MBA Podcaster has launched a new Day in the Life Series. We’re traveling to business schools across the country and around the world to shadow current students, meet with deans, admissions directors and others to bring you an in-depth perspective of life on-campus. Schools include UCLA Anderson, Wharton, University of Chicago, INSEAD and many others. Visit our website at mbapodcaster.com to listen to any of our day in the life shows and see pictures and videos from campus. This month we bring you University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.

“Hi, I’m Mike Kunidonis”

“The University was chartered in 1789.”

“Right down to the Associate Dean of the program, I welcome you all home.”

“What we try to stress for our MBA Executive students is the power and importance of networking.”

I’m Janet Nakano for MBA Podcaster and this a day in the life at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. It’s Friday morning about nine o’clock and Mike Kunidonis, a second year weekend executive MBA student has just arrived on-campus. He’s gearing up for his first class. I’m going to a class called “Strategy and Uncertainty”, it helps managers to be able to better plan and put both strategic and tactical plans in place in uncertain environments. It’s a pretty interesting course.” Mike’s busy weekend starts here at Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Weekend executive students attend classes every two weeks on Fridays and Saturdays. They also have mandatory week long residencies twice a year and all EMBA students are working professionals. “So it’s very important for them to be able to let you get out of the office, not contact you when you’re in class, know that you’ll get back to them through email or voicemail things like that once you get out of class. So obviously you need a lot of support from your company.” Support that Mike’s getting from his employer, Corning Cable Systems. He’s currently a product line manager, “I knew that as part of my role in Corning that I would need to get a MBA in order to have additional responsibility and move up within the organization.” Mike says he chose Kenan-Flagler to help him reach those goals. Its team based approach to learning and flexible curriculum he says were just what he needed, “A lot of the other programs that I looked at were fairly rigid in types of courses you could take. One thing I really like about Kenan-Flagler Business School is that their elective programs. You do the core program first, it’s basically the first year of your time in the program, the second year you go through electives and I think I had somewhere 35 to 40 different choices for electives and that choice held the key to the curriculum to my needs, my future needs really appealed to me.”

Class is about to start, I decide to follow Mike to a classroom down the hall but not before I grab a bite. Outside the door of the EMBA offices staff has laid out an assortment of breakfast goodies for students muffins, yogurt, fruit and thankfully some hot coffee. “Now a learning curve says that as the total production, this total production from day one increases labor costs declined exponentially. How does that fit with both what Mark said and Russ said? How does that fit with that and does it make sense? I say it works, that’s just what a learning curve looks like. Would you draw one? Mike.” “Basically what it is saying is over time you get better and better and in the beginning the improvements you make in the early periods it’s much better than improvements that you’re getting at the end.” “Yeah, exactly. Other comments here?” Class runs till 12:45 so we’ll meet up with Mike later for lunch.

Kenan-Flagler offers three executive MBA programs. One MBA is the Global program, they also have an evening program and weekend program which are fairly similar. Let’s take a look at the evening and weekend programs first. “We have a great opportunity as faculty when we are working with evening and weekend students because we can serve as coaches on real world issues and problems.” That’s Hugh O’Neil, Associate Dean of the evening and weekend programs. “One way we do that quite formally is for many of the assignments we ask students to pick things that are related to the issues they’re struggling with at work. I happen to teach a course which deals with corporate transformations. Many of the students that take that course end up writing papers on how their organization can transform a particular process or a particular division that has not been performing well. So the students can use projects in the classroom to inform their work. We’ve even had occasions where students doing those projects get noticed by their senior executives and end up with more opportunity so it enriches the career. A less formal approach to coaching happens both offline and inline in the classroom. It’s a moment of passion for example when a student says, ‘Well we have that problem right now in our company’ and the professor says, ‘Let’s talk about it.’ and the professor guides a discussion among a number of interested people and quite frequently in the classroom there are more than a few who know something about the subject. So immediately the executive is getting feedback about the experience that people in the class has had with a similar phenomenon.”

