is interested in the Ross BBA Program, pass along these links.

Taking charge of your classwork

I’m teaching juniors this year in my BBA introductory course, BIT200. We have had a busy semester already, with a couple of assignments already turned in and several other assignments in progress. I have thrown a lot at them with varying degrees of success.

The primary difference that I have noticed that distinguish the better students from the pack is that he or she takes charge of his or her classwork. She knows what to do on an assignment and, if she doesn’t, she uses her resources (friends, online) to try to determine the answer but if she can’t find the answer, she asks. She understands what’s going on in class and, if she doesn’t, she uses her resources (friends, online) to try to determine the answer but if she can’t, she asks. She doesn’t wait until the last minute to do her homework so that, if she has a question, — guess what? — she can ask.

This is not to say that this person becomes a pest and asks a question every time doubt creeps into her mind, but it is to say that she doesn’t let uncertainty dominate her thoughts. She takes charge so that she knows what to do, she’s on top of her schedule, and she doesn’t rush to finish her assignments just before they’re due.

We can’t always reach this ideal. But this is what distinguishes the strongest students and is a sign of their maturity. It’s not a sign that they are overly compulsive about their work — it’s a sign that they understand how to give themselves the best chance of succeeding.

Important attributes recruiters look for

In a Wall Street Journal article from September 20, 2006 entitled “M.B.A. Survey: Something Old, Something New” discussing the WSJ ranking of schools granting an MBA, Ronald Alsop reported the percentage of recruiters who ranked an attribute as “very important” to them:

89.0	Communication and interpersonal skills
86.9	Ability to work well within a team
86.2	Personal ethics and integrity
84.3	Analytical and problem-solving skills
82.9	Work ethic
74.5	Fit with the corporate culture
74.0	Success with past hires
72.5	Leadership potential
67.1	Strategic thinking
64.9	Likelihood of recruiting “stars”
53.9	Willingness of students to relocate to the required job location
50.7	Well-rounded
43.2	Student “chemistry”
38.0	Content of the core curriculum
35.7	Students’ years of work experience
31.7	Overall value for the money invested in the recruiting effort
29.0	Incorporates experiential learning into the curriculum
27.1	Career-services office
25.9	Faculty expertise
21.0	Students’ international knowledge and experience
16.7	Commitment to corporate social responsibility

As someone closely affiliated with the Ross BBA Program, I found the above very interesting. While these are recruiters’ opinions related to hiring MBAs, these also apply quite nicely to BBAs, and should tell BBAs a lot about what they should focus on both inside and outside of the classroom. Let’s look at those attributes that at least 70% of recruiters thought was very important:

Communication and interpersonal skills

Your writing and speaking skills, and your experience working with a team getting things done. And working on a team not necessarily just as a leader, but also as a good team player.

Ability to work well within a team

This is amazingly important to companies. Most of your work, actually all of your work, involves working on teams. The more experience you can gain working in teams, the better you’ll be.

Personal ethics and integrity

It is a better situation by far to not have any ethical problems appear in your work or school record. Do not take the easy way out. At the end of the day, your integrity is all that you have. Don’t do anything to devalue it.

Analytical and problem-solving skills

This is one area in which our curriculum really gives the students a workout. We do this over and over again, in many different forms. Our BBA graduates should be top-notch by the time they graduate.

Work ethic

The more that you can show that you are diligent, organized, and committed to getting the job done, the more employers will be interested in you.

Fit with the corporate culture

This is what fly-backs are all about. This is also what internships are all about. Every day is an interview. They want to see what kind of person you are, and if you are a good “fit”. They’re not worried about whether you’re smart enough, they want to know if they want to have you around the office for a few years.

Success with past hires

Everything past hires (and past interviewees) have done influence what recruiters think about Ross. That is why you should be on your best behavior when you are interacting with recruiters. You’re not just influencing how the company feels about you — you’re influencing how the recruiter feels about Ross.

Leadership potential

Many times this comes shining through (or doesn’t!) in your extracurriculars.

What does this tell us? BBAs should work at their teamwork skills, their communication skills, and their analytical skills. They should work on doing “good works”. And they should look for experiences outside the classroom in which they can exercise and develop their leadership ability. This sounds like a good plan, and one which BBAs would be good to think about.

The top business schools: Recruiters' MBA picks

The Wall Street Journal just came out with its annual ranking of business schools. This ranking is based on evaluations by over 4000 recruiters (completed in early 2006). Ross again did well, ranking #1 for the second time in the last three years. While this is a ranking of MBA programs, it is the ranking that is most closely related to the BBA program. As such I see it as something that I am proud of and think reflects well on the BBA Program. I covered this topic the last time the WSJ ranked us #1, and I’ll repeat my comments here:

...We sell recruiters on the “one-stop-shopping” nature of the University. If they want MBAs, we got ’em; if they want BBAs, we got ’em; if they want engineering students, we got ’em; ditto for LS&A, computing, English, etc. Having a BBA program makes the University more attractive to recruiters than it would be otherwise. And it’s not like the BBA program is the weak sibling of the bunch: it's always ranked in the top 3 or so of any list that I’ve ever seen.

Furthermore, if recruiters come here for MBAs and like, they are (more than likely) also here recruiting BBAs and enjoying the services of our top-notch Career Development office. Speaking of which, the high-quality service of OCD is shared by BBAs and MBAs alike. All of the corporate relationships and alumni and data that are available for MBAs are naturally available to BBAs. This means that you are the beneficiary of services that wouldn’t be there were it not for the fact that we have to support such a large number of students (BBA, Day MBA, evening MBA, MAcc).

Thus, while this ranking isn’t for the BBA Program, students in that program benefit from it.

I gotta tell you, it’s really nice to be able to re-run (with reasonable frequency) text that I use to celebrate one #1 ranking in another column celebrating another #1 ranking. It’s an abundance of riches that we have around here.

Why money doesn’t bring happiness

There was a recent press release by the UM News Service entitled “Why money doesn’t buy happiness”. This summarizes a study published in a recent issue of Science. Here’s a few comments from the author:

Citing evidence from a nationwide survey of a representative sample of people they conducted recently, they noted that people with greater income tend to devote relatively more time to work, compulsory non-work activities (such as shopping and childcare) and active leisure (such as exercise) and less time to passive leisure (such as watching TV and just relaxing).

“When someone reflects on how more income would change subjective well-being, they are probably tempted to think about spending more time in leisurely pursuits such as watching a large-screen plasma TV or playing golf,” the authors wrote. “But in reality, people should think of spending a lot more time working and commuting and a lot less time engaged in passive leisure and other enjoyable activities.”

BBAs should think about this when thinking about a career. Certainly it’s the case that, all other things being equal, it’s better to have more money than less. The point of the article seems to be that it’s rarely the case that all other things are equal. It’s up to each individual to determine what trade-offs between earning money and other activities are appropriate.

Speaking up in class

I’m in the enviable position this year of being BBA Program Director while also teaching a BBA class. This allows me to hear more about what’s going on than in previous years. And that’s a very good thing.

A consistent theme that I am hearing from students is that they are having communication issues (not speaking loudly enough, speaking too quickly, or whatever) with their professor in a class. Professors aren’t perfect (did you know that we know that?) so this is to be expected sometimes. Because I use a fast feedback form in every class, it is easy for students to tell me about problems they are having. And because I’m Program Director, they also tell me about issues they are having in classes other than mine. If I hear a common theme in these comments, then I take them to the appropriate party.

This process adds unnecessary and confusing steps to the process. It should be the students who go to the professor directly either during (the best option) or immediately after (second best option) class. Professors generally would like to think that they are teaching you something during class. If they aren’t, and it can easily be fixed, then they almost certainly would appreciate hearing about it so that they can fix it quickly. If students address this in a calm and constructive manner, then this would work out better for all concerned. The best thing about it is that addressing it the first time makes it easy to begin a semester-long dialog about this with the professor so that he or she can find out if the situation is improving. If, for some reason, the faculty member does not respond well to such comments, then you should consider taking your comments to the chair of the department to get another viewpoint on your concerns.

