mba

WUSTL and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay have announced a joint Executive MBA program aimed at the international executive. The new program is the first of its kind to confer an MBA degree from both an Indian and an American university and will be modeled after WUSTL’s highly ranked Executive MBA in China and the United States.

The Weston Career Center at Olin Business School is not sitting on the sideline, waiting for the economy to recover, campus recruiting to pick up and unemployment to drop. Instead, the career center team has gone on the offensive to help students find jobs in non-traditional markets and help them learn how to market themselves and network in new ways. 

First year MBA students at Olin get a head start on the school year with a two week boot camp that involves serious academic work, team building exercises, career counseling and socializing. Jackson Nickerson, PhD, the Frahm Family Professor of Organization & Strategy, greeted the class with this challenge: “I dare you to take full responsibility to transform your thinking and change your life forever.”  Nickerson teaches a course in critical thinking custom-designed for Olin students.

The health care industry needs managers with a strong foundation in business and public policy. A new dual degree from WUSTL is designed to prepare students to meet the challenges of complex companies across the health care spectrum. Details of the new MBA/MPH graduate program offered by the Brown School and Olin Business School are announced today.

Medical and law schools have seen the percentage of women enrolled grow steadily over the past 20 years, to the point that women frequently represent at least half of most classes. Business schools have yet to catch up with this trend but the Olin School of Business is pioneering the way for women to increase their numbers in MBA programs. More than 800 people are expected to attend the National Association of Women MBA’s annual conference and career fair in early November at WUSTL. This event comes after Olin’s admission to the Forte Foundation, a consortium dedicated to promoting women in business.

Surprisingly, officers leaving the military — even after service in Iraq — are finding that a bachelor’s degree and leadership experience are not enough to arm them for more than an entry-level job at a Fortune 500 company. So what they’re seeking — and what makes them particularly desirable to employers — is a master of business administration degree, says Stuart I. Greenbaum, Ph.D., dean of the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis.

Forbes Magazine has ranked the M.B.A. program at the University’s Olin School of Business No. 12 among 67 U.S. business schools. The Forbes rankings measure best “return on investment” for M.B.A. graduates of the Class of 1998. For this year’s survey, Forbes sent out 18,000 questionnaires to full-time graduates of M.B.A. programs around the world. With a five-year gain of $120,000 over tuition and foregone salary, the Olin School jumped eight places, from No. 20 in Forbes’ last ranking of M.B.A. programs in 2001.

Students in the inaugural Executive MBA class of a joint program between the John M. Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis and Fudan University School of Management in Shanghai, China, arrived in St. Louis on September 6 for two weeks packed with classes and celebrations. The 70 students from China completed their MBA degrees with a capstone two-week residency at the Washington University business school.

HutchingsIt’s going to be another tough year for grads looking for that perfect job they hope their newly minted degrees will help them nab. Though the war in Iraq could impact hiring, the outlook is still pretty good for business school grads, says Gregory Hutchings, associate dean and executive director of the Weston Career Resources Center (WCRC) at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis. Accounting, financial services, and healthcare are a few of the industries where Hutchings sees “pockets of opportunity.”