Vanderbilt Executive MBA: The EMBA Journey

When learning foreign languages, you know you have achieved something when you awake realizing that you’ve been dreaming in that language. What have you achieved when, as an MBA graduate, you are channeling your professors and their advice?

I think it means you have achieved a few things. Perhaps it signifies you have achieved a nerd level that could cause eyes to roll. More importantly, it probably means that those faculty relationships and lessons were lasting and useful in how you think differently with the MBA.

Here is a story from last week, when I caught up with EMBA 2009 graduate Justin Calhoun, who is a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch in Memphis, helping ERISA administrators customize compliant DV/DB plans. In an information session, we were making the point that your faculty and class peers in the EMBA program become the voices in your head. Justin said he could underscore that point in an unusual way, and that he’d send me a picture of his car license plate. Here it is, and let’s see if you get it (answer at bottom, but don’t cheat!):

Justin is referring to the four fundamental components of a sustainable competitive advantage, which are:

Valuable
Rare
Inimitable
Organized

Next time you see Justin in Memphis, honk once if you remember VRIO and twice if you want him to stop and tell you how he uses this invaluable lesson from his strategy class at Vanderbilt to help his clients every day.

What would you be doing if you had started the EMBA program this fall? If you’d attended EMBA Math Camp four Saturdays in July, you’d now be an expert in everything from basic order of operations to solving lineals and quadratics, definition of derivatives, marginal analysis, and probability theory – all in prep for the first day of EMBA classes. Math Camp is required of some admitted EMBA students but open to all, complimentary. The goal of Math Camp is to calibrate the quantitative skills of candidates from vastly different career backgrounds so we can move at the speed of Vanderbilt’s typical class. Some students, despite studying hard for the GMAT and doing well, aren’t sure if they should attend camp…

Suppose I asked you to solve this simple equation, using basic order of operations:

(12)(2) ÷ (2)(3)

If you answered 4, you are rusty and would have needed Math Camp!
If you answered 36, you are correct and perhaps would be ready without it.

(Statistics Professor Bruce Cooil, watching over my shoulder as I wrote this, said, “Oh, no! I think I’d need math camp too.”)

Once past the cobwebs of math forgotten long ago, your official launch of the EMBA Program would be Week in Residence. For EMBA 2012, that began Sunday evening August 8, 2010 in New Harmony, Indiana near Evansville. Students who attended Math Camp arrived –often carpooling—anxious to get started and to meet members of their class who did not attend Camp.

What and why New Harmony, IN for a residency week? New Harmony is a Utopian society in southern Indiana that was founded in 1825. Scientists, philosophers, artists, educators and geologists arrived in this wilderness town which was founded on the belief that education for all was the key to a better way of life. Vanderbilt believes this is the perfect place to start the Executive MBA Program each year. We believe that education for working executives continues to be a key to a better way of life benefitting them, their families, and their organizations. Classes take place in a remodeled 1814 Granary that retains its original charm but underwent a transformation to serve as an ideal, modern meeting space. Vanderbilt EMBA classes have begun their journey here for several decades.

Two days into the EMBA experience and the Executive Leadership course, the students anxiously awaited their C-Team assignments. The C-Team is the group comprised of 4 or 5 executive students who will lean on, learn from and laugh with one another as they navigate their way to an MBA. Their candid interactions and willingness to share knowledge will have huge impact on overall learning. The collective wisdom of executive student experiences, put to work frequently on group assignments within C-Teams, enables EMBA students to teach one another in and outside the classroom. Bonds of shared purpose, leadership, and mentorship have already started here at the Residency Week for the 48 members of EMBA 2012.

I hope you enjoy some pictures from WIR 2010. Congratulations EMBA Class of 2012, and welcome to Vanderbilt.