Dean of Cornell's Johnson School Will Step Down in '07
The following is from the All Star Essays blog for April 21:
Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management has announced that Dean Robert Swieringa will step down from his post at the end of the 2006-2007 academic year. He will take a year of sabbatical and then return to Cornell as a member of the accounting faculty, with dean emeritus status.
Should news about a change of leadership affect your decision about applying to particular school or program? In most cases, no. Changes in the dean’s office tend to have limited impact on a student’s education or school experience. The decisions that deans make are at a level of management where it generally takes more than a couple of years to implement change. In the case of Cornell, even if you were to enter the MBA program in fall 2007, you probably would have graduated before the new dean would have effected much change at the program level.
That said, the choice of a dean does say a lot about a school’s institutional values and the direction it plans to take in the future. Dean Swieringa’s decade-long tenure at Cornell is an excellent case in point. He initiated a wave of student-centered reforms that deserve much of the credit for raising the Johnson School’s profile and stature. Among other achievements, he helped establish the Roy H. Park Leadership Fellows program – which is one of the best deals going in MBA education, and well worth checking out – as well as some innovative student-run investment funds that give MBA students practical experience with financial management.
Dean Swieringa also deserves credit for promoting the collaborative spirit that sets Cornell apart from other top b-schools. Recent Johnson alumni never fail to mention Cornell’s collegial atmosphere as one of the things they value most about their MBA experience there. As one of them puts it, her Johnson MBA was not only a business education but also a positive life-changing experience.
The bottom line is that it’s worthwhile to follow news about changes in leadership at the schools you’re interested in. The official statements you’ll read and the backgrounds of candidates for top offices can give you an idea about the school’s institutional culture and what it thinks is important in management education. Those are pieces of information you can put to good use in deciding whether you’re a good fit for a particular school – and perhaps good material to mention about fit in your essays.
But you shouldn’t let the departure or arrival of a dean become a deciding factor in applying to one school over another. It’s not like you’re a faculty or staff member who will have daily interaction with the dean or his or her deputies over many years. You’re only going to be at the school for a couple of years, and your contacts will be professors and career services officers and fellow classmates. You should select your schools more on the basis of how good a fit you think you will be at that level.
Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management has announced that Dean Robert Swieringa will step down from his post at the end of the 2006-2007 academic year. He will take a year of sabbatical and then return to Cornell as a member of the accounting faculty, with dean emeritus status.
Should news about a change of leadership affect your decision about applying to particular school or program? In most cases, no. Changes in the dean’s office tend to have limited impact on a student’s education or school experience. The decisions that deans make are at a level of management where it generally takes more than a couple of years to implement change. In the case of Cornell, even if you were to enter the MBA program in fall 2007, you probably would have graduated before the new dean would have effected much change at the program level.
That said, the choice of a dean does say a lot about a school’s institutional values and the direction it plans to take in the future. Dean Swieringa’s decade-long tenure at Cornell is an excellent case in point. He initiated a wave of student-centered reforms that deserve much of the credit for raising the Johnson School’s profile and stature. Among other achievements, he helped establish the Roy H. Park Leadership Fellows program – which is one of the best deals going in MBA education, and well worth checking out – as well as some innovative student-run investment funds that give MBA students practical experience with financial management.
Dean Swieringa also deserves credit for promoting the collaborative spirit that sets Cornell apart from other top b-schools. Recent Johnson alumni never fail to mention Cornell’s collegial atmosphere as one of the things they value most about their MBA experience there. As one of them puts it, her Johnson MBA was not only a business education but also a positive life-changing experience.
The bottom line is that it’s worthwhile to follow news about changes in leadership at the schools you’re interested in. The official statements you’ll read and the backgrounds of candidates for top offices can give you an idea about the school’s institutional culture and what it thinks is important in management education. Those are pieces of information you can put to good use in deciding whether you’re a good fit for a particular school – and perhaps good material to mention about fit in your essays.
But you shouldn’t let the departure or arrival of a dean become a deciding factor in applying to one school over another. It’s not like you’re a faculty or staff member who will have daily interaction with the dean or his or her deputies over many years. You’re only going to be at the school for a couple of years, and your contacts will be professors and career services officers and fellow classmates. You should select your schools more on the basis of how good a fit you think you will be at that level.
posted by AllStarEssays at 12:13 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home