Inaugural Modular EMBA graduates give program high marks

by Bruce Brooks

When Carl Willis ’04MEMBA becomes part of the first graduating class for Goizueta’s Modular EMBA Program this spring, it will be the achievement of a long-term goal.

Willis began pursuing an MBA degree three times previously but had to end the program each time due to his travel schedule and work relocations. As region director for the Central Africa Region for Coca-Cola, Willis travels three out of four weeks per month, making it nearly impossible to attend a weekend MBA program.

But Goizueta’s new Modular Executive MBA Program (MEMBA), has offered Willis and his classmates the ability to participate in a majority of class discussions and complete coursework from anywhere in the world.

“It really offers the best of both worlds by giving me supreme flexibility to accommodate my work schedule,” says Willis.

Under the twenty-month Modular EMBA Program, students alternate between nine-week-long residencies on the Emory campus each quarter, including an international colloquium. In between the “bookend” residencies, students stay connected and collaborate on projects via distance-learning technology. Each student is provided with a laptop, multimedia software, and dedicated technical support.

“Distance learning allowed us to leverage the many strengths of the existing EMBA Program, while it also gives us the ability to serve executives who could never attend a weekend program,” says Ed Leonard, senior associate dean for academic programs and the academic director of the W. Cliff Oxford Executive MBA. “It’s one program, two formats.”

The difference lies in the approach. In some courses, professors e-mail or post individual and team case studies to a course website to which each student is provided access. At their own pace, students post their responses online and in some cases work on projects in real or “synchronous” time for team case analyses. For group projects, students post responses to a shared drive on the Web so they can proof each other’s preliminary work, make comments, and complete the final draft and edits over a software Webex conference call. Students also have asynchronous “threaded” discussions of their on-line readings through a program called Blackboard, which allows them to comment on case discussions.

For Richard Makadok, a professor of organization and management who teaches “Business Strategy,” it was important to adapt his approach to fit each segment of the program. “Since our face-to-face time is scarce, I don’t waste any of it delivering lectures, which are one-way communications that can be delivered just as well online.” Makadok tried recording his lectures to the weekend MBA students on CD-ROM, but found the delivery cumbersome. Now he records the lectures in five- to ten-minute invervals and even slips in video clips from television and elsewhere to amuse but highlight the point of the lecture. The lectures are posted to the course website as well. Makadok reserves campus time for “activities which are more interactive in nature,” such as experiential exercises and case discussions.

And that’s something busy executives appreciate. “I’ve been really impressed that every minute of our time on campus is maximized to our benefit,” says Catherine Bennett ’05MEMBA, vice president of Endurance Specialty Insurance Ltd., based in Bermuda. “There’s just not a lot of fluff.”

The program, which has drawn senior executives from Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt, as well as Massachusetts and Michigan, has received high marks from students for its state-of-the art technology, flexibility, quality of faculty and students, and overall approach to learning.

“I believe this program is the way of the future. I couldn’t be happier with the experience,” Willis says.

Kelvin Balogun ’04MEMBA, an operations manager for Coca-Cola in the Horn of Africa territory, agrees. “The format of the MEMBA Program is an excellent concept that is real to life in that it allows you to apply what you learn in the classroom (whether virtual or physical) in real time on the job with immediate results.”

For example, as he was learning how to apply the theoretical principles of organization design to enhance corporate and market effectiveness, his own company was going through a shift. “After the course, I was co-opted into my region’s team, which was charged with re-examining the existing organization structure and recommending ways to better align this structure to our current focus of streamlining cost (or increasing efficiency) and improving our responsiveness to market opportunities,” Balogun explains. “The course enabled me to provide thought leadership as I had a clear view of what we needed to do and how to implement the recommended changes.”

For students closer to Atlanta, the opportunity to interact and learn from executives from around the globe adds value to the experience.
“Business today is moving toward an international context with international players,” notes Jae Schmidt ’04MEMBA, business manager for the Department of Otolaryngology for Emory Healthcare. “This program mirrors that reality and casts a wide net that brings in the top talent of student executives from around the world. I could never have learned how to build and manage a bottling plant in Mogadishu over breakfast without this type of program.” The conversation Schmidt had with a fellow classmate from Africa centered on the unique challenges a global firm has with organizing and conducting a plant in an emerging market.

This is something that other American students find beneficial as well. “Hearing from people in different industries and about the obstacles they’ve encountered in executing their business plans is invaluable,” adds Bennett. “For example, I’ve heard about international trade issues that I would not have encountered first-hand in the insurance industry, or perhaps not have been exposed to in other programs that don’t offer the same mix [of people and industries].”

Teresa Stamper ’04MEMBA, a manager with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, agrees. “The business experience of classmates from other industries in the ‘for profit’ sector and their international experiences have been invaluable. It really added to the richness of the program.”
In addition, Stamper adds that the faculty is “top notch in their field and bring experience from both the business world and academia.”

“The quality of faculty is tremendous,” adds Balogun, who notes that the faculty maintain a high level of discussion and interaction, which helps to sustain a close sense of connection, even during the distance learning modules.

Overall, students say that the most valuable aspect of the program is the discipline and learning approach the program helps to instill. Peter Collier ’05MEMBA, group commercial director for the Johnston Group of Construction Companies in the Turks and Caicos Islands, notes, “It’s a great training of the mind that can be applied to any business, even construction in the Caribbean.”

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