School is out for students at the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, but not for the approximately 400 business executives returning to the Dartmouth campus to participate in one of Tuck's executive education programs.
Tuck's executive education programs, which are offered between May and October, are designed to hone participants' business skills and to help executives adjust personally and professionally to changing global business conditions.
Minority Executive Program
Kicking off Tuck's schedule of summer events was the week- long Minority Business Executive Program,
The objective of the program, which has existed for 17 years, has remained the same, according to Marie Eiter, director of executive education programs at Tuck.
Eiter said MBEP is "an effort to bring small minority businesses the same high quality management that is readily available to Fortune 500 companies" by teaching minority business executives how to react to an everchanging corporate climate
As part of the program, the coordinators of MBEP invite undergraduate minority students to meet the executives. Approximately 15 undergraduates attended a cookout during the program, which ran from July 14 to July 19.
"It is a good idea for undergraduate minorities to see successful minority business entrepreneurs. And I think it is a good idea for these entrepreneurs to see successful minority undergraduates," Eiter said.
Hassan Shariff, vice-president and senior consultant of the New York City-based Johnson Consulting Group and one of the 110 participants in this summer's MBEP, said he heard about the program while in graduate school in the 1980s.
Shariff said graduate school taught him much about corporate America, but with today's emerging global economy, there are more important entrepreneurial issues to deal with, such as strategic marketing and resource management.
Shariff said he applied to MBEP so he could learn as much as he could in order to compete more readily in this competitive, international environment.
He said the program consisted of many case-studies, personal testimonies, and simulations, in addition to significant interaction between students.
There are a lot of people "not privileged with information," Shariff noted. "When you look at minorities in American corporations, there are not a lot of them."
Shariff said the program was a valuable tool in meeting other minority businesspeople and sharing information.
"When you are out there [in the corporate world], you have to network with each other as far as sharing information on how to get by. The MBEP program helps let you know that you are not alone out there," Shariff said.
Shariff said he will be back for next year's advanced MBEP.
This year's advanced MBEP started yesterday. Eiter said the first program is more basic, consisting of courses on such topics as creating a business plan, constructing a marketing strategy that fits into this plan and preparing financial statements.
The advanced program, Eiter said, is more strategic. Executives who have participated in the first MBEP have to wait one year before participating in the advanced program.
The advanced program builds on the skills learned in the first program, focusing on growth management.
Market-Driven Management
Last Friday marked the end of the one-week Market Driven Management Program for 39 executives from around the country.
Eiter said the program, which has been offered for about ten years, targets marketing executives from major corporations -- essentially "letting them know what's new in marketing since they went to school."
According to Tuck's World Wide Web page on the Internet, this program focuses on "new approaches to winning and retaining customers."
Eiter said most of the executives participating in this program have had about 10 to 15 years of experience in the workforce.
Tuck Executive Program
The Tuck Executive Program, which runs throughout the month of August, deals with current challenges corporations are facing, Eiter said.
According to the Tuck web site, the curriculum of the program examines key management issues in each of the functional areas from a general manager's perspective. Such topics of focus are globalization and new business development.
Eiter said the participants of TEP are nominated by their respective companies and are predicted to become future corporate leaders.
Partners in Business Education
Dean of the Tuck School Paul Danos announced in April that Tuck will assist in launching Vietnam National University's new Hanoi School of Business --a major initiative to educate Vietnamese managers in the business skills necessary for the communist nation's experimentation with a market economy.
The program started in April in Hanoi with a 13-week executive program for 30 senior-level Vietnamese managers.
During this time, Eiter said each of the managers spent two weeks in Vietnamese classrooms. They later visited the United States to tour Washington, D.C., some major corporations and the New York Stock Exchange.
The program concludes this summer at the College, where the executives will be involved in more class work. They will also be presenting plans for their respective businesses.
Eiter said the program teaches the executives about certain aspects of free-market economies, such as price-setting and product marketing, which will guide the operation of their businesses.
