A l u m n i M a g a z i n e - Duke University's Fuqua School of Business

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pioneering This pioneering spirit epitomizes the inaugural class of The Duke MBA – Cross Continent. Duke’s newest MBA program officially began in August 2000, with about 100 students divided between campuses in Durham and Frankfurt, Germany. “Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of By Danielle Remmy “We developed The Duke MBA – Cross Continent program because the market demanded it. Fuqua had the technology and the vision to create a new MBA program that was perfect for professionals with three to nine years work experience, who wished to continue working full-time while earning their MBAs from a top business school,” says Blair Sheppard, CEO of Duke Corporate Education, Inc. Gary Sturisky, a student in the inaugural class and a management consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP says, “The Cross Continent program enabled me to simultaneously balance my busy personal and professional commitments with MBA studies. Since my career as a management consultant requires significant domestic and international travel, I was further attracted by the fact that the program is Internet-based. This delivery platform works well with my traveling schedule because as long as I can connect to the Internet, I am in no way hindered while being out of town.” In early August, students arrived concurrently in Durham and Frankfurt to begin a two-week orientation program and classes in Financial Accounting and Managerial Effectiveness. They met their peers, faculty, and staff, participated in an all day outdoor leadership training session and attended several events in celebration of the kick-off of this exciting new program. Fuqua even teleconferenced both campuses together for the event. Dean Rex Adams hosted the Durham activities while Dean Keller and Blair Sheppard were the hosts in Frankfurt. “This launch marks an extremely important milestone in the history of Fuqua and in the history of business school education,” said Dean Adams. “I was very excited to finally start the program after months of anticipation, but at the same time a bit anxious about becoming a student again. I was curious about what my A TYPICAL TERM Pre-class study 28I F u q u a / W i n t e r 2 0 0 1 classmates would be like and also the workload during the residency and distance learning portions,” says Marcia Rothschild, senior engagement manager with Zentropy Partners. “Though I had very high expectations, I must say that I am extremely satisfied with the program. The faculty is superb, the organization flawless, and my classmates are the best. We spent two very intense and demanding weeks together and bonded in a way that I did not expect. I feel like I’ve known them for a long time.” After an exhausting, but exhilarating residency, the students headed back to their homes and jobs to begin the six week distance learning portion of the program. Fuqua took the Internet-mediated learning experiences of the Global Executive program and partnered with Pensare, Inc., to design a next-generation technology platform for Cross Continent students. “The tools on the Pensare platform are a great way to fill in knowledge gaps from lectures and post-residency readings. They often serve as great introductions to topics and can familiarize the user with general concepts quickly,” says Jim Snyder, current Franfurt-based student and product technical leader at Owens Corning. Cross Continent students break new ground in many ways, for example, communicating globally with teammates. While all students use bulletin boards, chat rooms, instant messaging and e-mail, Sanjay Patel, manager at ZEFER, and his team took a different approach. “Our team first did the chat rooms and found that it was a pretty good vehicle but very tough for some courses, especially accounting. We then tried conference calls, which got to be very expensive. Finally, we had one of my colleagues build a page off his home page that would allow us to conference call each other using the Internet. This proved to be a much cheaper way to communicate frequently with one another.” Students and their corporate sponsors alike are quite gratified by how quickly they can apply their new knowledge to the W E E K 1 W E E K 2 W E E K 3 W E E K 4 W E E K 5 W E E K 6 W E E K 7 W E E K 8 W E E K 9 W E E K 1 0 Residency Break Internet-mediated learning Break
SPIRIT labor and the march, Pioneers! Oh Pioneers!” workplace. “I have used skills developed in Managerial Effectiveness to negotiate resources on projects, and have already applied concepts from Economics to gain an understanding of the business market my company operates in,” says Jim Snyder. A number of world-class companies are taking advantage of Fuqua’s newest MBA program by sponsoring several employees. Participating firms include Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Borse, Fidelity Investments, Metallgesellscheft, Pearson, The Timken Company, Walt Disney World Company and Westinghouse Electric Company. Cross Continent’s third and fourth terms promise more excitement as half of the Durham class will travel to the Frankfurt campus, while half of the Frankfurt students come to Durham. The third term in January 2001 also marks a very special time as the Frankfurt-based students will move into the program’s official campus at the Steigenberger Esprix Hotel. Ahmed Albahar, class of 2002 and general manager of Albahar Center Company said, “I am certainly looking forward to switching campuses. I chose this program because it clearly offers an opportunity to meet talented people from all over the world. The wealth of real-life knowledge and experiences that working students learn from each other is invaluable.” The Cross Continent program is only beginning to grow. Next year, the program has some major targets to reach. For the class of 2003, the Durham enrollment goal is 110 students, while Frankfurt is 60. For the 2004 class, the program plans to divide its students into sections, three in Durham and two in Frankfurt. “I feel that we are breaking new ground in so many ways with this program,” says Donna Spinella, assistant dean and director. “From our use of technology to running operations concurrently on two continents, we’re helping to catapult business education forward dramatically in a short period of time. I can’t think of a better way to define pioneers.” CLASS OF 2002 PROFILE Undergraduate Studies Business & Accounting 27% Economics 4% Political Science 6% Liberal Arts 8% Other Engineering 9% & Natural Sciences 46% Functional Background Account/Finance 10% Other 13% Ops/Gen’l Mgmt 14% MIS/Systems 4% Consulting 6% Engineering 14% Tech Dev/Mgmt 14% Sales/Marketing 18% Banking 7% Citizenship Dual Citizenship 8% Africa 2% Middle East 2% Latin America 3% Asia 4% Europe 18% US 63% Feature Walt Whitman E x c h a n g e / W i n t e r 2 0 0 1 I 29
Page 1 and 2: EXCHANGE A l u m n i M a g a z i n
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Page 5 and 6: By Jim Gray Associate Dean, Marketi
Page 7 and 8: g News NEW DEAN Marketing recently
Page 9 and 10: F.M. Kirby made a generous gift of
Page 11 and 12: the duke mba GRADUATIONS [CONTINUED
Page 13 and 14: ADMINISTRATORS TAKE ON new roles De
Page 15 and 16: a commitment TO DIVERSITY Fuqua stu
Page 17 and 18: P O T L I G H T Reiko Segawa Global
Page 19 and 20: the Faculty Qi Chen Assistant Profe
Page 21 and 22: the Faculty Patricia Thornton Assoc
Page 23 and 24: lynch RECEIVES BANK OF AMERICA FACU
Page 25 and 26: faculty HONORS, AWARDS AND PROMOTIO
Page 27 and 28: 75 11 Adams also affirms that our c
Page 29: fuqua builds STUDENT CENTER Constru
Page 33 and 34: DukeCE DUKE CORPORATE EDUCATION for
Page 35 and 36: From the DIRECTOR of Alumni Global
Page 37 and 38: Fast Facts Kerrii B. Anderson Chief
Page 39 and 40: Fast Facts Michael P. Crowley Presi
Page 41 and 42: Fast Facts Brian Hamilton CEO Steve
Page 43 and 44: Fast Facts Bruno M. Schmid Head of
Page 45 and 46: The Best Designed Open-Enrollment P
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