Summertime, and the B-school is Busy

I’ll often run into a neighbor or an acquaintance this time of year and they’ll invariably ask how I’m enjoying my summer off. I try not to laugh. In management education, there no longer is anything resembling a summer off.

The academic year calendar for business schools that once started in September and concluded in May has gone the way of the slide rule. In fact, just last month we had three of our newest programs (MSBA, MS in Finance, and Industry MBA) start their academic year, while our first MS in Supply Chain Management students are currently in the midst of their experiential learning with the one-year program concluding next month.

“Summer break” is also the time we host a variety of camps such as Women Mean Business, Gopher Business, and our newest Camp Emerge. These camps allow high school (or college students in the case of Camp Emerge) to experience the broad range of possibilities a business degree can offer while providing a tremendous opportunity for personal development.    

For our faculty, summer is one of the most productive times for research. It offers a chance to collaborate with coauthors from around the world, and is also when many of our annual academic conferences are held. These meetings by such groups as the Western Finance Association, The Academy of Management, and SCECR play a critical role in keeping our faculty on top of the latest advancements in their fields, as well as presenting their own state-of-the-art work to colleagues for critical feedback, and in the process burnishing our school’s reputation as well as their own.

Personally, I just returned from the Academy of International Business Annual Meeting in Dubai to help promote next year’s conference, which will be held in Minneapolis. As a Fellow of the AIB, I have been regularly attending the annual meeting since I was a doctoral student at MIT in 1989, and I am delighted to be hosting over a thousand of my professional colleagues from around the world, with Dean Lenway of St. Thomas, for the first time ever in Minneapolis.

Finally, summer is the time that we prepare for the return of the bulk of our students and I couldn’t be more excited about the state of our school. We look forward to welcoming a record number of undergraduates as freshmen this year, and the class looks stronger than ever!  The 2017-18 school year is going to be a significant one in shaping our future, and I look forward to sharing details with you about the entering classes in the coming months. Until then, enjoy this wonderful time of the year in Minnesota!