The weekend program is 20 months, the evening two years. Both programs begin with 16 core courses and end with 10 or more electives. O’Neil says the program is catered to two types of learning styles, “The fact is that evening program meets more frequently, across a set of weeks. So you’ll meet on Monday and Thursday and Monday and Thursday; do, study, do, study, do, study. It leads to a pattern of relatively quick turnaround on the work delivered in one class to the work delivered in a second class. The paced and sequence learning matches the style that I think most people have. Now the fact is there also are many people who are mass learners. Now if you have been around the undergraduate campus you know about the people who spend the classic all-nighter just before the final. For the weekend program given the two week difference between the first set of classes and the second set of classes, what frequently happens is something more akin to mass learning. There’s a second factor which is quite different than learning style and that’s just the demands of the job and life. If you an individual is traveling with some frequency on his or her job, the weekend program may be easier to schedule within a complex scheduling program.”

While the curriculum of the evening and weekend programs is the same, weekend students are required to stay on-campus Friday nights, “That does provide people a time of focus just with other students that the evening program lacks the opportunity to have. That time just for those students can be very, very valuable on a number of dimensions. Now I’m not supposed to notice this as Associate Dean but once in a while some fun breaks out. And I think that the fun does help you with the tension and the pressure of learning so it is good. In contrast with evening students you get to 9:30 at night, generally you’ve already worked a 13 or 14 hour day, lingering around to socialize is somewhat difficult to do.”

“It is chilly, I thought it was going to be warmer today.” That’s Christine Ferrell, Director of Marketing and Business Development, she’s showing me around campus. “This whole area is UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School,” Christine points out three red brick buildings that face each other around a grassy courtyard. “The main portion of the building right in front of us is called the McCall building and that is primarily classrooms and offices that sort of thing. Then as you’re looking at the building here over to the left is Koury Auditorium and it’s a really large auditorium where we have events. Then this building is the first building that was built as part of this overall complex and this is called the Kenan Center. The University was chartered in 1789 and it is the oldest chartered public university in the United States so 1793 the first student came to school here and folklore  has it that he walked all the way from Willington which is about three hours away. So anyways that’s sort of the history of the University. North Carolina is a state that highly values the ability for anybody to get an education and so purposely the University is very active in the community, really tries to keep tuition as low as possible. Chapel Hill as a town grew out of the University, it’s primarily a college town, it is small town America. A lot of people who work in the Research Triangle Park which is a high technology area about 10 miles away will also live in Chapel Hill and some folks who also work in Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina also live in Chapel Hill. So it really has become a very residential community where people live too.”

There are three rounds of admissions for the weekend program. Application deadlines are in April, July and September. Class begins in January and Marie Summers is Director of the Weekend Executive Program. She says when considering an applicant they look at six main factors, “We look at your mainly your work experience. We look at your letters of recommendations that we would prefer to see work related ones. We look at your academic records, both your undergraduate experience, any graduate work you’ve done plus the GMAT. We do require personal interview. We do look at your leadership and community involvement and we do look for people with some strong international experience.”

Is it difficult to get into the program? “It’s competitive, yes. We’re fairly selective, we know what we want. We really look for the work experiences, the major factor you know what have you done in your career and where do you see yourself going? Does the MBA make sense and can we help you get where you are now given our skills, can we get you where you want to go, those are all critical factors that we look at when we’re making our admissions decisions.”

You said the GMAT is required but I’ve head that it’s not actually required, “For the weekend program and the evening program it is technically required of all students unless you have a master’s degree or higher in the technical area. Okay so you have a master’s degree in engineering and math and any of the sciences we’ll definitely encourage you to apply for a GMAT waiver where we’d have to see your transcript of all the schools that you attended, we look through your resume and at that point we’ll decide whether we’ll give that GMAT waiver based on what we see on the transcripts. The real concern with the GMAT is we’re looking at your analytic and quantitative skills so if you got a technical degree in engineering let’s say you have fairly well developed quantitative skills and that’s why we use the GMAT. It’s on an 800 scale and we average between 600 and 650.” Applicants to the One MBA program are not required to take the GMAT.

The tuition for the weekend executive program includes all fees, books, one night accommodations and meals as well as other services. “We try to make sure that all the students have to do is worry about attending class and doing the best that they can in the classroom environment so we take care of all accommodations, we take care of all their books, two weeks before they start their next set of electives or their next set of classes I will have all the books that they’re going to need, their books, their course packs, any additional cases and then we literally distribute them on the Friday that they’re here in class.”

