Graduating EMBA 2010 Class Votes with Their Dollars

Every graduating class is special, but I owe special gratitude to EMBA 2010 for being the FIRST CLASS AT VANDERBILT WITH 100% PARTICIPATION IN THEIR CLASS GIFT. The EMBA 2007 Class made it to 98% giving--a previous Vanderbilt record. Leave it to EMBA 2010--always ready for any competition--to beat that record. Even more telling: 36 of 46 graduating with the MBA from our Executive Program contributed significantly at the Owen Circle level of giving. What motivated them to this generosity?


In short, they are big believers in the quality of our strategy curriculum. The class gift will fund an endowment for our Strategy area. The students felt this was such an important part of the curriculum--in many cases the emphasis on quantitative courses leading to intense strategy assignments and the strategy client project were the reasons they chose Vanderbilt. The strategy program is a year-long sequence of courses (15% of the total program coursework) beginning with Business Strategy, followed by a Strategy Project for a real client company. As one member of the class put it when asked the single greatest strength of the program: "The focus on strategy--how everything aligns to strategy--is the differentiator." We didn't disappoint: Business Strategy Professor Brian McCann won the teaching award at graduation, and 88% of the class was extremely satisfied with the program's impact on their ability to think strategically.

What are other favorite things indicated in anonymous satisfaction surveys as EMBA 2010 completed the program?

90% of the class was extremely satisfied with their Negotiation course

85% -- extremely satisfied with accessibility of the faculty

78% -- extremely satisfied with their Transforming the Organization course

78% -- extremely satisfied with the degree to which the program enhanced their understanding of the global marketplace

76% -- extremely satisfied with the logical sequencing of EMBA courses

75% -- extremely satisfied with Vanderbilt's standards of performance

73% -- extremely satisfied with the applicability of the courses to real business situations they are facing
71% -- extremely satisfied with the Strategic Alignment of Human Capital course

71% -- extremely satisfied with the amount of team work

71% extremely satisfied with their study group (C team).

This generosity of giving and of satisfaction with the Vanderbilt EMBA experience is underscored by the fact that they paid their own way (only 20% of those surveyed had 100% company sponsorship).

In a way, they voted with their dollars twice--with the decision to enroll and with the decision to become alumni donors. They continue to be the best ambassadors for the EMBA experience by recommending their friends to the program. I am left asking, "What else can I do to help you now?" I thank you, EMBA 2010, for your thoughtful responses to our survey, and for your leadership and friendship moving forward. Here's to you with a few of my favorite photos from graduation...we miss you already, so visit often!

What’s in a C-Team?

Whether you are aspiring to the C-Suite or are already there, we can help. Your transformation to executive decision-making through Vanderbilt’s EMBA program is aided by the way we recruit systematically a group of 50 EMBA classmates who will form ten C- Teams.

What is a C-Team? It is your assigned study group of, typically, five EMBA students for the two-year duration of the Executive MBA experience. All EMBA students are cast in a C-Team. Most of the EMBA courses involve team assignments and grades. The carefully selected peers in your C-Team (representing 4-5 industries and functions) mirror the skill sets of a balanced, corporate executive team. This maximizes learning and diversity of perspectives as you master the skills to earn an MBA.

Our admissions criteria stress the combination of academic and experiential contributions that you and each prospective student might make to the overall learning experience—to your collective learning experience as a class. How do we do it?

• We recruit the class carefully. First, we ensure everyone is academically compatible so that anyone potentially on your team is someone you could depend on and learn from. Second, we find the right balance or combinations from among our candidate pool. As we recruit each of the 50 students in the EMBA class, we are forming 10 balanced C-Teams. Each team should have an experienced professional in finance or accounting (CFO or CAO), operations (the COO), technology and productivity (CIO), marketing or sales (CMO) and one other. The other might be a former junior military officer, doctor, staffing director, corporate attorney, or other professional to serve as Subject Matter Expert, Chief People Officer, GM, or CEO. The other already may be in the C-Suite or own a business.
• The C-Teams are balanced across industries too. This further broadens your frame of reference and potential sources of “best practices” to solve problems in your industry that are common to other industries.
• We are thinking about C-Teams when we meet you. In your interview, we will talk about what you bring to challenge the perspectives of your classmates, and what you need most to learn from them. We will use this information later to determine the best fit among potential C-Teams based on your goals and the goals of your classmates to build the balanced class and specific teams. For example, if your company is undergoing an acquisition, the candidate who has already managed through an acquisition catches our attention. We would not want 50 MBA candidates who have roughly the same experience; in a way, you and your classmates are depending on one another’s diverse backgrounds even before you meet; once you do meet, you will form friendships and professional advocates for life.
• You will learn to leverage and trust others—leadership in practice. Your C-Team will develop more thorough analyses, even if getting the collective wisdom of your group isn’t always the fastest way to complete work. You will learn patience, and you will practice delegating and giving feedback. As one student put it, “In a room of strong personalities, I learned to become a stronger advocate for a well formed idea, whether mine or someone else’s.”
• Your frame of reference—the lens through which you view a problem and potential solutions—will transform subtly with the aid of your C-Team and your faculty. By the time you graduate, you will not only survive by getting work done well through group effort, you will be able to understand and present business opportunities from the perspective of the person you most need to influence—your CEO, CFO, CIO, COO, Board, or customer.

Your ability to understand and influence across these sometimes competing perspectives will go a long way to clearing a path to the C-Suite for you, if you aren’t already there.

Ask Your Accountant

While I am not your tax accountant, I do hope you will look into a possible tuition write-off. Recently the "Clarke Decision" ruled in favor of Lori Singleton Clarke, an MBA pursuing the degree to improve existing skills. She was allowed the work-related tuition write off as a qualifying "miscellaneous itemized deduction" within the years she paid for advancing her education. This may be good news for non-sponsored EMBA students, increasingly the rule rather than the exception as corporate sponsorship has taken a break.
Here's why:

Career Enhancing, Not Career Switching: EMBA programs were designed as general management degrees for professionals already deep into career specialties (10-20 years typically), where they need to enhance those skills to stay current and continue moving up their career path to senior leadership. To the extent that students are planning to stay in their field and thus pursue general management programs without concentrations of study in a different field of business, this bodes well for tax implications. (Conversely, many weekday MBA programs and some newer iterations of EMBA programs are designed -- through concentrations or internships or both -- to enable career switchers, typically at a lower experience level.) Improving skills is the key -- the CPA to controller or CAO path, the technical lead to CTO path, the sales director to EVP sales transition, etc. EMBA programs were designed for this upward path, to the extent they still encourage incoming students looking to escalate versus change career direction.

Employer Not Requiring/Sponsoring: The proactive nature of Ms. Clarke's case seems to have helped. She was not required to, but did pursue advanced education related to her job to be better at it. As a bridge against uncertainty in business and the job market, that's smart. I'd rather have an MBA than not in this job market. One of my recent EMBA graduates told me that a large number of her colleagues were laid off, but she was specifically told (in this medium sized company) that she was not, because her MBA would enable her to pinch hit across the organization when the number of employees is down. As she put it, "That's one sort of six-figure ROI that's pretty critical, even if it's not a promotion."

The education cannot lead to a new line of work altogether, from what I understand. In some cases, the marketing executive may be able to write-off the marketing portion of EMBA education and organization management courses if presumably in a leadership role, if not the whole degree. So now is a good time to talk to you accountant and Uncle Sam about continuing in your path and strengthening your position in your field through the EMBA program.