I encourage all BBAs to take responsibility for their education. If you can help improve the educational process for yourself or your classmates, then you should take the steps necessary to bring about this change. It’s another way that you can leave Ross in better condition than you found it.

‘Any college will do’

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal by Carol Humowitz titled ‘Any college will do’ makes the following point:

Getting to the corner office has more to do with leadership talent and a drive for success than it does with having an undergraduatea degree from a prestigious university...Most CEOs of the biggest corporations didn’t attend Ivy League or other highly selective colleges. They went to state universities, big and small, or to less-known private colleges.

I consider this the best possible news for us, because I consider Ross to be a state university that is also in the position of also being able to be selective. This way you get the benefits of a larger school (resources, range of options, diversity in every possible dimension) combined with the high quality student body that selectivity brings.

The article goes on to say:

What counts most, CEOs say, is a person’s capacity to seize opportunities. As students, they recall immersing themselves in their interests, becoming campus leaders and forging strong relationships with teachers. And at state and lesser-known schools, where many were the first in their families to attend college, they sought challenges and mixed with students from diverse backgrounds — an experience that helped them later in their corporate climbs.

This sounds like it comes directly out of the playbook of our BBA advisors. What we want you to do is to do well in class, but also be sure that you have a well-rounded extracurricular experience that allows you to lead teams, manage projects, and get things done. It’s all in a day’s work for Ross BBAs.

Giving of yourself

I was just watching a show on The Food Network (while I’m waiting to watch the UM/ND football game) that had a great lesson for BBAs. It told the story of a working mom who quit her job and wanted to become a chef. She did not have any background in cooking (other than cooking for family and friends) — just like BBAs have little background in business when looking for their first jobs (other than the education they receive here and any experience they might have from internships). After a bunch of looking, she found a cooking school where she donated her time to help out the chefs in the kitchen. She wasn’t looking for anything other than a way to learn about the business. She quickly attracted a mentor. Her mentor was excited to work with her because she came with the attitude that she was looking for ways in which she could help, doing whatever was necessary, instead of looking for ways in which she could shine.

She donated her time and learned from professionals for four years. When a position opened at the restaurant next door (owned by the owner of the cooking school), they offered her the job. Why? Because they had observed her for four years. They knew her work. They knew her working ethic and her attitude. It was a natural fit.

BBAs should think about this approach. Go into a job with a humble attitude. Look for ways that you can help. Know that you are competent and able to contribute but that you are a beginner. Realize how much that you have to learn from people who have been doing their jobs for years. Think about and work on giving of yourself, and you might be surprised by the gifts you receive.

Facilities for BBA classes

I’ve been quite busy in my role as BBA Program Director this week. Many of the issues have had to do with classrooms — specifically, the classrooms that we are using in Mason and Dennison Hall during the construction of our new building. This post is simply to let students and faculty know that we are aware of many of the problems (projectors, temperature control, acoustics) and that we are working on them. I’m fairly confident that you will be hearing about or noticing changes in the near future.

We won’t always be able to address concerns in a way that will satisfy everybody (or anybody!), but we certainly are not able to fix a situation that we don’t know anything about. The most important thing about this whole process is that students and faculty are using the BBA Program Office as a resource to improve the educational process for the BBAs. Which is exactly the point of this office. So I’m a really happy camper right now.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed that changes will be implemented soon. I’ll keep you posted.

Survey of new BBA Juniors

I recently completed a survey of the 362 new BBA Juniors in my BIT200 class. Its purpose was to help me understand them better, and to understand their technical interests and capabilities better. I learned a lot about them, and I think they learned a bit about me in the process. I’ll share some of the results with you now.

Concentration (or major)

I asked each student to list the one or two areas that he or she is most likely to get a concentration in. The three most popular areas were finance at 43.5%, accounting at 20.1%, and marketing at 10.4%. Of course, these can change by the time they graduate, but it still shows where their thoughts are at when they enter the program.

Computers

These students have access to computers at their residence while they are here, that’s for sure. 99.7% have access to a computer at their residence with 85.7% overall being laptops. 97% of the students have access to a personal (versus shared) computer, and 92% have high speed Internet at their residence. 87.6% of the students have Windows on their primary computer, and 11.8% have Mac OS X.

Cell phones

This one was the first sign (to me) of the wide generation gap between me and them. (What was my first hint?) 99.2% of the students have a cell phone, and 83.2% of the students use their cell phone to send text messages. Wow! The next text message that I send using my cell phone will be my first. I’m just not there.

Social networking software

I found this to be an interesting category. I thought that flickr would be higher, and I had no idea that Facebook was that popular. Concerning Facebook, I would guess that half of my class had at least 100 “friends” and 3-4 students per section had at least 400.

Software	Currently use
Flickr	0.8%
Delicious	12.4%
Myspace	12.7%
Facebook	90.4%

Collaborative software

This set of questions turned up a surprise or two. About a fifth of the students have written a blog and the same percentage currently read a blog. I was surprised about both of these values being as large as they are. What I should have asked is whether they wrote the blog because they wanted to or because they had to. Very few students have contributed to a wiki; I’m not too surprised about this because I haven’t heard about too many academic situations in which wikis are used. Another surprise is that 70% have used wikipedia; I would have thought that more would have used it.

Software	Currently use
Have written a blog	21.8%
Currently read a blog	18.2%
Have contributed to a wiki	3.3%
Have used wikipedia	69.7%

Computer skills

All of the values in this section surprised me. Along with just about every other person, I am susceptible to thinking that everyone else must think and be a lot like me. Well, the data here certainly confirms that this is most definitely not the case. Only 9.1% of students are comfortable writing in HTML (I write raw HTML almost every day --- when I’m not using LaTeX), only a fifth of the students have taken a programming class in high school or college (my favorite languages to program in are python, lisp, and prolog but I can program in many others), and only 4.1% are comfortable using an ftp program (I use one just about every day, and have used one for at least 15 years). If I need any more evidence that the world isn’t a bunch of Scotts running around, then I’m not paying attention.

Skill	Comfortable	Once or twice	Never used
HTML	9.1%	30.0%	57%
ftp	4.1%	10.7%	79.6%
Programming course	20.1%

Excel skills

When interpreting this data, realize that this is self-reported. About 3/5 of students report that they are comfortable using Excel with another 37.5% reporting that they have used Excel a few times. Almost 90% of students report that they have created graphs or charts in Excel at least a couple times. However, about 4/5 of students have never used PivotTables. By the end of this class, students will all report in the left-most column.

Skill	Comfortable	Once or twice	Never used
General usage	60.1%	37.5%	2.2%
Graphs	42.4%	45.5%	11.6%
PivotTable	5.5%	13.5%	79.9%

Access skills

Finally, the following table can be summarized by saying that almost all students know very little about databases. Again, by the end of this semester, all students will report back in the left-most column.

Skill	Comfortable	Once or twice	Never used
General usage	3.0%	22.3%	73.3%
Forms	2.8%	8.5%	87.3%
Foreign keys	1.4%	3.0%	93.7%

Don’t do your best

Nicholas J. Cotsonika wrote an article in the September 8 Detroit Free Press about the Head Coach Rod Marinelli and the Detroit Lions titled “Your best isn’t enough”. While this was about one of the beliefs of a pro football head coach, I believe it also applies quite directly to BBAs, especially incoming BBAs. Here’s what he had to say:

It’s not about doing your best; it's about doing what is required.

It’s not about doing your best? I have always been taught to do my best, and I have always tried to do my best. I have always assumed I would teach my children to do their best. Why wouldn’t I?

Because when you set out to do your best, you have good intentions, but you limit yourself to whatever you feel — deep down — your best is. ...

How do you know what you’re capable of?

If you set out to do what is required to win, your only limit is being the best. You might achieve things you would not have otherwise.

“A little extra effort, a little extra energy, a little extra study, it may be bigger,” Marinelli said. “It may be more.” ...