A lot of the students are sponsored by their companies, can you talk about that? How would an employee go about getting their company to sponsor them for a program like this? “Some are at the corporate level and some are at the manager level and what we do with our students, we encourage them and we’ll do a number of informational interviews for students to say come in and talk, this is what the program is going to cost, this is what we’ll be able to give you and then go back and talk to your managers and say you know this is what I want to do, this is where I want to go within the company, I really feel I need these skill sets to get there maybe sooner rather than later and let’s talk how I can make it a win-win for me as an individual and the company. And so that’s where we’ll help them to start to sell to really make sure that the company realizes what they’re getting out of it. Some companies are very perceptive to it, if you have a boss that has a MBA and realizes the value of a MBA that helps and so they will do that. Some companies want you to get it, encourage you to get it but just their resources won’t allow them to do it so they can’t fund the whole thing but they’ll give partial and most of our students will have to demonstrate that they’re doing well in the program so they do get grade reports and many have to turn in the grade reports in order to get reimbursement. There’s probably 20 or 30 percent will get maybe a full ride and then there are other companies who will give 15 to $20,000 a year. Some companies only give $5,000, some will only give the Friday off and they feel that is their corporate sponsorship to be able to have Friday off and not be penalized to have to do overtime to make that up is another option that many companies will exercise.”

What about for the students who are self financing; what are the financing options? Are there scholarships? “We have just been to offer this coming year the classes entering in January 2008 will have an opportunity to have, we’re going to offer four, $5,000 scholarships. If they’re not getting corporate support of any form except for maybe Friday off, the financial aid office is very good. The business school now has its own in-house financial officer, her name is Susan Brooks and she’s been terrific in working with our students to make sure that they get the maximum funding that they can possibly get. So the Stafford Loan is the best loans to et for students, our students do qualify for that because they are considered full-time students, they’re taking more than nine credits at a time.”

So what’s for lunch today? “It looks like what we have for lunch here today is green beans and some pasta and some chicken. It changes all the time so sometimes we’ll have food that’s like Indian food, or Mediterranean food.” How’s the food usually here? “The food is really good. Both here and up at the Riso Center, the food is excellent. High, high marks on the good.” All weekend executive students have lunch together in the Kenan Center’s elaborate dining hall. There’s a buffet and students sit comfortably at large round tables covered in white linen. Today Mike is having lunch with his team, “We’re not sure what Anne Marie Summers did but she assigns all the teams somehow. I guess she looks at us, sees our backgrounds to try to figure out how we best gel together but she put us all together and we never would have thought we would gel well but I think our team is really, really tight, we’re looking forward to continue to do stuff after school is all done. We get some pretty strong friendships across the table here, it’s pretty good. And the good thing about the team aspect is there is five of us in our team, some teams have six and so there’s always a time where one individual teams or a couple of individuals have a lot of work going on and maybe there’s some family issues going so maybe they don’t work as hard during that particular week or month or what not but other team members step in for them and then they know there’s going to be another time when that team member is going to need some help so that team member who wasn’t doing as much work they’re going to step in for them so it really gels the team together real well. It’s just after 1:30 and its 1:45. Lunch was delicious, it was great to get in front of the team and all because you go through class for a couple of hours then you want to socialize, catch up over the last few weeks because you haven’t been together. The next class is a class called New Ventures, it’s an entrepreneurial class.” Mike’s second class runs until 5:30. We’ll catch up with him again after class.

