“ I’ve been able to move easily from role to role in my company because of what I learned as an MBA student.”— linda linardos mba ’89 When new students start the program, they spend an entire weekend in seminars to help them analyze their strengths and weaknesses. As part of this initial workshop, students write plans on how they will improve their leadership potential as they pursue their degree. Another focus is on the need to effectively work in teams with people with diverse skills and backgrounds. Once students start the program, classes constantly focus on group projects that culminate in presentations. Often, the projects involve financial analysis and research, followed by organizing results and preparing a presentation. So a group with accounting, finance, international business and marketing students will need significant contributions from each team member. “I’ve been able to move easily from role to role in my company, in large part because of what I learned as an MBA student,” said Linda
1990
1994
Full-time MBA program offered for the first time. The Americans with Disabilities Act is signed into law.
Linardos MBA ’89, an executive sales rep for Cengage Learning, one of the nation’s largest suppliers of textbooks and learning materials for universities. “A lot can happen in a large company — culture shifts, reorganizations, mergers — so you need to be able to see the bigger picture and roll with it.” Today, UT’s MBA program has seven concentrations — entrepreneurship, finance, information systems management, innovation management, international business, marketing and nonprofit management. Of the 365 students, 57 are enrolled in the Executive MBA program, which offers weekend classes for professionals. And in a growing trend, more students are choosing a dual major, pairing their general Master of Business Administration degree with one of three Master of Science degrees, in marketing, finance or accounting. In another example of this thinking, the University created a 4-credit-hour
1991 Collapse of the Soviet Union.
14 UTjournal winter 2013
Ronald L. Vaughn, then-dean of the College of Business, becomes the 10th president of UT.
practicum, where students can choose an activity to help their marketability — whether it’s learning another language, attending Toastmasters International sessions to improve their public speaking or going to a Dale Carnegie Training conference. “Students are seeing that they need to get both a solid overall knowledge of the business world and specific skills for the workplace,” said Amy Beekman, director of graduate business programs. Those skills have come in handy for Efren Zanni MBA ’11, a project manager for Power Design, one of the top electrical contractors in the U.S. “Coming to UT, my background was in civil engineering, but my MBA helped me in understanding how to manage a budget and have skill with numbers,” he said. “And my marketing classes have helped me in doing presentations that have been complimented by others in the company as being very professional.”
1998 1995 Netscape debuts and the dotcom boom begins. Windows 95 released.
Graduate program in the Sykes College of Business accredited by AACSB International — The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.
2000 Former McKay Auditorium is renovated and reopens as the Sykes College of Business.