Some players have made peace with doing their jobs amid the losing. Others don’t understand the level of work expected of them — like Charles Rogers before he was cut, like Mike Williams.

Rank work on a scale of one to 10. Maybe you’re so talented that you’ve always gotten by working at a two. Then a coach pushes you, and you work at a four. You say, “Hey, I’m working twice as hard as I ever have before! I’m doing my best!” But you’re still not working hard enough. You’re still not doing what is required.

This is what life is going to be like for you at Ross. Our professors, and other students, will push you to perform and work at a level you may never have had to reach before. Before you push back or withdraw emotionally or reduce your commitment to the program because you feel that you’re being asked to do things or perform at a level that you are not capable of, ask yourself if you are giving your full effort. You shouldn’t be focusing on the fact that you think you’re doing your best and still coming up short, You should focus on figuring out what you can do, how you can change, to ensure that you will be able to do what is required of you.

You don’t know what you’re capable of until you give yourself an honest chance to complete a task with full commitment, attention, energy, and attitude. It’s my guess that, given this honest effort, everyone at Ross is fully capable of succeeding at a high level. It’s up to each student (with the help of the vast support staff and advisors here at Ross) to determine how to draw out the level of work that is expected of them.

Back in the saddle again

For a variety of reasons I haven’t taught in the BBA Program since Fall 2002. Well, this semester I get to teach BIT200, “Personal Productivity with Information Technology”, a 1.5 credit hour course for BBA Juniors. (This coming winter semester we will begin teaching this class to BBA Sophomores.) I am tremendously excited about getting back into the classroom with BBAs again. In my opinion, they are our smartest and hardest-working students. Why wouldn’t I want to teach them?

In any case, I’m simply working like mad getting ready for class. I was up until 5am last night preparing. And I’ve been working just as hard all day today. I can’s wait until the first day of class.

“Co-creation” and the BBA Program

One of the four core values of the Ross School is “Co-Creation”. You might ask, “What in the heck is that?” I’m glad you asked! According to the School’s strategic positioning statement, this is defined as the following:

Our commitment to innovation in business education together with our relationship to the University of Michigan supports our philosophy of co-creating robust and diverse individual experiences for faculty and students across all programs — from BBA to Executive Education. Co-creation means that each person participates actively in the educational process; that the process is not a one-way delivery system from professor to student.

This core value also recognizes that we have forged and will strengthen cross-disciplinary programs, research partnerships and intellectual affiliations. For example, faculty grapple with the complex, often multidisciplinary problems that challenge our society and students can customize their education with a variety of opportunities.

After reading that you still might ask, “What in the heck is that?” For a long time, you could have put me in that camp, too. But now I’m getting a much better understanding of what it means. And it turns out that it’s really important for understanding all that Ross has to offer to BBAs. Let me take a shot at translating what this means to our undergraduate population.

Co-creation is all about creating a program of study that fits you as an individual rather than simply taking some pre-defined course of study. It’s about taking diverse pieces from around Ross and around this great University and constructing an educational experience that fits you. It’s about working with an advisor, working with representatives of the school, creating with them (get it?! — co-creating!) a set of courses and extra-curriculars that support your goals.

This is a big deal for Ross and the BBA Program and is one of our core values because we have such a set of absolutely fantastic programs surrounding the academic classes. There’s the Dare to Dream competition for those with an entrepreneurial bent. There’s the Washington Campus program for those who are interested in pursuing a life in, or simply understanding a life in, public policy. There’s the Erb Institute for students who emphasize the importance of sustainable enterprises. Study abroad programs in Germany and China for those who think that international business is what deserves emphasis. Double majors in business and music or economics or engineering or ... whatever. It almost doesn’t matter what a student wants to do. If he or she takes the time to define the interest, the Ross School has programs in place that the student can take advantage of.

This is a strength in diversity and a strength in context that is not easily duplicated elsewhere. I have always matained that the strength of Ross is that it is located within the University of Michigan. And this is one way in which the BBA Program fits the strategy of co-creation better than the MBA Program: BBAs have a diverse set of resources throughout the University in which to co-create their educational experience. If another undergraduate business program were to want to compete with Ross in this dimension, it would almost certainly come up short unless it was part of one of the world’s great universities as Ross is. Further, since business schools (any school, for that matter) have little influence over the rest of the university in which they are located, they have little ability to change their competitive position in this dimension.

This same philosophy manifests itself in the Ross BBA curriculum. Yes, students have a core curriculum that they all must complete; however, this is not a large number of hours, leaving a good chunk of the students course work for electives in Ross, electives in LS&A, minors, and double majors. In this case, the co-creation is primarily between the student and his or her advisor who brings a deep knowledge of possible courses inside and outside of Ross.

In conclusion, though co-creation sounds like a theoretical concept, it can actually be seen and felt in many different parts of a student’s experience while they are here at Michigan.

Discussion of BBA Program at a faculty meeting

For any of you who were around Wyly 2740 at 12noon Friday, you would have had the distinct pleasure of seeing about 75 of our faculty members gathered for a Ross Faculty Meeting. It was our first one of the year, and we certainly had good attendance for it. It’s generally pretty hard to get that many of our faculty members to come to our meeting. And it was good to see so many familiar faces after the summer.

In any case, the exciting thing about this meeting (from my perspective, anyway) is the amount of time that Dean Dolan and Associate Dean Anderson spent talking about BBAs. You have to realize that this faculty meeting time is very valuable time. There are only eight faculty meetings during the year, so to spend it on the BBA Program is exciting. What they talked about, and what faculty members asked a lot of questions about, was the quality of the incoming classes. Rightly, they are pleased to hear about the high quality of these students and our plans for doing all that we can to ensure that it does nothing but increase.

At next month’s meeting I will address the faculty about the funds that the Jones Center has at its disposal for funding the creation of senior capstone electives and leadership development for BBAs. It’s another opportunity for drawing senior faculty members to the BBA Program. Once I get them interested, I have generally found that the quality of the students keeps them coming back.

Meeting with Tom Jones

Today I had the privilege of meeting again with Tom Jones, the first BBA Program Office Director and the man who gave $10 million to the Ross School which now fund the Jones Center for BBA Education. I had the distinct pleasure of working with him a couple of years ago when he was the outgoing director and I was learning the position from him. I only get to see him intermittently now since he is working up north so I look forward to seeing him around the office.

This was such a great meeting because of all the great things that have happened with the BBA Program over the last year. Let’s review for a minute:

• Admissions: we admitted three separate great classes of students
• Curriculum: we are about half way through the process of implementing the new 3-year curriculum ordering
• Outreach programs: we have implemented significant outreach programs for high performing high schools in the Detroit area
• Mastery Project: we started up this program for at-risk students that was quite successful at preparing students for Ross who probably would not have been able to make it without this support
• Orientation: we just had a fairly successful orientation that informed over 700 students of many of the exciting programs that we have around Ross
• Workshops for BBAs: in the last year we put on workshops about law school, getting an MBA, getting a PhD, personal finances, business etiquette, speed reading, stress management, business presentations, living in NYC, living in Chicago, and venture capital & private equity.
• Student advising: we have three student advisors who have done a great job of reaching out to and connecting with students
• Washington Campus: this new program for BBAs educated students for a week in Washington, DC.
• Study abroad: we have planned two programs for up to 70 total students in Germany and Beijing

Given the above list of accomplishments by my staff, wouldn’t you think that it would be a good meeting?

Welcoming new students

Wow! What an exciting and exhausting two days that was! Over the last two days I hosted the last class of incoming junior BBAs at a full day of orientation, hosted a dinner for the first class of incoming freshmen preferred admit business students, participated in the new student convocation for the University, and then hosted the first class of incoming sophomore BBAs at a full day of orientation.

My overriding reaction to meeting all of these students is that they are a quality group of kids, and that we should expect a lot out of them in the years to come. These are smart, well-spoken young adults who professors will enjoy having in class, and I think they're going to have a great experience while enrolled at Ross.

