In accordance with the Cvent Privacy Policy, we use cookies to provide you with a great browsing experience. By using Cvent, you accept our use of cookies for analytics and personalized content.
Cvent Privacy Policy
December 5-6, 2019 | San Francisco, CA
*Schedule & program subject to change.
The graduate management education industry continues to evolve at a rapid pace. Geopolitics, student mobility, the advent of more programs and new formats are just a few trends affecting candidate demand. As a b-school professional, you need to understand current market dynamics to get ahead and plan your resources strategically. This session will provide an overview of global test-taking trends and market intelligence with a specific emphasis on Master’s programs.
At the time new programs are created, ‘refreshed’ or ‘redesigned’, most of the program planning centers around the core curriculum. What is somewhat less discussed is best practices around co-curricular offerings. How do heavily technical programs, for instance, ensure that students are well rounded and have the necessary soft skills to launch their careers in a professional setting? Vice-versa, how are the less technical programs making sure that students are adequately prepared for the workplace of the future, particularly with the increasing emphasis on AI and computer skills in any career path? What are some of the most innovative co-curricular offerings and how are they organized to fit into the busy schedules of Master students? The first part of this session will review co-curricular offerings at two schools – what has worked, and what has not worked so well. In the second part you will be asked to participate in small group discussions both to share best practices and to arm yourself with a practical list of ideas that you can take back to your institution to strengthen your programs.
Do you know what incoming students expect from your program – their perception of student life – before they set foot on campus? What type of classmates they will interact with? The level of service they will receive, from faculty mentorship to career support? How coursework will be delivered, be it cases, lectures, or a combination, and whether online or on in person? No matter how much we communicate throughout the admissions and enrollment process, perception is usually far from reality which may result in dissatisfaction and disengagement. What if you were able to gain insight into incoming student expectations, giving you ammunition to communicate differently across the student journey and/or beef up your services accordingly? The first part of this session will present results of a survey of incoming students conducted in four schools – 2 in the US, 1 in Europe and 1 in Asia. The second part will break the room into groups to dive deeper into the top expectations we are seeing and to discuss how we can work differently to tackle them. Actionable takeaways from this discussion can be brought back to your campus to ensure you deliver the best programs possible.
Case Studies in Adapting Organizational Structures to Support a Growing Portfolio
In today’s highly competitive market, ensuring we work together – Marketing, Recruitment, Admissions, Student Services, and Career Services – while keeping the overall organization’s goals in mind is critical for success. This often seems to be an elusive goal as each department focuses on achieving its own objectives – be it increasing applications, improving student satisfaction or placing students in fulfilling careers – independently of each other. This “siloed” mentality results in miscommunication, missed opportunities for collaboration and overall inefficiency. In this highly interactive workshop, you will first get a crash course in design thinking where you will learn how to develop personas, implement “customer” experience mapping and use ideation tactics to solve problems. Together with colleagues from other schools, you will be involved in an interactive exercise that will result in new strategies and tactics to work more closely together, increasing the probability of conversion and achievement of student and graduate expectations in the process.
Candidates applying to Masters programs are increasingly more demanding. They expect higher degrees of personalization, especially when choosing courses that make up their degree. Managing program flexibility, however, is extremely complex as it requires traditionally bureaucratic systems to respond quickly to changing student demands. This session will explore challenges and opportunities associated with offering a flexible curriculum: creating generalist vs specialized options, combining courses in several programs to obtain synergies, managing faculty resources and communicating flexibility to students. Come prepared to discuss your ideas and explore new ways to remain agile despite your existing faculty structure and bureaucracy.
Gen Z consumers, pre-experienced masters students and prospects, are increasingly focused on supporting businesses they believe are purposeful. These consumers are looking to business to go beyond shareholder value and to consider the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment. What does this mean for business schools? How do we attract a generation of student who are adept at making choices about purpose and values? What does this mean for our marketing efforts? How do we address these issues in academic offerings? And, how do we ensure we are engaging employers that balance profit and purpose for on-campus recruitment ultimately ensuring strong post-graduate employment numbers.
A number of factors are converging to reshape the nature of organizations and the experience of work over the coming decade. As a GME leader, you need to have a thorough understanding of how business education will – and should – be impacted to act accordingly. This highly interactive workshop will make you think through emerging issues and technologies that are reshaping how enterprise “gets things done”, from economic volatility, rise in digital natives, demographics and artificial intelligence, to name a few. By participating in brainstorming exercises with your peers, you will identify areas your institution should watch and areas it should actively engage in. You will walk away with a practical list of “what should we do about this on Monday morning” that you can take back to your leadership to ensure your institution is ready for what’s to come.
What skills are recruiters looking for in business master graduates? Where do these profiles fit within the company hierarchy? This panel of employers will evaluate key factors, skills and competencies needed, including specific suggestions of what business schools can do to better prepare leaders for the future.
As cracks appear in the demand foundation of general management offerings, Business Master’s will become an ever-larger proportion of our portfolios. In these changing tides, is it the responsibility of the Business School to double-down on skills-based training to meet demand, or does a Business School have a greater prescriptive obligation to deliver the general critical thinking, collaboration, and framework training that comes from a general management degree? This session will be organized in three segments: Framing, Collaboration and Crowdsourcing. In the Framing segment, the complexity of the current market for GME is defined, including input heard during the last two days of the Symposium. In Collaboration, participants will breakout into 4 groups to discuss strategy and tactics through the categories of Shaping Expectations, Structuring for Innovation, Strategic Partnerships, and Open & Transparent Curriculum. Finally, in Crowdsourcing, each group will give a brief presentation on their group discussion, and the entire group will use live polling online to select the most actionable suggestion from each group. The ultimate goal of this session is to bring the Symposium to a close and develop a practical list of proposed actions to bring to your Dean.