One MBA is Kenan-Flagler’s global program, it’s spread over 21 months and students complete four global residencies in different regions of the world on top of attending classes one weekend a month. “One MBA is kind of a very unusual and we think probably the most global MBA program on the planet.” That’s Peter Bruise, Associate Dean of the One MBA program. “And why we make that statement is because it’s a true equal partnership among five business schools, one located in the United States, one in Europe, one in Asia, one in Brazil and one in Mexico. One MBA is best fitted to someone who seeks to understand the practice of global business who wants to know how to operate in different regions of the world and how to operate cross culturally. It’s also fit for somebody who wants to understand the differences between the developed world and the developing world and get a sense of how productivity differs from Latin America to developing and developed Asia, through to Europe and through to the United States. It’s probably best for somebody who is going to be involved in leadership of a global company or the building of a global capability out of a company that is trying to globalize.” Weekend, evening and full-time MBA students have the opportunity to get a taste of global businesses as well. The school offers what they call global emersion electives or GIEs. Peter Bruise, “Typically what a GIE is, is that you spend a week in a region or a country visiting one or two countries over that week. Prior to that you have four or five class sessions of three hours each where you go over material with regard to that country or that context in doing business there. I think what differentiates the UNC GIE from others that I had seen or understood from over schools that I’d been associated with is we do a lot to make sure it’s not just academic tourism. In the sense that a number of the GIEs are actually quite light, go out there and look at the country and have a bit of fun and come back. We provide a lot of academic input.” There are global emersion elective courses offered for South America, India, South East Asia, South Africa and currently Mike is preparing for one to China.

“So what we’re going to do right now, we’re waiting for Mike, he’s coming, we are meeting Cube, we call him Cube and there or four of us are going to save it for home about 30 minutes to get to see the event sponsored by Morgan Stanley, Mike’s company. Then we’re going to come back here but we’re going to go to the China class.” Did you hear that? It’s 5:30 and we have to be back by 6:00. We’d better hurry. “I will say this, I’m not as exhausted now as I was initially.” Okay, so you get used to it? “Yeah you get a little used to it. Actually I look forward to these weekends now actually seek and report back.” A little music, a quick drink, a few hellos and we’re rushing off again.

We made it back to campus just in time. “You’re going to have a very important choice to make as to whether to come down by the toboggan or not.” “So could you explain that a little? What do you mean by toboggan?” “I mean that Germans make super slide.” It’s half past six and Mike and I slip out of class and head across the courtyard to Corey Auditorium for the Executive MBA Alumni Series. Mike says he has to head back to class at some point so we agree to meet again later.

“On behalf of a number of people from the Governor of the state of North Carolina right down to the Associate Dean of the program I welcome you all home. I’m excited to see. None of you look a day older and you all look about 10 pounds lighter.” Tonight’s keynote speaker is CEO and President of Red Hate Incorporated, Matthew Sewick, “I’d like to share with you a little bit about how I spend my day and I think things that are meaningful to you as you consider what you do at school here and what you do afterwards.” In the foyer of the auditorium alumni talk to old friends and classmates over wine and hor’dours. The keynote address and reception kicked off the alumni event that continues through Saturday. Tomorrow they’ll attend a series of panel discussions on various business related topics. 2001 alumni, Craig Matthews says he’s been back every year, “Actually my whole study group usually comes back to this, we still get together every say four times a year and get together for lunch or dinner and just catch up on things so we’ve been a really tight knit group. In fact, we’re all working together on a project called Knowledge Well which is a non-governmental organization focused on getting knowledge that we have in the states over to other areas under resourced parts of the world. I’m the CEO of Blue Sahara Technologies which is a software company focused on the water industry. I probably would not have started the company the way that I’ve done it if I had not come through the Kenan-Flagler Business School so coming through here certainly changed my view point on how businesses run and how things should operate. It certainly gave me a lot more of the skills that I needed to create a company and run it.”

It’s a few minutes past nine o’clock and Mike is just getting out of class. He and his teammates look pretty exhausted but that doesn’t mean the day is quite over. “Are you going back? Why don’t we go out now? Go out for like an hour and then go back. Because you and I both we’ve still got a lot of work to do.” “So what do you want to do?” “So we’re heading to a restaurant/bar called Spice Tree. It’s not in the downtown area, it’s kind of a shopping mall area actually but it’s an area where more older professionals from the Chapel Hill area hang out and so we’re going to go there for a drink, maybe have some appetizers or what not. The classes, the two classes were fairly typical. Today it was not typical in that we had class that went all the way to just past nine o’clock so as a result we were in class for almost 13 or 14 hours today so it was a long time so that’s kind of demanding obviously but obviously rewarding as well. So overall enjoyable but challenging.” The night ends at least for me, close to midnight. All weekend MBA students stay at the Rizzo Center, a 28 acre retreat just five minutes by car from campus. The newly built luxury conference center and hotel lie adjacent to an old southern style mansion. Students attend classes at the Riso Center on Saturdays. Mike’s got class in the morning at eight so we plan to meet at lunchtime.