We had a productive and informative orientation for the students at the Michigan Theater. They got to hear from Dean Dolan and me to start things off. The rest of the morning was spent on what I termed the “necessities”: ensuring that you graduate (Evonne Plantinga), ensuring that you take classes that you’re interested in (Rob Koonce), and ensuring that you get a job (either Al Cotrone or Lisa Hurst). In the afternoon, we got to spend some time on more interesting topics. First John Kim (BBA ’83), president of Prudential Retirement, spoke for 45 minutes on his reflections concerning work, life, and balancing the two, and then took questions from the students. It was valuable time for the students. After his address, the students heard several short pitches related to interesting opportunities that they will have during their time at Ross. I will discuss more about this topic later but, suffice it to say, many students found something or the other that got them even more excited about their upcoming time at the school. Finally, we closed with a reception and the ever-popular chocolate fountains.

While the day was long, I believe that the students received a useful introduction to their next few years at Ross. At the same time, I got quite excited about the overriding quality of these students, and even more than before I look forward to working with them.

An exciting time of the year

Students are arriving back in town. The band is practicing. (I love hearing the band play off in the distance or driving by Elbel Field and watching them work on the tiniest details so that they can provide part of the Michigan experience on game days.) Faculty, including me, are gearing up for class. There's a buzz in the air throughout Ann Arbor as students start to arrive on campus.

We've also been busy in the BBA Program Office over the summer. Incredibly busy, as a matter of fact. We admitted three entering classes this last year, two of them over the summer. We read applications from November through July. I’ll have more detail later on this, but we were incredibly successful in our goal of admitting high quality, well rounded, analytically prepared students who have an interest in business.

Other summer activities that I will be discussing in future posts:

• The Washington Campus program in our nation's capital
• The new study abroad partnerships that we have developed
• Our advising program (including our new advisor who came to us from LS&A)
• Our outreach program so that we can communicate with students in ways that are predictable and easy for students
• Our new admissions director and clarified admissions process
• Our high school outreach efforts
• The Mastery Project, a joint effort by the Ross School, the math department, and the economics department directed towards preparing at-risk students to succeed in analytical classes and in their careers
• The Ann Arbor version of “The Big Dig” and how it will affect BBA classes

And then there’s my on-going work on revamping BIT200 “Personal Productivity with Information Technology”. It's been something like 5 years since I have taught in the BBA Program (that’s horrible!) and I am very much looking forward to doing this again. I would bet that I will have plenty more to say on that topic as the semester progresses.

A difficult time of the year

Late last week a student dropped by the BBA Program Office and she was not doing too well. Crying, upset. Too much work; not enough play; too much time at Ross; too many assignments; too much groupwork — you get the idea. Since Rob was at a conference and Katie was in a meeting, I talked with her for a while and was reminded that this is a very difficult time of the year, especially for juniors. I had some advice for her that I thought I might pass along.

• You're not in this alone. Every other BBA graduate since I've been here has gone through this exact same situation. Others survived this process; you will, too.
• Don't compare yourself with other students. The Ross student population leans toward the anal retentive/obsessive compulsive end of the scale. These students have done well in school by 1) being smart, and 2) working harder than other students. Well, put 350 of these students together, and the results are fairly predictable. But, the question remains, how to deal with it? You shouldn't compare your work habits with other students. You can't work harder than all of them, and you shouldn't try. You should know that you are not the hardest working student in all of your classes. You should work toward getting good grades, but you shouldn't expect to get them. You should realize that you will have to work hard but that there is some point after which working will no longer be productive and may actually be counter-productive. Each person is different and you must determine when that point comes for you.
• This is not the time of year for a BBA to think about partying, having fun, or working out for hours on end. It's not going to happen — or, at least, it shouldn't if you want to make it through unscathed. There's a time to work and a time to play. This is the time to work. Look forward to taking some time off in May. However, if you came to Ross thinking that you would be able to continue a life of leisure approach to your college studies the whole year round, then it turns out you're sadly mistaken. It's not like we work like dogs all year 'round &mdashp; we certainly don't. But there definitely are times when you need to work for extended hours on multiple assignments. No doubts about that.
• Have a plan. If you don't have a daily planner, get one and use it. There's no way that you can keep all that's going on in your head. Determine what you need to do when and write it down in your calendar.
• Work the plan, day by day. The next thing to do is to work the plan — but focus on the day's activities, not the whole plan. If you look at all that needs to be done, you'll quickly become overwhelmed. If you need to, make another sheet of paper that contains just the day's schedule and to-do list, and keep this separate from the rest of your calendar so that you don't spend all of your time obsessing about the mass of upcoming tasks.
• Know that there is an end to the push. This level of stress and activity will not go on forever. Junior year at Ross is a highly stressful time, and it culminates with a very hectic April. But April ends and so do the demands of the school year. Next year will be better for many reasons, especially in that you will have a year's experience under your belt of how to deal with the ebb and flow of the school year.

Finally, and a point not of much comfort to this particular student, this is one of the primary reasons why Ross is moving to a 3-year program. While we want to maintain a competitive environment with the best possible students, we also think that at some point too much is really too much. The 3-year program spreads out the current junior year requirements over the sophomore and junior years while, at the same time, also putting them in an order that makes a lot more sense. I'm sure that we'll need to tweak things over the next couple of years, but I do expect that the number of students who drop into my office on the verge of tears should go down significantly.

BBA core course requirements

This post was inspired by a comment posted by student in response to my posting "Grades, college, & life":

i agree entirely with what you say, but how representational is that attitude with the current BBA program? We are required to take 13 courses in the business school, and truly only allowed to elect around 5 or 6 of our own. if we are being required to study material that we are not interested in because of these CORE requirements...doesn't grades become the only motivation?

What an amazingly interesting and useful comment! I happen to completely disagree with it but it's something that I can respond to and recognize as coming from a BBA.

Here's an (extended) excerpt from an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education titled "Has Harvard lost its way?" (by Harry R. Lewis, March 24, 2006). Professor Lewis is a professor at Harvard and previously served as dean of Harvard College. In this piece he is speaking of Harvard but he could just as easily (for my purposes) be speaking of Michigan:

[Harvard] headed toward the conclusion that its students are free agents and for the most part should study what they wish. ... Undergraduate education defined [as Harvard currently defines it] allows professors to do as they wish as well. In an effort to persuade me that I should back the newly proposed, requirement-light curriculum, one professor offered that it meant we faculty members would no longer have to teach students who did not want to take our courses. But the courses from which students learn the most are often the ones they would be disinclined to take without being pressed to do so. The general-education courses I took on Western philosophy stretched and rewarded me, and the core course I teach on information technology and society plays that role for my students. If professors can define their job as teaching what they wish to those who wish to be taught it, Harvard will not carry the centuries-old ideal of a liberal education forward into the next generation. It will instead indulge students' inclinations to learn more of what they know already, while avoiding unpleasant but enlightening disagreements among professors about the relative importance of different studies. Liberal education will be reduced to an easy compromise among academics rather than a long-term commitment to the welfare of students and the society they will serve.

This states my worries about the direction that undergraduate education is going quite well. But here's the essence of it for me: A great university in its undergraduate liberal arts education 1) should help students to (as Dr. Lewis states) "understand the complexities of the human condition" and 2) "challenges its students to ask questions that are both disturbing and deeply important." An undergraduate business education should provide its students with a broad understanding of business in the context of providing a liberal arts education.

When I taught my database and Web site development class (BIT320), it was actually a philosophy class operating under the disguise of a technology class. I wanted to help students think about the world in an entirely different way, one that was not accessible to them before they took the class. I certainly enjoyed teaching this to students electing to take the class. However, the class I most enjoyed teaching was BIT301 — a required introduction to computing for the whole BBA class. This class required me (and my students) to get our heads around a vast array of topics, and required me to figure out how to present these topics in a manner that was accessible though still challenging to students with a wide set of differing backgrounds. In turn, it required students to confront topics that did not immediately appeal to them but that would, to a great extent, be extremely helpful to them as they began their independent lives and careers.

Let me now react more directly to Steve's comments.

