All Talked Out

In the run up to our Open House this Thursday for the Western MBA Program I have been visiting undergraduate classes throughout the College of Business and Economics as well as in the Journalism and Communications Departments.

In less than a week I have visited 15 classes and talked with over 150 students on this Road Show of sorts. With several more classes to speak to in the next couple of days I hope to be able to personally reach over 200 students in my travels.

So far the reception has been great by both the students and professors. It is amazing how many students don't even know about the MBA program at Western. The goal is, as you can imagine, to increase awareness of the program among the undergraduate target market.

Some classes have been less than enthusiastic about a business guy visiting them. The students in a Senior level Journalism Seminar I visited looked at me like I was a very ugly toad who had crashed their enchanted ball.

It was a pretty humorous setting with me staring at those poor journalism students like Clint Eastwood in a Fist Full of Dollars and them staring at me like I was an escapee from Alcatraz. To make matters worse my visit was on the day after the recent mid-term elections so you can imagine the reception an MBA was in for. Needless to say as I'm writing this today I made it of there alive...but just barely.

With a passion for speaking and a love for the MBA program at Western it's a pretty fun part of my job. I hope in a small way that we have planted a seed in some minds that a graduate degree is within reach. My thanks goes out to the Professors who let me come and speak to their classes.

Of course my hope is that we get a good turnout at the Open House to hear our speakers. But the real goal is to get those students sitting out there in the classrooms interested enough in the program to not just come to the Open House but to actually apply to the program. Only time will tell.