Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/58060
The workshops increase the student workload, but we believe we can push students harder than we had done before. continued from previous page The program has allowed us to recruit a diverse range of students, energize the faculty, and forge strong bonds with companies participating in Project Connect. After the first year of the program, a number of students were interviewed and hired by companies that did not routinely recruit our MBAs. Student placement rates rose appreciably, and we have heard back from graduates who told us how relevant their classroom experiences have been on the job. More Work Ahead We realize that much work remains to be done, particularly in three areas. First, we must grow enrollment by expanding our geographic footprint. This will provide a greater pool of students, draw more recruiters to campus, and better align revenues with costs. The program is expensive, especially Proj- ect Connect, which requires a full-time director to recruit com- panies, serve as a liaison with them, and mentor students. Second, we must improve the experience for both stu- dents and faculty. For students, trained to expect a tightly integrated experience, planned discontinuities to provide diversity in topics can be interpreted as poor program execution. We've learned to clearly delineate such material through use of "workshop" or "learning lab" formats. For faculty, especially those who only teach one or two days as part of a long module, there is a risk of losing a sense of much as 20 or 30 percent—but we believe we can push the students harder than we had done before. Students have embraced the workshop idea because they can see that it is important to improve their skill sets, but some have been a little surprised at how much work the new program entails. The workload is also substantially larger for faculty, but they've learned to work smarter, not just harder. Faculty conduct only some of the workshops; others are taught by executives from our partner companies. In some cases, we've also contacted the companies that handle executive educa- tion for our partner corporations and hired them to teach our students the skills they need. The cornerstone of the revised program is the six-month corporate residency required of each student. During this time, students take full-time, paid, MBA-level positions with our partner companies, who often keep real jobs open for our MBAs and simply fill those positions with a rotating cast of students. During their residencies, students might work with a manager to analyze supply chain issues or integrate new 54 BizEd JULY/AUGUST 2007 ownership in the program. Yet it's unrealistic to expect fac- ulty with other teaching responsibilities in the same semester to commit large amounts of time to coordinating their activi- ties. We are continuing to search for low-cost mechanisms to improve coordination and preserve faculty autonomy. Third, faculty are still learning how to deliver con- tent effectively in the immersive format, which sometimes requires them to teach 30 hours in a week or eight hours in a day to the same set of students. This format allows them to concentrate their teaching assignments and free large blocks of time for research, but it also forces them into a different working structure and an unfamiliar teaching mode. We will continue to refine our delivery techniques. Return on Investment While we've been pleased with the practical results of our Immersive MBA, the program's biggest return on investment has been a new spirit of innovation that has spread through- out the college. The new format we've adopted in the MBA program has spurred the business faculty to re-examine our other educational offerings, and a major revision of the undergraduate program is under way. D. Sudharshan is dean of the Gatton College of Business and Economics in Lexington at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. Paul Jarley is Senior Associate Dean. customers into IT databases. Students are actively involved in important projects from start to finish and interact directly with top executives. After they complete their corporate residencies, teams of students undertake projects for corporate partners in a capstone business planning exercise. Students are better prepared for both the residencies and the workshops because our new program requires them to do pre-work even before they arrive on campus. We let them know that, before their first class, they should be able to perform certain functions in statistics, economics, and basic accounting. We send them exercises and worksheets that reflect the skills we expect them to possess in their very first week. Once we know these basic skills are mastered, we can open the program with more targeted learning approaches. STAGE FIVE: Launching the Product We launched the revised curriculum in the fall of 2006, after recruiting the incoming class based on a variety of metrics. We asked questions such as: Does this candidate bring