Can you talk about "Applied Learning" opportunities at Olin?
There are a number of them, so I'll just touch on a few.
One of them is called The Practicum. The Practicum basically brings in major local, national or international firms, and they present projects to our students. The students serve, essentially, as consultants.
These are generally very large in scope, and the students get together in groups. They work in small teams to do the analysis, to do the research, and to present the findings both to our teachers and to the firm.
On a smaller scale, we have something called The Taylor Community Consulting Program.
In theory, this is the same kind of project-based work, but here we're dealing with companies typically from St. Louis that are non-profit agencies or entities.
So, depending on the student's interest, they might want to work for a relatively large corporate entity – for example, something like Monsanto – as opposed to a much smaller, local, St. Louis-based company. In that way, I think, especially for The Taylor Community Consulting Program, we're able to give back a little bit to our surrounding community as well and establish good relationships with them.
Another example is something called The Investment Praxis. Many good business schools do this, which allows students to manage a portion of the school's investment portfolio.
Another example of Applied Learning would be our Global Management Studies which allows our students to go for short periods of time, roughly two to three weeks, to different parts of the world to study businesses that are operating in international environments.
This is very different than the Semester Abroad program, where a student might go in and take courses just as they would here, but in an international setting. Here, they're more interested in looking at actual business practices that are being conducted in the international destinations.
The other things that we would certainly call Applied Learning would be almost everything that our Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies does. They have
their Hatchery Program as well as different competitions – for example, the Olin Cup Competition
and the Hatchery Seed Capital Fund. Those kinds of things are really meant to help students develop their own ideas and create their own businesses.
What opportunities are there for Olin students to personalize their MBA studies?
As I said before, almost all of the required courses that are conducted by our students are completed by the end of the first semester of the first year.
That leaves a large percentage of the curriculum as electives of their choice. Within those choices we offer a number of different concentrations, just as any good business school does, in
the areas of accounting, finance, marketing and consulting.
Students are guided by our advisors as to what they think the students should take if they want to be good, for example, at strategy consulting or brand management.
However, there's no requirement that we give to our students that they necessarily choose a concentration or specialization.
Now what I think you'll find is that strategically it's in the student's best interest, usually, to declare at least one area of concentration if not two.
That's really for the job search that they conduct. But again, there's no requirement, so the student is allowed to take whatever courses he or she desires. That would include courses outside of the business school, meaning other schools or departments across the University.
We like to refer to this as an "open architecture" program. We really encourage our students to start looking at other offerings of Washington University – for example, the Law School, the Health Sciences campus,
or the School of Architecture – depending on what their areas of interest are. So we will take some of those classes as credit toward their degree.
What other international opportunities are available?
The other major area would be to do a Semester Abroad program. But what I find is that a lot of students may not have the ability to do an entire semester abroad since they're only here for two years, which is essentially four semesters. It's very difficult to take an entire semester off, particularly when you're conducting a job search.
But some people do it.
Those are essentially exchange programs. We have one with Manchester Business School, one with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, one in France,
and one in Germany. Students can go there for a long-term experience. However, we want to offer Global Management Studies as brief, experiential learning opportunities so that students will be able to get a flavor of what happens in international business
without having to dedicate an entire semester to it.
What are some of the attractions of going to school in St. Louis versus a big city like New York, Boston or Chicago?
This is a very personal question for a lot of students. I think a student oftentimes should base his or her decision on where they will do their best work.
For some people, that means being in a large city. For some people it means being out in different kinds of smaller environments. St. Louis is probably a hybrid of the two.
We are certainly not one of the bigger cities, but we're not small, either. In fact, I think about my own experience. I spent the last 10 years working in Los Angeles and, the truth is, I can do pretty much everything I need to do in St. Louis – all of the social and professional activities – and the kicker is that there's no traffic.
I think that a lot of people – especially people coming from either international destinations or the coast – don't know a lot about what St. Louis does have to offer. It's a pretty vibrant community.
It's not a small place. We have a terrific business community. I think, on top of that, it's a setting that's an attractive one for students.
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