the Digital Wares shops on Ricci Street

Announcements

Medaille College MBA Program

other pages
curriculum and course descriptions

faculty | events | advisors

recommended study schedules
full-time | typical | part-time

spring 2003 Mod IV course webs
MBA 503 | MBA 504 | MBA 604 | MBA 614 | MBA 621

this page
summer 2003 schedule | fall 2003 schedule

send announcements for this page to Doug@RicciStreet.net

April 16 Graduate Assistantship

Position Description

Title: Graduate Assistant, Career Planning

Report To: Ms. Carol Cullinan, Director of Career Planning

Compensation: $8000.00 stipend/tuition

Qualifications: Enrolled in Master's/Doctoral program in Student Personnel, Guidance, Counseling, Business or Education. Proficient with Microsoft Office. Experience in career and/or employment counseling preferred.

Description: Learn more

April 7 Scholarship

Medaille College administers a private scholarship initiated through the generosity of friends and employees of the College. To apply, see Doug for a (paper) application form.

Anna M. Kramer Scholarship

Adult student (over 25) in the Management Programs with an interest in accounting. Student will be selected on the basis of demonstrated financial need and academic merit. $500.

William Randolph Hearst Scholarship

The Hearst Foundation donated money to Medaille College to provide opportunities to help students achieve a college education. Awarded to students who have overcome obstacles to pursue their education. $1,000.

Stanley P. Szymanski Scholarship

Through the generosity of Mr. Stanley P. Szymanski, this scholarship is for five students of Polish descent. Financial need will be considered. $1,000 per student.

April 4

Holly McCarthy, Medaille's new Dean of Students, has asked for the names of students to serve on a newly formed committee, Quality of Student Life.

She is looking for a representation of traditional, non-traditional, commuter, day, evening, graduate, and undergraduate students.

If you are interested in this resume builder, please email Doug@RicciStreet.net ASAP.

Let's make sure this committee has strong representation from the MBA program.

March 18

Al Olhoeft, who was in the first MBA 504 class three years ago, is graduating from the MBA program this year. He recently got a new job with the Entrepreneurial Services Network according to a recent press release from the Erie County Industrial Development Agency. Check out Al's web at Ricci Street's Parkside Plaza. His new email address: aolhoeft@ecidany.com.

ECIDA Names Exec to Help Entrepreneurs Promoting High Tech and Life Sciences

Mr. Alan Olhoeft has been appointed Director of the Entrepreneurial Services Network and brings extensive experience in the computer and medical technology fields to the position. According to Mr. Olhoeft:

“We have a good foundation in Western New York to foster the growth of start up and early stage companies. We have excellent educational and research institutions that are conducting leading edge discovery. We have a growing infrastructure of professional services for the entrepreneur. And we have a pool of non-profit and for-profit funding sources. We now need to leverage these resources by efficiently and energetically channeling support to the entrepreneur.”

The Entrepreneurial Services Network (ESN) links technology and life science entrepreneurs with the financial, professional, technical and business development resources they need to create innovative, high growth companies in Western New York. ...

Mr. Olhoeft has been in senior management positions for over 20 years. He previously served as Executive Vice President at Mennen Medical, a local medical instrumentation company, Group Vice President at Siemens Electro-medical Systems in Danvers, Massachusetts, a medical technology business of Siemens AG and President, of the Critical Care Division of Baxter International in Irvine, California. Mr. Olhoeft has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Ohio State University and a Masters of Business Administration from Medaille College.

Congratulations, Alan!!

March 14

Ten years ago today, March 14, 1993, the graduate student team at the University of Illinois released the first Web browser with inline images.

Marc Andreessen headed that team. Tim Berners-Lee, who had written HTML and HTTP and the first browser a couple of years previously, complained. His browser displayed text separately from the text.

Browser Inventors, Marketers Look Back at What They Wrought
by Kevin Maney
NewsFactor, March 10, 2003

At a conference, Berners-Lee yelled at Andreessen, telling him that adding images to the Web was going to bring in a flood of new users who would do things like post photos of nude women.

"He was right," Andreessen now says with a shrug.

March 10

Summer 2003 Schedule

Nakia Franklin is leading the effort to get a core course added to summer. Thanks, Nakia!

