Graduate School of Management: A conversation with Dean Edward Ottensmeyer
Clark's Graduate School of Management (GSOM) is a globally-focused center for business education. Created by the Clark Board of Trustees in 1982, GSOM began with only a small, part-time MBA program. Today, the school offers an undergraduate management degree, a five-year B.A./M.B.A program, an in-house MBA program at the Public Consulting Group, and MBA and MS in Finance programs designed both for full-time students from over 30 countries and for working professionals from the region's world-class business firms, such as Fidelity Investments, EMC, BOSE, and Genzyme. Here, GSOM Dean Edward Ottensmeyer discusses GSOM's unique qualities and his vision for its future, as the School begins its 25th year.
Q. How has GSOM changed since its founding in 1982?
EO: This year is our 25th anniversary as Clark's only professional school and we have a great deal to celebrate! We're proud to be accredited by AACSB-International - a widely recognized quality designation which puts us in the same club as much larger business schools like Boston University, Northeastern University, and Boston College. We have 180 full-time graduate students from over 30 countries studying for the MBA or for the MS in Finance. We have over 100 part-time students from world-class firms in New England. We have 20 full-time faculty members, whose excellence in academic circles is matched only by their dedication to, and passion for, top-notch teaching. At the undergraduate level, our BA program, with 100 majors, is firmly embedded within Clark's outstanding liberal arts curriculum, and we connect students to the realities of the 21st century world of work. We all take great pride in building this School into a first-rate center to develop the next generation of thoughtful business leaders.
Q. What is important about being a small business school?
EO: Part of what makes GSOM unique is the high quality student experience that can best happen in a small program. We're committed to being a close-knit learning community where students and faculty come together in small classes and can get to know one another outside the classroom. In addition, students can learn about global business realities with fellow students from over 30 countries. Students appreciate that, and so does our faculty. The long-term bonds that develop here between students from around the world are amazing! Recently, for example, I've been getting emails from a group of alumni, from at least five countries, who've stayed in touch after graduating ten years ago and who are planning their own reunion.
Clark provides students an exceptionally valuable portfolio of opportunitymdash;a bundle of resources, not just for the short time they study here, but for a lifetime. At its core, that bundle includes a dedicated and talented faculty, who truly enjoy helping students grow as professionals, staying in touch with them after graduation, delighting in their professional accomplishments and welcoming them back to campus as respected alumni. But it also includes an exceptional set of co-curricular learning experiences and close relationships with faculty, unavailable in larger business schools.
Q. Has GSOM always attracted international students?
EO: Yes. Our MBA program has had an international flavor from the beginning, even before GSOM was created in the early 1980s. I heard recently from an Egyptian alum from the early 1970s. Today, with the globalization of the economy, we must provide our graduates with the tools for global business success, and part of that is an environment that includes classmates from around the world. With over half of our full-time students from outside the United States, students get an opportunity to work with people whose cultures and business practices may be very different from their own. Emerging economic powers like China and India take on a more personal reality when students work with other students from those countries on team projects or case studies, or simply get to know one another informally over coffee. The international flavor of our program is what our alumni mention most often when I talk with them.
Q. You said you prepare students for the world of global business. How do you do that?
EO: GSOM faculty members make a point of weaving a major global component into nearly every course - simply put, the world we live and work in requires it. We have a required International Management course for all MBAs, a number of internationally-focused electives and a Global Business concentration. We also have a number of international student exchange programs (e.g., with the Sorbonne in France) and a Global Business Seminar (which I developed ten years ago) that allows students to go to a foreign capital to learn business practices first-hand from business executives working there. Plus, we regularly attract business executives to speak on campus, so that students can learn about the challenges and opportunities of global business , directly from successful globally-savvy executives-people like GSOM alumna and Procter & Gamble-Europe executive Isabel Hochgesand, or EMC vice-president, Joel Schwartz, or UPS's CEO, Mike Eskew.
Q. How do gifts to the Clark Fund make a difference to GSOM?
EO: When I reconnect with our alumni all over the world, I always tell them that their gifts to GSOM via the Clark Fund are critical to delivering on our promise-a transformative educational experience in one of the finest small business schools in the world. To deliver on that promise, we need their support. Long term, GSOM needs to build an endowment - to award fellowships to outstanding students, to attract and retain a world-class faculty, to keep up with state-of-the-art technologies - and student tuition dollars are not enough. We need annual Clark Fund gifts from our alumni and friends to bring in more executives-in-residence, to incubate exciting new programs, to make investments in technology, and to build better brand awareness for GSOM. In order to continuously improve this School and to attract high-quality students-who expect their degrees to grow in value over time-we need the support of our alumni. It's as simple as that…and we deeply appreciate whatever help they can provide!
Give to the Graduate School of Management through the Clark Fund now and help the University prepare business leaders and innovators who will change the world. Please give today.
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I can't tell you how exciting it is for me to reconnect with my former students and other GSOM alumni who are doing exciting work and living interesting lives in every corner of the planet!
What I think is great about GSOM is that if you give money to GSOM there's an immediate effect. We create business people who go out and create products and businesses driving the world now. We're creating good, well-rounded, global thinkers in business, which, in my opinion, is probably the best thing you can do for the world.