First, as he correctly states, the current BBA curriculum requires that you take many courses, leaving little room for electives. Yes, and we consider this a feature, not a bug, of the current curriculum (to borrow a phrase from my IT background). The "we" in the previous sentence refers to the faculty, alumni, the School's boards, and recruiters. The Ross School is not a school of finance, or a school of marketing — it is a school of business. We provide a general business education in the context of a liberal arts education. If a student wants a specialized education in some facet of business, then he or she should get an MBA with a specialization in that particular area of study; that's what a masters is for.

Second, implicit in this comment is the belief that studying something that is required cannot be (or, at least, frequently is not) enjoyed. Well, that's too bad. It does not have to be that way. This is something that is entirely under your control. Do what you can to make every course a positive learning experience. Learn to enjoy the analysis done in business economics, the detailed specifications created in a BIT course, the complexity of the human condition in M&O. These are all completely different, but each are enjoyable in their own way. Try to figure out how to mine each class for its particular gold.

The purpose of action-based learning

I'm currently supervising, in one way or another, eight different MAP projects. MAP is the 7-week program that almost all MBAs go through at the end of their first year. It is a project in which 4-6 MBAs work on a single problem defined by a single company. It's a difficult but highly engaging process.

It's hard to say exactly what students get out of this process, but they clearly (to me, anyway) do get a lot out of it. I've been thinking a bit about this recently. I alluded to it in an email I sent to a member of one of the teams that I supervise:

You need to focus on developing an actionable plan for [the company] based on data. Keep picturing yourself giving the final presentation and having them ask you "why should we believe you?" — what you're doing now is essentially writing the answer to that question, the question that broadly determines the success of your project.

If the students take this lesson to heart, then — to me, anyway — they have learned what they're supposed to learn from MAP. When you're in business, it's no longer about being smart. It's no longer about doing the best analysis. It's about making your company successful. And this involves doing things and not simply ordering more analysis to be completed. These things usually involve making stuff (faster, more efficiently, more effectively, or just better stuff) or selling stuff (more of it, for a higher price). And, generally, doing MAP drives this point home in a most effective way.

There's nothing like standing in front of a CEO and having him or her, at the end of your presentation, say something like "Yes, I hear you, but why should I believe you? Other smart people have told me to do the exact opposite thing." And you realize that you haven't collected enough (or the right) data in order to back up your conclusions. Or, even worse, "Uh, that's all nice, but what are we supposed to do about all this?" And you realize that you've analyzed the situation but you haven't gotten down to the bare details of what specific people are supposed to do at specific times and what the payoff will be for those tasks.

Business is about doing the right things well. MAP drives this point home for the MBAs.

Handling job fly-backs and multiple job offers

Sometimes a BBA is in the enviable position of receiving a job offer while at the same time being involved in the recruiting process for one or more other companies. This can sometimes lead to a difficult situation of having a scheduled fly-back (or other significant recruiting event) when the student is close to accepting an offer from another company. Students need to realize that this is a good thing, not a bad thing — but it can quickly become a very bad thing if the student does not handle the situation correctly. In a recent situation, a student accepted a job offer and then cancelled on a non-refundable ticket for a fly-back at the last minute without following up with staff at the School who had worked to build the Ross relationship with that company. This left the recruiting company with a very bad feeling about the level of maturity of our students and left staff at the School with egg on their faces for standing behind the maturity level and integrity of the student. This is what's known as a Very Bad Thing.

There are many facets of this situation that the student needs to be aware of when they consider what to do in this situation. (From here on down, I'll assume the student is a female for the ease of explication.)

• The student is a representative of the Ross School and the University of Michigan. The student needs to remember that she is not out interviewing on her own; she is an ambassador of the School and the University and needs to conduct herself as such.
• The student is the beneficiary of the relationships that the School and the University have maintained over many years, or that we hope to build in the future. Companies do not come to Ross to interview specific students. They come because we have built up these relationships and because they have had good experience with our students in the past. Current students should be aware of this good will that has been built up over many years and do their best to build it up rather than simply to draw on it or to use it up.
• Staff in OCD, the BBA Program Office, the Women's Initiative, Student Life, and elsewhere throughout the School sometimes draw on the relationships built up over time and put themselves on the line for students.
• Industries are small worlds unto themselves and word travels fast about a person's integrity. People never really know what the future will hold. Even if the student is turning down a position right now being offered by person A at company B, the student might later want a job in the future 1) at company B, or 2) at company C (where person A might have moved to). You just never know when you might cross paths with the person sitting across the table from you. Further, people do not quickly forget being treated poorly or with a lack of respect. Being put in a difficult position is one thing — but not handling it with delicacy, tact, and respect is quite another.

For all of the above reasons, when a difficult situation comes up, a student should work with OCD (or with other staff throughout the School whom she might have been working with) to attempt to resolve the difficulty. Believe me, these people have seen these situations many, many times. The wrong approach is to back out at the last minute and hope that no one will notice. People will notice and the School will hear about it — and the relationship might be irreparably damaged. This may not hurt the student right now, but future students will lose an option. If this happens too many times, then future students will be in a real bind and the School's reputation will be badly hurt.

So, for everyone's sake, think about the bigger picture and work with the School's staff. In the long run, you and the School will be better off.

Preparing in high school for college math and science

Margaret Spellings, the U.S. Education secretary recently told a U.S. Senate committee that students need to be better prepared for college-level math and science classes.

One of the big pushes in the plan to enact this is to expand the Advanced Placement program so that more high school students have access to it. I generally support such an idea but I have a couple personal reactions to it. Note these are based on my experiences and don't necessarily reflect official UM or Ross School policy or even some recent research.

First, if a student is at a school that offers tons of AP classes (I'm talking 6, 20, or even more classes), she shouldn't feel compelled to take a huge number of them. Take three or maybe four of them; there's no need for the student to swamp herself with work that keeps her from participating in extra-curricular activities. The student does want to demonstrate to readers of her college application that she was interested in taking a difficult and diverse set of college preparatory courses. She doesn't necessarily want to place out of too many freshman-level classes during her freshman year and start taking lots of classes with "seasoned" sophomores. Doing this a few times in the first year might work out, but do this too many times and her performance can suffer.

Second, but on a related point, a student shouldn't necessarily let an AP class and test be a substitute for college math. College math courses can be quite difficult. Placing out of the initial Calculus class and starting the college math curriculum with the second Calculus class can make the jump to college math quite daunting. I'm not saying that it shouldn't be done; I'm just saying that the student should consider simply taking the college math class even though she took the AP class.

This is what I did when I went to Furman University many moons ago. I took Calculus when I went to Dunwoody High School and actually did fairly well. I went to Furman on a math scholarship but I still took calculus from John Poole as a freshman. I thought it would help solidify my knowledge of calculus, would introduce me to math at the college level, and would (hopefully) provide me with an easy A. The first two held true — though, while I did get an A in the class, the grade didn't come easily.

In any case, I encourage high school students to take as many demanding math and science classes as they can fit into their schedule. It will pay off in college.

What to do in high school to ensure you get a degree

A new report issued by the U.S. Department of Education studies thousands of students over an eight year period to determine what factors are positively correlated with getting a college degree. According to the press release:

The study ... found that the academic intensity of a high school curriculum is the strongest indicator of postsecondary degree completion, regardless of a student's major course of study.

Specifically, (and this quote is from the article about the study in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

[T]aking math beyond Algebra 2 and three classes in laboratory science (biology, chemistry, and physics) in high school provided greater "academic momentum" than taking three classes in foreign languages and any Advanced Placement courses.

This report also pointed out the positive correlation between getting credit in non-traditional times --- e.g., before college actually begins, or during the summer. According to the Chronicle article, "[e]arning some college credits while still in high school is positively associated with degree completion." Finally, "[e]arning more than four credits during summer terms correlated positively to degree completion, particularly for black students."

How to fairly test and grade a multiple section course

A student recently asked me about a test she had taken. This course has multiple sections and she had questions about how the test was administered. When a course has multiple sections, the School is generally supportive of the professor's efforts to give the exam in one large sitting. However, sometimes this isn't possible (for any of a number of reasons). So, in this case, when the exam is given at several times, the professor has to take steps to minimize the sharing of information between sessions.