Last summer, MBA 624 worked very well in a one-night-per-week format. Around 8 PM, we took a half-hour break for some food. I kept us supplied with water, soft drinks, and chips. Lillian Wright always brought ice. Some evenings, we ordered pizza and subs. Most evenings, someone brought food from home. Evelyn Kerney even brought her little grill and her slow-cook pot, which sure smelled good the closer we got to 8 PM!

Also, last summer, we had nine sessions from 5:30 until 10:30. Subtracting the half-hour for dinner, that was 4.5 hours x 9 = 40.5 hours.

This summer, we're scheduled for eight sessions from 5:15 until 10:30. Subtracting the half-hour for dinner, that will be 4.75 hours x 8 = 38 hours.

In my experience, however, many of you don't get out of work until 5, making 5:30 a more realistic starting time. Subtracting the half-hour for dinner, that will give us 4.5 hours x 8 = 36 hours.

One option would be to skip dinner. That's not a good idea in terms of physical health or mental energy.

The other option is to add a ninth evening, August 12 and 13. At the end of MBA 624 last summer, everyone felt rushed. Some of the things we were learning about were so strange and different that we needed more time to absorb it. That's what I'm going to suggest this summer:

> start at 5:30
> take a half-hour break from 8 - 6:30
> meet nine evenings

MBA 624 Strategic Management of Technology and Innovation

eight Tuesday evenings, June 17 - August 5, 5:15 - 10:30

Learn more from last summer's course web; we'll do something very similar this summer. The first evening, I'll lay out a variety of topics, and you'll vote on which ones we'll spend our time on. You'll make an investor relations web for a  company in the future selling products and services that we don't even have names for now.

MBA 698 Strategic Content Management

eight Wednesday evenings, June 18 - August 6, 5:15 - 10:30

Learn more from the course outline; this is a new course that has never been offered before. I'm still mulling over the best project. For sure, you will plan a complex web site with a huge amount of content, the kind you increasingly find as large organizations learn how to make best use of the terabytes and petabytes of digital content they are accumulating. I'm still unsure of what content you're going to organize and how far I will expect you to take the prototyping.

Whatever I do, I'll make it a large enough project to discourage you from taking both these courses if you're also working a full-time job.

March 3

Fall 2003 Schedule

Mod I

Comments? Now's the best time to tell us about problems you foresee. Take it to the Bistro's Ask Bill forum.

Mod II

Advisor lists will be available soon. Meanwhile, talk about it at the Bistro's Ask Bill forum.

March 1

Jen Gratien got promoted. She was working for ACNielsen, Inc. at Tops Markets as a Sr. Account Associate. She is still with ACNielsen, but she is now Account Executive - Consumer Insights. She writes:

I analyze Homescan data for multiple retail accounts. So when I'm not traveling to different retail headquarters in the East for sales calls, training, and presentations, I'm supporting the retail account teams by performing analysis from my new home office.

Home office? Translation: Instead of hanging out at the grocery store every day, she now stays home and works in her pj's. And makes more money! But do you think she's happier? Ask her via email - jengratien@excite.com.

Jen participated in the MBA 613 Training and Development session on January 14, 2003. Her Parkside Plaza web is a terrific example of using the web as a learning portfolio. It also has some handsome-looking pages, such as the one on nanotechnology for MBA 624.

Other questions for inquiring minds. Jen is taking the capstones in Spring 2003 and will graduate in May.

Did her MBA help her get promoted?
Will anything she learned in the MBA program help her do her new job better?

February 3

As we promised we send you a couple of pictures of Anna...

Eva, Anna and Bence

benedek.kaldy@polimerieuropa.com

January 5 | Baby!

I got this email today from 2002 MBA graduate Benedek Kaldy, now back in Budapest:

Our friends,

We are extremely happy to let you know that our first child, Anna, was born today, January 4, 2003. She and her mother both are well.

Eva and Bence

January 1 | How many MBAs?

source: Educause's Pocket Guide to U.S.
Higher Education 2002

November 30 | How long to graduate?

The program's fifty-four graduates took on average a little over five semesters, 5.018 to be more exact, from first registration until graduation.

This average ignores waivers, modules when a student took no courses ("stopped out"), students who took more courses than they needed to, and students who finished taking courses a mod or two before their official graduation in May.

