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A Message from Dean Deborah Merrill-Sands
Building our Academic Reputation
A school’s academic reputation is built by the success of its graduates, the quality and relevance of its educational programs, and the contributions that its faculty makes to advancing knowledge and practice in the field. As dean, I have set enhancing our academic reputation and the value of the Simmons MBA degree as a central priority. We are seeing excellent results.
Quality of graduates: On August 8 we graduated a stellar MBA Class who came to us with strong GMATs, GPAs, and an average of over seven years of work experience in a wide range of industries and functions. Our students demanded rigor, excelled in the classroom, and are now landing great MBA-level jobs in top quality organizations such as Bank of America, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Trinity Partners Consulting, and 3M. We are building our brand through the quality of students we are graduating. And, we are sustaining our founding vision of supporting women to transform their careers and their lives – a woman who enters the SOM as a dental hygienist secures a job in corporate training at a Fortune 100 company; a publishing professional lands a job as a financial analyst in a large non-profit; a research analyst from India wins a job as a business analyst in a highly regarded boutique consulting firm in the pharmaceutical area; a sales woman competes nationally and is accepted into Bank of America’s prestigious management development program; and a management trainee in the hospitality industry from Zimbabwe joins the Braver Group accounting firm as a staff auditor and she prepares for her CPA exam.
I thank those of you who referred high quality students to our program – it makes all the difference in building a strong class – and those of you who are helping our students secure top quality jobs.
Quality of programs: We have replaced our 11-month fulltime program with a more robust 16-month program. The new program continues to provide the advantages of acceleration, but offers enhanced opportunities for internships, study abroad, and in-depth study through advanced electives. More broadly, the entire accreditation process with the Association for the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) is designed to ensure strength and relevance in our academic programs. Associate Dean Deborah Marlino, senior faculty members, and I spent much of the summer preparing our comprehensive self-evaluation report which we submitted to AACSB on August 1. Reading the full report, I am very impressed with the quality of our programs, their impact on students, and the career outcomes of our alumnae. The peer review team comes in February 2009 and I am optimistic that they will agree with our assessment.
Quality of scholarship: Our faculty members are active contributors to advancing knowledge in the field of management. In the past academic year alone, they published more than 100 peer reviewed publications and made over 80 presentations of research papers at academic conferences and in the business community. They organized doctoral consortia, served as research mentors to Ph.D. students in other universities, and published teaching cases. Our faculty members are committed to making their research relevant to managers and disseminating it within the world of practice. Over 122,000 of our CGO Insights -- briefing papers summarizing our research for managers as well as academics -- were downloaded from our website.
Much of the faculty’s research and participation in academic conferences is supported by major gifts from SOM alumnae and your individual gifts to the annual fund. I want you to know that your support is making a difference every day as we build academic excellence and the reputation of our School of Management.
As always, I welcome your comments and feedback at somdean@simmons.edu.
Best,
Dean Deborah Merrill-Sands
Posted on September 15, 2008 3:06 PM