The next step is to figure out how to assign grades on the exam: Should letter grades be assigned within a section or across sections?. This question is pertinent in both core and elective courses because there is a grading curve that applies to each.

Across

A student is compared with students in all the sections. The student's grade is affected by how students perform in other sections; this should allow a more accurate measure of how each student performs relative to all the students in the course. On the other hand, if the student is in a section that does not perform as well on the exam, then he or she would receive a lower grade than he or she would receive if the grades were not determined this way.

Within

A student is compared with other students in his or her own section. If the student is in a section that performs better on the test than other sections (for whatever reason), then that student would receive the same or a lower grade than he or she would have received when in another section. On the other hand, the student would not be receive a lower grade simply because students in another section scored higher on the test.

The across sections method is more appropriate when multiple sections are taught by the same professor or when the professors work hard to coordinate the content presented across sections. This method also has the feature that it discourages students from sharing information about the exam. However, in any case, the professor (or professors) have complete discretion to assign grades in whichever method he (or they) see fit.

Being tough and working hard

I'm in the middle of reading an article by Bill Simmons on ESPN.com that is transcript of an email exchange with Malcolm Gladwell, a writer at the New Yorker and the author of Blink and The Tipping Point. (Here's a review of Gladwell's work.) In any case, Gladwell wrote this wonderful little passage about believing in yourself and working hard:

Why don't people work hard when it's in their best interest to do so? ... The (short) answer is that it's really risky to work hard, because then if you fail you can no longer say that you failed because you didn't work hard. It's a form of self-protection. I swear that's why Mickelson has that almost absurdly calm demeanor. If he loses, he can always say: Well, I could have practiced more, and maybe next year I will and I'll win then. When Tiger loses, what does he tell himself? He worked as hard as he possibly could. He prepared like no one else in the game and he still lost. That has to be devastating, and dealing with that kind of conclusion takes a very special and rare kind of resilience. Most of the psychological research on this is focused on why some kids don't study for tests — which is a much more serious version of the same problem. If you get drunk the night before an exam instead of studying and you fail, then the problem is that you got drunk. If you do study and you fail, the problem is that you're stupid — and stupid, for a student, is a death sentence. The point is that it is far more psychologically dangerous and difficult to prepare for a task than not to prepare. People think that Tiger is tougher than Mickelson because he works harder. Wrong: Tiger is tougher than Mickelson and because of that he works harder.

Which type are you? Are you putting yourself on the line every day? Or are you giving yourself excuses so that, when you fail, you don't have to doubt yourself?

One good reason to visit me

Yesterday, a student came to the BBA Program Office because she had a concern about a class. Specifically, she was upset about one section of MO300 getting to take their mid-term as a take-home exam while the rest of the sections took their mid-terms in-class. She didn't think that this was right and, at the same time, didn't feel comfortable discussing it with her professor but didn't know where else to turn.

Well, that's where I come in. She dropped by our office and spoke with Rob Koonce (who advises students). He realized that I shouuld know what's going on, so he directed her into my office where we had a quick chat. I took this student's concerns to the MO chair and then the core course coordinator. We discussed the issue and we now both understand the other's thinking on this topic. I don't know what's going to happen today, but the MO professors are at least better informed as to the concerns of the students and will be able to address them before and after the exam.

Building next year's classes

Admissions and the BBA Program Office are busy building next year's classes; the deadline for this set of students has already passed. We are currently in the midst of reading applications for next year's freshman class of preferred admits. They are really, really strong. Any concerns that some might have had that we would not be able to attract a group of smart and active freshman have been completely washed away. High SATs, high GPAs, strong analytic grades and scores, tons of activities, several have been running their own business for multiple years, good mix of in-state and out-of-state — good, good, good. We won't know until mid-summer how many of them are going to show up in September but I'm certain we'll be happy with the result.

The application deadline for current sophomores (rising juniors) is tomorrow (Feb 15). This will be our last 2-year program but it will be as strong as ever. Our third deadline, for current freshmen (rising sophomores), is the end of March. This will be our first 3-year program. We are looking forward to continuing our tradition of attracting a group of smart, highly motivated students to Ross. This has been, and will continue to be, the basis of our success.

Overall, adding our senior class to our three entering classes and next year we'll have around 800 students. We are eagerly awaiting the time when they arrive on campus. We are planning several activities for each group of students to help begin (or continue) to build a connection to Ross.

Good teachers and good classes

I like to consider myself a good teacher. (I'm not talking about how well I fulfill the whole job of professor; I'm simply commenting on my ability to teach a quality class.) I've won awards from students and from other professors that indicate that other people think so, too. That's all well and good.

Now that doesn't mean that I can't get better. It doesn't mean that the next class that I teach is going to be a rousing success. Of course, I hope that it will and expect that it might — but hope and expect are a long way from actually delivering such a course.

Lots of things have contributed to my teaching methods and style. Of course, I've worked with other professors whose work in the classroom I highly respect (Mike Gordon being a prime example). I've observed many great teachers over the years as a student (e.g., Fred Allvine and Eugene Comiskey at Georgia Tech) and as a professor (e.g., Dennis Severance and Judy Olson here at Michigan). I've also built up quite the library of books on teaching; here's a sample of my favorites:

• Making the most of college by Light
• What the best college teachers do by Bain
• Teaching at its best by Nilson
• Strategies for energizing large classes, edited by MacGregor et al.
• Leaving the lectern by McManus
• Classroom instruction that works by Marzano et al.
• Engaging large classes by Stanley & Porter
• Simulations and the future of learning by Aldrich
• E-learning and the science of instruction by Clark & Mayer
• Lessons from the cyberspace classroom by Palloff & Pratt

And that's a sample of the books; there are, of course, many other journal articles that I've read over the years that I've found valuable. These are books by researchers and practitioners (that is, researchers who study teaching and teachers) that tell me their take on what they found of interest when looking at the art and practice of teaching. All of these give me strategies that I might use in my future classes.

What does this have to do with you? Well, I would like to hear from students about their best experience in a classroom, and why it was so great. It can be about a full-semester experience and how it all came together on a specific day in just the right way; it can be about a specific day in one particular class that had a great impact on you — whatever. What I'm looking for are stories, especially from Michigan and Ross students, about their favorite experiences in specific classes. Go ahead and name names if you are going to do so in a positive light. I don't know of any professor that wouldn't love to hear that he/she did a great job.

And why do I care? Two reasons. First, in my current job as BBA Program Director I get to hear about all of the problems. What I'd like to do is have a series of positive examples that I can relay both to prospective students and to current faculty who are looking for inspiration. Second, I am currently working through the process of designing a couple of new classes. I want to hear about the approaches used by professors that students find interesting and not just those approaches that other academics find intriguing.

So, if you would take a few minutes, what I'd like you to do is leave a comment for this post that describes the project, in-class activity, assignment, or other aspect related to a class that you really enjoyed or found valuable. There's no deadline — so even if you're reading this years from now, please go ahead and post — but, on the other hand, the sooner you post your comment, the sooner I can take advantage of this information. Thanks!

Grades, college & life

I just had a chat with a student that reminded me of where many of you are mentally and emotionally in your journey through this school and through your life. And I thought I'd just pass on a few of the main points of this conversation to you.

Grades are important. They are a major component of the decision of admissions committees if you should ever decide to go to graduate school. They are also a major component of the weeding-out process for initial interviews for certain careers. Getting good grades is certainly better than getting bad grades. I got good grades and they certainly helped me in my academic career.

Grades are not important in many ways. They should not determine your self-worth. They are not who you are. They also should not be the reason that you try hard in school. You should possibly end up with good grades as a by-product of working hard in a class that you enjoy and that is important to you for some reason. Not the other way around.

