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USC Joins Peace Corps Program
The Peace Corps has announced that the University of South Carolina had joined its Master’s International program. Established in 1987, the program enables potential Peace Corps volunteers to complement their overseas service with study leading to a master’s degree. Prospective Master’s International students apply simultaneously to the Peace Corps and participating graduate schools. On acceptance, students complete one to two years of graduate course work as they prepare for their 27-month Peace Corps assignment.
USC’s program, offered through the Moore School of Business, will grant candidates an International Master of Business Administration. Former Peace Corps volunteers are also eligible to pursue USC’s IMBA.
Other schools offering MBAs through the Master’s International program include Loma Linda University, Monterey Institute of International Studies, and the University of the Pacific. Nine additional schools offer other management degrees in the program.
The Peace Corps also operates Fellows/USA, a separate program that gives returned Peace Corps volunteers financial assistance for graduate study. As of early 2009, 18 schools were offering MBA or other management degrees in that program.
Survey Shows Executive Education Increases Graduates’ Value
Executive education pays off for students, according to a recent survey. Three-quarters of Executive MBA students who took part in the Executive MBA Council 2008 Student Exit Benchmarking Survey say they greatly increased their value to their organization as a result of their Executive MBA experience. Sixty-seven percent said the program greatly increased their ability to be promoted. Respondents reported a 23 percent increase in salary from entering to leaving the program, with mean salaries of US$117,617 when entering and US$144,361 when leaving. Students surveyed also noted that executive education helped them gain specific business skills, with the largest improvements in business discipline integration, critical thinking, decision-making, global sensitivity, leadership, and team building. The survey included 3,858 students from more than 120 programs.
Sloan Offers its Knowledge to the World
The Sloan School of Management at MIT has started a website, MIT Sloan Teaching Innovation Resources, offering a collection of creative teaching materials developed by MIT faculty and students. Designed to share the school’s knowledge with the world, the site provides free case studies, teaching videos, and other innovative instructional resources.
Wake Forest Pushes for Diversity in Accounting
As part of an effort to enhance diversity both on its campus and in the field of accounting, the Calloway School of Business and Accountancy at Wake Forest University sponsored the Calloway Accounting Diversity Consortium in early January. Prospective students in the school’s Master in Accountancy program were invited to campus for the three-day event, part of a university strategy designed to build ongoing relationships with historically black colleges and universities. Wake Forest credits last year’s inaugural Diversity Consortium, in conjunction with other diversity efforts, as having helped the Calloway School raise minority representation in its graduate accounting program from 4.5 percent to 15.7 percent in one year.
B Schools Grade Super Bowl Ads
At least three business schools combined business and pleasure on February 1 by rating the advertising that accompanied the Super Bowl. At Northwestern University, the employment website Monster.com won the fifth annual Kellogg School of Management Super Bowl Advertising Review, earning top marks for its ad “Need a New Job?” At the other end of the spectrum, the Kellogg School panel had significant strategic concerns about spots from SoBe Lifewater, H&R Block, GoDaddy.com, Vizio and Toyota.
Following a tradition at the Henry B. Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa, MBA students there met to watch the game and critique its ads. They voted the Doritos commercial—with an office employee throwing a crystal ball at a vending machine after predicting everyone in the office will get free Doritos, made as part of a contest sponsored by the company—as both the best and funniest ad. The Doritos ad also took top honors at Washington University in St. Louis, where students in the Olin Business School conducted their own rating, “Super Ad Bowl IX,” as a fundraiser for Meds and Food for Kids, an organization dedicated to curing child malnutrition in Haiti.
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