Tepper Business School
Admissions Interview
The
Tepper School of Business is able to offer its students a very unique
experience based on its small class size, borderless classrooms, and curriculum
that is truly integrated with the other strong programs at Carnegie Mellon.
The recent $55 million gift from alumnus David Tepper is expected to pump
even more energy into this business school's recent push up the rankings.
Below is the four-page transcript of our interview with
Laurie Stewart, Executive Director of Masters Admissions.
How
do you typically call the MBA program? The Tepper MBA,
Carnegie Mellon Tepper MBA...?
We, as
you know, received a naming gift from Carnegie Mellon
alumnus David Tepper this year in the amount of $55 million.
The gift is being directed in numerous ways to support the
educational environment, teaching, research, and
infrastructure here at the school. Our school name is the
Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon. We refer to
our degree as the Tepper MBA.
Tell
us about the new campus opening in California this fall.
We have
a campus located at Moffett Field in California's Silicon
Valley, and this year we will begin offering our MBA degree
there. We offer the MBA by having faculty in Pittsburgh
give class via live video conferencing. We call this the
FlexMode MBA and have been offering this program since 1996.
Students in the FlexMode MBA are sponsored by companies such
as United Technologies, Lockheed Martin, and General Electric. The
campus at Moffett Field is
called Carnegie Mellon West and it will be the first time
individual students can come in and earn the Tepper MBA
degree via FlexMode.
So,
students from Carnegie Mellon West attend class watching a
professor teach an east coast class?
We have
three studio classrooms on our Pittsburgh campus and a
faculty member is teaching live to the distance learning
students. We have multiple locations that are all
participating in the class at the same time. It can be five
or six different distant classrooms from Florida to California and it
is all live. The students can interact with one another or
with the professor. We have both administrative and
technical support at each individual site. The technology
allows students to speak or to signal that they would like
to ask a question. It is really interesting to see the
classroom in action. Students can have case study teams
using the video conferencing equipment or other forms of
electronic communication outside of class.
Do
you have an Executive MBA Program there?
We
don't. We offer a single MBA degree with three different
methods of delivery. Our full-time MBA program based in
Pittsburgh is the traditional two-year program with an
internship between the two years. Then we offer our
part-time version to Pittsburgh students, which is called
FlexTime, for students who come to class two nights a week,
and complete their degree in three years by studying year
round. Then we have the FlexMode program which we have
previously talked about and that is also three
years, year round by taking two classes at a time. Again,
with each format we offer the same MBA degree. The same
faculty members are teaching in all three programs. We maintain the
same requirements and curriculum throughout.
Could
you provide more detail about your cross campus
curriculum?
Carnegie Mellon as a university has a unique and wonderful
combination of strengths on our campus. We have colleges
that are leading in areas like software engineering,
computer science, engineering and fine arts. We have always
had flexibility for MBA students. They could take some of
their elective choices at some of the other colleges on
campus. One of the more popular electives here in the
business school has been an acting course for MBAs taught by our
drama department. The
acting course offers students an opportunity to improve
their communication skills and stage presence, both speaking
in front of an audience and in their one-on-one
communication.
Page 1
2
3
4 |
