Dean Jackson's New Year Message
As we usher in a new year, we are feeling confident and encouraged about current activities and future prospects. Here are just ten reasons why we are energized and enthusiastic -- and why we are hopeful that you will continue to engage with us in helping to fulfill the potential and the noble purpose that is the Drucker School:
- Our new class of Executive Management students for the winter/spring, 2007 is up 30% over last year and more than 100% from 2005. The class includes three managers from Boeing, two from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the CFO from Patagonia, an author, a management consultant, business owners, and executives from Citibank as well as from the entertainment and pharmaceutical industries. A handsome new EMP brochure will soon be available suggestive of lots of excitement and interest in this program, which has long been a flagship of the Drucker School. Contact christina.wassenaar@cgu.edu for copies which we'd appreciate you circulating among colleagues and friends,
- Our MBA Program is also experiencing a resurgence and revitalization, with a doubling of our entering mid-year participants over last year. Two-thirds of these new entrants are domestic students, three-quarters are fulltime, and they all look strong. Anne Roberts Masterson, assistant dean and director of the MBA Program at the Crummer School of Business at Rollins College in Florida (ranked the #1 MBA program in Florida by Forbes Magazine), will be joining us at the end of the month as our new Director of the MBA Program. Anne will add a level of professionalism and accomplishment that will help power the strengthening of this core program at Drucker for years to come. I'm also pleased to report that our Drucker School Student Association is taking the initiative to reinvigorate a number of student activities, including an active and engaged chapter of Net Impact and the Finance Club.
- Applications for next year's entering Master of Science in Financial Engineering (MSFE) Program are up over 275% from last year at this time, and the quality of the applicants continues to look impressive. Nine new MSFE students begin classes this month, more than twice as many as last year, and four of the nine are from the United States, giving greater geographic balance to this unique and highly acclaimed program.
- A recent survey of 800 current and prospective MBA students in Japan (The 6th MBA Tomo-no-kai [Friendship Club] Business School Ranking) cited the Drucker School as #3 in its worldwide ranking of programs, behind Kellogg and the Garvin School, and ahead of Harvard, Stanford, UCLA and MIT.
- Data submitted to U.S. News and World Report from our totally reorganized and strengthened career services and placement office shows a dramatic increase of employment rates for our MBA graduates. The number of current students taking advantage of placement services from Fatma Kassamali and Paul Hardister, our talented new director and assistant director of Career Services, is up smartly from previous years. The number of employer contacts is also up dramatically, along with the engagement of our extensive alumni network.
- Part of that outreach and engagement with regional, national and global employers has resulted in our designation at as a preferred educational institution by the Boeing Corporation.
- Drucker School faculty are increasingly in the news, and making an impressive impact on their respective fields within management. As just one example, Prof. Mike Csikszentmihalyi's pioneering work as a founder of the field of positive psychology, was recently featured in a cover story in the Economist Magazine and in this week's Sunday New York Times Magazine.
- We continue to host a number of important thought leaders at the Drucker School. Last month, it was Bob Eckert, Chairman and CEO of Mattel. This week, it is Daniel Pink, best-selling author of A Whole New Mind and Prof. Charles Manz of the University of Massachusetts, author of Emotional Discipline: The Power to Choose How You Feel. Next month, Prof. Ikujiro Nonaka of the Haas School and Hitotsubashi University, noted authority on knowledge management and organizational creativity.
- Our Venture Finance Institute, directed by Prof. Richard Smith, is gearing up to host and award the 17th annual Henry P. Kravis Award for Entrepreneurship in April. This signature program, analogous to our Drucker Award for Nonprofit Innovation, is part of a newly reinvigorated effort led by Prof. Smith to provide intellectual and applied scholarship to the field of venture finance and social entrepreneurship, eventually leading to a major new initiative in the field of entrepreneurial studies based at Drucker, involving the entire Claremont College Consortium.
- Look for our ads in the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the LA Times and elsewhere as we begin the search for the Peter Drucker Chair in Management as a Liberal Art. We are actively searching for the next generation Peter Drucker: a profound and original thinker who will embrace the spirit of Peter Drucker and add his or her own unique contributions to the art and science of management in the 21st century -- exploring the new dimensions of management as a catalyst for economic progress and social justice, and the role of business in relation to government and civil society.
There is more -- much more, to report. We are also seeking the first director of the Drucker Institute, the living memorial to Peter Drucker and the hub of a world-wide consortium of like-minded scholars and activists for effective management and ethical leadership in a globalized society. We have been approached by California's Latino Caucus Institute to serve as academic partner in their leadership academies for newly-elected public officials, and we are signing on to this exciting new outreach effort.
We will be hosting a new series on regional issues of interest to the community, with a kickoff event on February 1 on the state of commercial real estate development in the Inland Empire, to which you are all welcome.
We will also be hosting an event soon to celebrate a new and important work about Peter's legacy, The Definitive Drucker by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim, to which you are also most welcome.
In all of this, we want to share our pride and enthusiasm -- and to encourage your active participation. The path from good to great, as Jim Collins reminds us, is an ongoing journey that requires discipline, focus and passionate commitment from a community of like-minded and values-oriented people – people just like you!
Best wishes.
Ira
Ira A. Jackson
Dean and Professor of Management
Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito
Graduate School of Management
Claremont Graduate University
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