You shouldn't work hard so that you get good grades; you should work hard (because you like something) and then possibly get good grades. This is a real important point. This is one of those "If I had only known then what I know now" things that adults say. Very few college kids understand this. Some of you never will. Some of you will get it during your mid-life crisis. And a few lucky ones get it while you're in college. I didn't get it until sometime in my late 30s.

Another point to be taken out of this: think of how "enjoyment" or "fun" or "goodness" fits into this whole equation. It should be related to the content of the class and how well the class is taught; it should not have anything to do with your grade. I've heard someone say "I didn't get a good grade in that class. I shouldn't have taken it." What?!? If you're taking a class because of a grade, or if a grade has something to do with how you value a class, then you're messed up.

You should take a class because you're interested in the topic. You work hard and try to learn the material. Note that I didn't say "You work hard and try to do well in the class." Wrong-o! You work hard to try to learn the material; as a result of learning the material, you then have a better chance of performing well on projects (and assignments and exams) and, thus, have a better chance of getting a good grade.

This isn't just a semantic trick or some philosophical mumbo-jumbo. It has to do with success. Take a moment to understand this chain of relationships: like topic —> try harder —> learn material better —> perform better —> better chance at good grade. If this doesn't seem right, apply the same concepts to playing a sport: like sport —> try harder —> learn skills better —> perform better —> better chance of winning. Now that makes sense, doesn't it? I'm just applying the same process to school work, that's all.

Still, when applied to school, this may sound hopelessly naive to you. You're probably thinking something like this:

"You don't take classes because you like them. Who likes their classes? You take them just to get through them. You take them to get good grades. And, at the end, if you're lucky, you get a good job because of them."

Well, I'm telling you right now that you might think this, but you would be wrong. The grade should not be the focus of your efforts; the process (the class and the material) should be the focus. Everything else will then flow naturally from that — including good grades on classes that you like and jobs that are related to this material that you like. Again, this is just like sports. Winning should not be the focus of your efforts; performing up to your capabilities should be your focus. If you do so, then winning will come. You can't (or, at least, shouldn't) measure your performance by whether you won or you lost — you should look at whether you prepared correctly to give yourself the best chance to perform well. If you did that, then you have to accept the outcome. As Bill Parcells says, "You are what you are."

Again, the process — in this case, the class and the assignments — should be the focus of your efforts. This statement might not make any sense to you but it's been a guiding statement in my life (since my life started making some sense, anyway). Don't focus on the end; focus on the journey. Focus on the process of learning. Focus on enjoying the class as you sit in it. Focus on the new topics that you encounter. Focus on the challenges that you come across. Focus on how you can apply what you learn to your life. And so on. In our life, all we have is what we do and who we come in contact with. You should focus on getting the most out of both of these.

If you're focusing on the process, you will become more engaged with the material. Having become more engaged, you will learn it better ... and off you go (as we discussed above).

I'm not encouraging you to not get good grades. I'm saying that I think you should focus on the learning process and let the grades take care of themself. I'm encouraging you to think about who you are, how you choose classes, how you think about your classes, and why you're in school. You'll be better for it because you'll learn more and enjoy your time in school more. And as a side effect, you'll also end up enjoying your life after school more. And I think that we can all agree that's a good thing.

Our BBA Program Office staff, and coming changes

The BBA Program Office is going to be hiring another BBA Student Advisor (like Katie's position that we hired for last year). This is the last piece of the BBA Program Office puzzle that Dean Bob Dolan and I agreed to two years ago when I started in my role as BBA Program Director. This person will allow us to add more outreach and more activities that involve the BBAs; however, it is also a necessary hire given that we will have about 1100 BBAs to advise next year instead of 720. This is a fantastic commitment by the Dean to the BBAs, and every future student will benefit from it.

This person will report to Rob Koonce (as Katie McCartney does) in his role as coordinator of all things related to a BBA's academic life once he or she is here — though, of course, not the stuff related to enforcement and interpretation of rules that Academic Services does (under Evonne Plantinga's steadying hand) — as opposed to their extra-curricular life stuff that Student Life (the group under Amy Cell's direction) handles. Erika Busch will continue to report to me, continuing in her role as liaison to the rest of the school, coordinator of BBA projects and events, and coordinator of communications and outreach for our department.

So, what does this mean to you?

• You should go to Student Life if you have any questions related to extracurricular activities.
• You should go to Academic Services if you have questions related to your degree audit, class credit issues, etc.
• You should come to Student Advisors in the BBA Program Office if you have questions about what classes to take or your program of study. You should also come to us if you don't know where else to go. We're real good at pointing you in the proper direction, in referring you to other departments in the Business School and in other parts of the University.

College students are still maturing

As described in a news release from Darthmouth University:

Two Dartmouth researchers are one step closer to defining exactly when human maturity sets in. In a study aimed at identifying how and when a person's brain reaches adulthood, the scientists have learned that, anatomically, significant changes in brain structure continue after age 18. ... The results indicate that significant changes took place in the brains of these individuals. The changes were localized to regions of the brain known to integrate emotion and cognition. Specifically, these are areas that take information from our current body state and apply it for use in navigating the world. ... "The brain of an 18-year-old college freshman is still far from resembling the brain of someone in their mid-twenties," says Bennett. "When do we reach adulthood? It might be much later than we traditionally think."

I'm bringing this to your attention because I sense a reluctance among students to come forward and ask for help from people who should be able to help them. Students should realize that asking for help from people who are there to help them is perceived as a sign of particular maturity and confidence and not as a sign of weakness and ignorance.

I fit into the pattern identified by the researchers. I know that I wasn't even an approximation of who I am now until I was in my early 30s. While I am still nowhere close to being able to keep my emotions close to the vest, I am now much better at being able to control my emotions and not allow them to rule my minute-to-minute activities. Even now, as a 43-year-old, I know that I think about relationships and situations much differently than I did when I was 30, let alone 20.

So, this is an admonishment to college students based not on the fact that I'm an old fart — though I'm getting there — but on actual science: Your professors, your parents, your advisors — all these people might actually be able to help you. Many of them actually think about things in a more advanced and sophisticated way than you do. We're not just dense; we see things and think about things in a different way, as being more interconnected and complicated. Going to your peers some times, many times, will not be enough because they are at the same stage of development. It's not that we're smarter than you; it's that we've had experiences that have shaped our brain (and, thus, our thinking) in a way that will happen to you but hasn't happened yet. It's not that you won't be able to think as an adult; you simply might not be physiologically able to do so at this stage of your development. We won't always give the right advice — we're not perfect — but we should at least be able to give you a different, and valuable, point of view.

Summer internships

It's that time of year — internship season. Looking over possible companies, bidding for interviews, preparing for the interviews, hoping for callbacks, preparing for a callback, the torture of that process, waiting for an offer, and — you can only hope — the strain of choosing among several good offers. This essay is, generally, not applicable to students who have to — get to! — go through this last step. I'm addressing this essay primarily to those students who are worried about their internship.

Let me get this out of the way right now: If you work this summer in any capacity, you have the opportunity to impress a future employer. Suppose that you want to work for some random industry (let's call it "Investment Banking") but you only get an internship in another industry (let's call it "not Investment Banking"). Your life is not over. Your career path is not set. You have not been proven a loser. You do not have to change your life and career goals. This is a wonderful opportunity; it is not punishment.

Let's look at the positives that might come from getting an internship — any internship. You will gain lots of transferrable skills. These are actually the skills that future employers are most interested in. You will gain experience working with a variety of people, not just other Ross Business School students. They might have, heaven forbid, grey hair, but they might actually treat you like a real human being after working with you for a while.

You will also gain experience getting things done in an organization. This is different than getting things done at school. You will have incomplete information and a less clear path to the information you do need. You will learn when to ask for help, when to ask for information, and when to just buckle down and get it done.

You will learn about organizational life. This is very different from academic life. You will learn to work with many bosses and many more co-workers, all with very different experiences and expectations than what you've come in contact with at school. You will learn to socialize, enough so that you have a network of friends but not so much that it gets in the way of getting your work accomplished. You won't have homework, but you might be expected to work until late at night. But other nights you will not have any work to do. No homework at all. You will just be able to explore a city, read a book that you actually want to read, go to a movie, rent a DVD — whatever! It's a very different feeling than always having homework hovering over your head.