The number of self funded executive MBA students has risen in recent years. Penny Osland is Executive Director of EMBA Programs. She says that’s one of the reasons why career management has become an important part of executive education. “When I came into this position it was probably pretty safe to assume that everybody was getting full support from their company and so it was logical to assume that they would probably want to stay in that company. Now if they’re paying more of the bill themselves, they’re not bringing that same company loyalty to the table as they come in. And the other thing that does happen is that there’s an incredible network in the classroom and I think they become aware of opportunities they simply would not have seen before. There are one of the things we try to work with our son is to try to understand that you’re marketing yourself every single day you walk into the classroom. We have some wonderful stories of classmates hiring other classmates because of the performance they say in the classroom. You know, there’s no better way to watch somebody in action and when an opening comes in your company and to say oh wow, so and so is always preparing for class really makes that equal contribution, that’s the kind of person I would like to see in our company. So there’s opportunity that happens simply because of the interaction.”

“I think when people arrange to meet with me I would say there’s probably four or five different topics that most frequently come up.” That’s John Worth, Director of Career Management for Alumni and Executive MBA’s. “One of them is they have been in a career that has been successful but they want to look into something different and they recognize that they need to market themselves different, the way that it is set up, their resume, the information they’ve always imparted to potential employers may now be different based on what they want to accomplish and they need to format their resume differently, they need to market different kind of skills. A lot of people have been in the same company or the same kind of jobs for a long time, haven’t interviewed for quite a while and really want refreshers on what can I expect, what happens in consulting interviews, what happens in finance interviews, how do I prepare? A lot of people have never really been active in networking and they understand the importance of it but they’re not necessarily comfortable in approaching networking, coming across to people they don’t know, using networking as a valuable way to gain information and develop additional contacts. I also have a lot of conversations with people that will say I have a meeting with my boss is a week and a half. It’s my annual performance review, I want to figure out how I can turn this conversation into one where we also discuss where I want to go, what I have to offer, how I can utilize my knowledge and skills that I’m gaining in my MBA. I also have conversations with people that will be in the process of interviewing with other jobs and receive an offer and have never negotiated salary or compensation or job conditions and they’ll often say to me you know I like this company, I like this offer but how do I approach negotiating, what can I do, what should I do, how do I approach it?” For those executives that are looking to change companies or careers, Worth offers this advice, “What we try to stress for our MBA executive students is the power and importance of networking. We try to make sure that they understand that they have a very strong and good network not just within their let’s say evening MBA ’09 class of 65 or so people but also there’s around 260 people that are in all programs within the MBA Executive so MBA weekend, evening and one MBA programs where these are people that may work in companies that are of interest to them. We also have a remarkably loyal and active alumni group that are very willing and eager to help our current students. In addition to that we allow our MBAs that are in their second year of the program to participate in what we call our recruiting access program where companies that recruit day MBAs for current kinds of positions may also be interested in talking to our MBA for Executive students about those same kinds of jobs or different or higher level jobs while they’re on-campus.”

It’s about 12, noon and I join Mike and his classmates for lunch in the elegant Dubois House, a three story Georgian revival home built in 1933. “So we’re on a hill that overlooks all of Chapel Hill so very quaint, it’s quiet, it’s wooded, you’ve got several different facilities here so Dubois House we’ve got a bar and social area as well as this is one of the kitchen and eating areas. And the Riso Center itself that’s where all the hotels are they are very nice, four or five star type hotel rooms, to sleep in, there’s meeting rooms there, internet access, there’s break out rooms, there’s food, snacks, things like that, bar at the bottom.” On Saturdays class ends at 4:30. Before heading home students meet up with their teams to assign tasks and set up conference calls. As for Mike, “I’ll consolidate all my stuff, check out of my room, and I will talk to a couple of folks from my team and I’ll be going back to Greensboro to be with my girlfriend, we’ll probably get dinner and go to a movie.” Mike sure has a lot of energy and you certainly need it to make it through Kenan-Flagler’s Weekend Executive program. All too soon the students will be back to their jobs and day to day lives before doing it all over it again in a couple of weeks.

In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, I’m Janet Nakano for MBA Podcaster.

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