Five semesters to take fifteen courses (none of them took 504) means three per semester, not counting summers. Thus the "average" student takes one course half the mods and two courses the other half.

Learn more about Medaille's MBA students.

October 15 | Student Wins Award!

She's Dorothea Baxter-Hughes and here's what The Buffalo News had to say about her.

Black Achievers in Industry awards dinner will honor 27
Buffalo News, October 13, 2002

Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr., D-Ill., will be the keynote speaker of the Black Achievers in Industry 2002 Awards dinner at 7 p.m. today in the Adam's Mark Hotel, 120 Church St.

The 30th annual banquet gala ... will honor local African-Americans for their accomplishments in the public and private sectors. ...

Dorothea Baxter-Hughes, who began her career at Verizon as a customer service representative, is part of the company's management team. She also has been appointed to represent the New York North region as a diversity coordinator, monitoring the strategy of the consumer sales organization.

Congratulations, Dorothea!

Another MBA student, Dr. Evelyn Kerney, won this award in 1986.

Visit Dorothea's web site at the old Parkside Plaza.

September 30 | Spring Course Schedule

Discuss it at the Bistro's Ask Bill forum.

September 1 | Plan for developing course schedules

We're trying to put together the best courses schedule for next spring as well as establish a process by which we can continue to put together the best course schedule.

What's best? Best is most convenient for the students, of course. Exactly the two or three courses they want to take at exactly the nights and times they want to take them.

That's impossible; it's not going to happen. Even if we got it to happen now, in September, by Spring someone is going to change her bowling night or need to tend to his suddenly sick parent.

Can we do one of the two, what or when? If the when is impossible six months in advance, what about the what? Can we make a schedule two mods in advance that each mod has at least two of the courses every student needs?

I believe we can. In August, we can make a schedule that will work the following January and April. In January, we can make a schedule that will work the following August and November.

We have one constraint and two restraining forces. By constraint, I mean conditions that won't change. Simply put, the MBA program is a small part of a larger department and an even larger institution. There are only so many classrooms and so many time slots. There are only so many teachers and we want to keep class sizes close to 15 students.

When Faith and Bill take our ideal schedule to Curriculum Committee to meet with a dozen other department chairs and program directors, no one gets exactly what they want. Truth be known, Faith and Bill are consummate masters of organizational behavior, so they'll do the best job that can be done. However, it probably won't be exactly our ideal.

By restraints, I mean things and processes that we can change. The first is the technical part, building a database that will let everyone express their preferences and will then spit back a schedule that satisfies everyone. Let me amend that .... a schedule that gets as close as mathematically possible to satisfying everyone.

The second restraint is your information. Can you predict six months ahead what you want to take? Sure, but things will change. OK, if things change, can you then accept that you might not get an ideal schedule?

We aren't proposing online registration (yet). What we're proposing will be needed even if we have online registration. What we're proposing is online prediction of demand.

We're trying to avoid:

too large and too small classes (12 - 18 is ideal)
cancelled classes
the lack of classes slowing down your progress through the program
the chancy, last-minute registration that leaves too many students and faculty unhappy

What we propose:

1) During your first mod, sit down with your advisor and tentatively plan out the whole rest of your program, mod by mod. We require only sixteen courses and most of you take one or two per mod for ten to twelve mods.

It will be especially helpful if you can indicate your Concentration preferences far ahead of when you'll take the courses.

2) Every August and January, update your tentative schedule.

Tip | When you have too many Foundation and Core options, choose the course with the lower number.

3) When we issue a tentative schedule in September and February, make sure you can get what you want before Faith and Bill go to Curriculum Committee.

Problem | What will we do when twenty-one students want a course, which is too many for one section and too few for two sections?

4) When the schedule gets finalized in October and March, check it to make sure you can still get what you want and tell your advisor ASAP about any problems.

If there is a pattern to the individual problems, we can sometimes fix it if we have enough time.

5) When registration time comes in November and April, don't wait. Register then. You can always add/drop later.

Courses canceling or closing are a common cause of overcrowded courses. Then the clumping snowballs.

6) If things in your life change, make the schedule changes you can, and accept those you can't.

Feedback on this proposal is most welcome. Talk about it at the Bistro.