You will learn about how a big company (or a small company) works. Either one would be useful. And they are quite different than each other, and quite different than how a university works.

You also might learn what you do not like to do — even if you actually did think you would like it going into the internship. This is a very valuable lesson. This will help you eliminate a bunch of companies that you might otherwise want to interview with. And do not forget that what you do not like now is not necessarily what you will not like in the future. Surprisingly enough, when you are 30 you will be different than you are now. (At least I hope so.)

You will make contacts that you will be able to use in the future. These contacts might be for future job recommendations. This person might be someone whom you hope will hire you at some point. And do not forget that these people can change jobs, too. Just because you wouldn't want to work in this particular company in the future, this does not mean that you would not have the opportunity to work for this person at another company. Every day that you are at your internship is an interview for some future position. You'll never know when you're meeting a person for the first time that might end up hiring you, or having the possibility of hiring you, in the future.

Finally, it is actually often easier to convert a "non-big-company" experience in which you get real responsibility into great talking points for companies in the fall (during your interviews for full-time jobs) than it is to convert the experiences you might get as an intern at a large company. Remember that it's not the company that counts, and it's not the position that counts, it's what you do in that position at that company — no matter what the position or company. (Thank to Al Cotrone for bringing this last point to my attention.)

So, take that internship. Keep a positive attitude. Work hard. Set goals. Get things done. Make yourself valuable. And have a good time.

Extracurricular participation for BBAs

The Ross School of Business BBA student certainly has a lot of clubs that he or she (I'll say "she" from now on) might participate in. The questions are:

• Why participate in the clubs?
• What clubs to participate in?
• How to participate in those clubs?

A student might have many reasons for participating in clubs — giving back to the community, strengthening connections with a culture, finding social activities, playing sports, or what not — but companies make important implications from looking at a student's set of extracurricular activities.

With this set of activities, a student sends a strong signal about her ability to manage her time, her ability to work in a group, and her ability and willingness to lead a group. A student should generally not have a long list of extracurriculars at any one time because that indicates that she is not able to make choices and she is probably limiting her ability to make significant contributions to those clubs. Even if the company isn't hiring in a position that seems like a leadership position, with most every hire it is looking for a person who might soon be able to handle small, informal leadership positions (running a subcommittee or group) and then, one day, be able to take on more significant, formal leadership positions (manager, director).

So, to answer the above questions: Participate in clubs for any of the above reasons; participate in the clubs that you are interested the most in; and work to accomplish things within the context and structure of the club. (I've written on this topic in a previous post.)

BBA Program Office goings-on

There is a lot going on in the BBA Program Office that you might not be aware of so I thought I'd give you a quick update.

Staff

I now have three people on my staff:

• Erika Busch: in charge of communications, coordination with the rest of the School and University, and on-going projects, among other things,
• Rob Koonce: in charge of academic advising, the Mastery Project, community outreach, among other things, and
• Katie McCartney: advisor to BBAs on academic and undergraduate life.

Workshops

Since the most recent workshops on going to law school (that the Law School put on for us) and living in New York City (that Katie and Tony Tsai put on) were so successful, we're looking into related workshops: living in Chicago, pursuing an MBA, pursuing a PhD, etc. Let us know — by coming by and chatting with Rob, Katie, or myself — if you have any particular requests that you think a good number of students might be interested in.

Visiting classes

Rob & and Katie are continuing to visit classes so that they might be in a better position to talk about them.

Career Guides

We are nearing completion on our career guides. These will provide students with a recommended list of classes for particular careers. We will publish these on our Web site for easy reference.

BBA Newsletter

Erika has been, and will continue to, publish the BBA Newsletter every two weeks. If you've been missing it, this email attempts to highlight events and resources that are, or should be, of particular interest to BBAs.

Orientation

We're working on BBA Orientation for next year. We've taken a long, hard look at the suggestions you made at the most recent Orientation and have incorporated many changes into our planning for next year's programming. Just FYI, we weren't too surprised by most of your comments. We saw the same problems that you saw. More on this in a later post.

Problem resolution

I've been working with students to help them resolve issues they had with professors last semester.

Washington Campus

We've been working with Professor Siedel to put on the Washington Campus program that will have its inaugural session this May.

Study Breaks

We're arranging to have a BBA Study Break again this semester. It was quite a success last semester in its first offering.

Printing problems

We've been talking with the Dean's office about the printing problems students have been having. We're getting close to resolution, I believe.

I just wanted to make sure that you know that we've been working hard for you this year — even if you haven't been aware of it! I have a fantastic staff, and and they make up a fantastic resource for you. I hope you can make the time to get to know them.

Changing businesses

A company does business long enough, and it probably thinks it's safe. Well, let's see:

• As of January 27, 2006, Western Union is no longer delivering telegrams.
• No matter how good it actually is (and no matter how many times I read it as a kid — yes, read it!), the Encyclopedia Britannica isn't exactly raking in the money any more, is it?
• GM, Ford. That's all I'm going to say.
• Sears and/or K-Mart.

I'm sure that there are a lot more, but these came immediately to mind.

To anyone who is of a certain age, the above list is shocking. If I had been told that those companies would be in trouble in their "core" businesses, I would have had trouble believing it.

The lesson: Don't ever be satisfied. Don't get comfortable. Keep working. Keep improving.

Having trouble with a professor

Periodically, students come to me describing some level of difficulty they are having with a professor (for whatever reason). Usually, by the time it gets to me, it's late in the term, it's difficult to address, and the solution is (frequently) not going to benefit the student much. So, let's now examine the process you might follow if you have trouble with a professor:

1. Talk to the professor directly. Be constructive. Have a conversation; don't accuse. Speak, listen, respond, and repeat. Work on determining if there has been a misunderstanding and clarify it. Figure out in this conversation what you can actively do to help the situation improve. Be clear about what you would like the professor to do to help the situation improve.
2. If the above process didn't seem to help, and follow-up meetings with the professor don't seem to be helping, then you should — early in this communication process — talk with a BBA Student Advisor (Rob or Katie). They should be able to provide an experienced viewpoint and will be able to give you advice on what next steps you should take.
3. Generally, if the above process fails to lead to a satisfactory conclusion, you should contact the professor's area chair. I would recommend that you stay in contact with an advisor leading up to this meeting. The advisor might also recommend that you come talk with me to get my take on things.

Why do I recommend that you talk with an area chair instead of with me when you're looking for further resolution? Because the professor's area chair is the person in charge both of setting the professor's teaching responsibilities and reviewing the professor's performance each year. In my role, I am not involved in supervising the professor in any way. I certainly can provide one professor's view of a situation (after all, I am a professor), but I am more like a liaison among students, faculty, area chair, and the rest of the Dean's Office than someone who has some power to yield in this situation.

Generally, I don't like to worry about these issues too much, and I generally don't have to. We have a very good faculty here at the Ross School and, on the whole, the faculty wants classes to go well for all concerned. Given the large population that we have, this isn't always going to be the case; however, following the above process should generally lead students and faculty to better conclusions than otherwise would be available.

Do what you love

Paul Graham has written a great essay "How to do what you love". What he says in this essay resonates quite directly with what I have told BBAs for many years but, of course, he says it better than I ever did. I highly encourage any Ross BBA to read this essay as you embark on your career.

The main point of this essay is that you should try to find a job that you enjoy because you will not only enjoy it, but you will do better at it. One of his main points is that you shouldn't decide on your career too soon. He writes about a friend who is a doctor but doesn't like her job:

How did she get into this fix? In high school she already wanted to be a doctor. And she is so ambitious and determined that she overcame every obstacle along the way --- including, unfortunately, not liking it. ... Now she has a life chosen for her by a high school kid.

This leads him to wisely recommend that it's better to "seek jobs that let you do many different things, so you can learn faster what various kinds of work are like."

If you are thinking about choosing a career, you should read this essay.