Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/54913
headlines Free Education at UC Berkeley Improving Business Education THE GRADUATE Management Admis- sion Council has announced the winners in the first phase of its Met Fund Ideas to Innovation (i2i) Challenge, which invited entrants to submit creative ideas for improving graduate management education. The winning ideas—15 prize winners and five honorable mentions— were selected from 600 submissions. The US$10 million challenge now enters its second phase, as GMAC invites non- profit organizations, schools, and higher education delivery providers to submit their proposals to turn any of these win- ning ideas into reality. The US$50,000 first prize went to Alice Stewart, an associate professor of strategic management in the School of Business and Economics at North Caro- lina A&T State University in Greensboro. Her idea is to encourage universities to design "stackable educational units and certificates" that can be used to deliver valuable chunks of knowledge as students need them—or that can be combined to design a customized graduate degree. In her proposal, Stewart notes that high-tech fields frequently yield new knowledge that corporations are eager to 12 May/June 2011 BizEd leverage into new products, but techni- cal experts often lack the management expertise required to convert them. She envisions schools meeting their needs by creating educational programs that deploy teams of faculty, some with management backgrounds and some with technology backgrounds, working together as equals. Schools then would create "stack- able" educational units and certificates to cover specific areas of standalone knowledge; these units could be pur- sued individually or combined to create a designated graduate degree. Stewart believes stackable programs are achiev- able if schools create incentives for their development and work with consortiums of universities, some of which specialize in management and some of which spe- cialize in technology. She writes, "Cer- tificates or other stackable units could be transferred across consortiums, much like courses are transferred across uni- versities in the current system, creating a more transparent market for well-taught specialized knowledge units." More information on all 20 win- ners can be found at www.gmac.com/ i2iwinners. FREE, ONGOING, postgraduate training might be the next major trend among business schools seeking to strengthen their con- nections to their graduates and upgrade the level of business knowledge among practitioners. The Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, is the latest school to announce plans to offer such programs to its graduates, starting with the students who graduate this spring. Alumni of Haas' full- time, part-time, and executive MBA programs will be eligible to attend two days of free executive educa- tion programs within the first five years after graduation. New alumni will have access to a variety of open enrollment courses through the Haas School's Center for Executive Education. The new initiative expands an existing program that allows MBA alumni to take MBA courses for free, as availability allows, under the Alumni Audit Program. Approxi- mately 200 alumni take advantage of the program each academic year. In addition, all Haas alumni enjoy a 15 percent discount for any open enrollment executive education courses they attend. "The culture at Berkeley-Haas is that we are passionate about learning, and we know we'll always have plenty more yet to learn," says Rich Lyons, dean of the school. "That's what makes the world exciting, and that's what drives innovation in the marketplace." WALTER B. MCKENZIE/GETTY IMAGES