Today I am going to give you a brief glimpse into an exciting summer-long initiative. I have hired seven of our rising second-year MBA students as summer interns. We had a great group of students apply and, while we originally thought we might hire two to four, we ended up hiring seven. We have eight important projects for them, including examining best practices in career services, the use of the internet and social networking sites in marketing, and our relationship with our alumni.
It is our plan to have many of our alumni engaged in this initiative.
The first half of the summer will focus on gathering information; the second half will focus on analyzing information and coming up with detailed, implementable action plans for each project.
In our career services initiative, students will not only look at best practices—seeking golden nuggets from other schools, they will also research, talk about, and think about how we can align our career services program with the experience of our MBA, Master of Accounting and undergraduate students.
I am deeply involved in the alumni engagement initiative. We are not only looking at best practices, we are bringing a blank piece of paper to the effort, incorporating your thoughts, and starting anew.
Another project focuses on our marketing efforts, including web and social networking site messaging and presence. We have great stories to tell and we are looking for uniquely effective ways to tell them.
“Merchandising Mason” is a project suggested by our students. It will focus on providing more than the standard clothing and accessory fodder you can find at bookstores and campus shops. We are aiming for something that is uniquely us and that captures our revolutionary approach to business education.
We are also looking at all of the databases and software we have available in the business school and examining how we can use them to help students gain access to both job opportunities and alumni. I will be updating you over the course of the summer. It suffices to say that I have high expectations for these efforts and am delighted with the enthusiastic engagement of the interns.
The interns are engaging team members across the Mason School and Tom Rideout will help with the day-to-day operations of the project. Many of you will be hearing from these teams as they gather information over the first part of the summer. We look forward to sharing the rollout of these plans and following up with you on our successful implementation activities over the coming academic year.
Please stay tuned or, better yet, join the conversation!
