Tag: Experiential Learning

Eric Bauer is an MBA2, who spent his summer internship at at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Eric holds leadership roles on the European Business Society, the Luxury and Retail Club and the Stern Student Government. He is specializing in Business Analytics, Finance, and Management.

 

When I started the process of choosing a business school to attend, location became a crucial part of the decision for me. Being that I had lived in Oklahoma for many years, I knew that if I was going to move away from home, I wanted to move somewhere that would provide me with the most professional opportunities and exposure to potential employers. Thus, NYU Stern became the obvious choice due to its unparalleled location.

Stern’s positioning in the heart of Manhattan has not only allowed me to network with countless potential employers, but it has also given me the option to round-out my curriculum with real world, hands on consulting experiences through the Stern Consulting Corps (SCC) and Stern Solutions courses/programs. Stern’s relationships with potential employers in the city, coupled with the fact that so many company headquarters are just a short subway ride away from campus, made these things possible. Since I had decided to make a career switch and recruit for a consulting role, the opportunities provided through these two experiential learning programs have become extremely vital parts of my course load and have been instrumental in my success with securing a full-time consulting offer.

 In the Spring semester of my first year at Stern, I took part in the Stern Consulting Corps program. As part of this 3-credit course, I had the opportunity to work with a luxury gym headquartered here in NYC to help strategize their expansion across Europe. The semester involved bi-monthly meetings with the client at their offices here in NYC and concluded with a presentation and hand off of our recommendations to senior executives and C-suite members of the company. During our weekly scheduled class time, we received feedback and pointers from our professors, one of which was a former consultant herself, which provided for a no pressure environment in which to ask for help, coaching, and guidance. The Stern Consulting Corps was a great way to gain consulting experience before heading into my summer internship, and I truly feel as though it gave me a leg up when I arrived on day one and was expected to hit the ground running.

The completion of my summer internship validated that consulting is what I want to do upon graduating, and so, after having accepted a full-time offer, I knew I wanted to keep working on real projects with real clients once classes started back up in the fall. This is what led me to enroll in Stern’s Fashion & Luxury Solutions course. With this experiential class, I am working with a Fortune 500 beauty products company to help craft a growth strategy for one of their prestige skincare brands. Similar to the Consulting Corps, we meet with the client at their headquarters and via conference calls as we craft our deliverables, and have our professor to bounce ideas off of and discuss uncertainties with during the weekly scheduled class time. This current project has proven to be a valuable learning experience and is helping me to continue to sharpen my capabilities as a consultant.

 While there are many classes to choose from here at Stern, for me, the ability to ‘learn by doing’ is such a great option and a real differentiating factor of the Stern program. In one short year, I’ve gone from having no consulting experience, to now having three projects under my belt, and I’m not sure this would have been as accessible of an option at many other schools. I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve had here at Stern, and the experiential classes are just one of the many reasons why I’m glad I came to NYU to earn my MBA.

When selecting our second semester courses, the debate for many of us was how to meet the core course requirement, while leaving more slots for the cooler electives. Now, here’s a thought: An experiential course, with only one introductory session in the classroom, all the rest spent outdoors, and still counted as a core course?

Yes! It exists and I am in it. Stern added a new section to the Operations Management course called “Ops in NYC” this semester. The class uses New York City as its platform, and every Wednesday afternoon, we visit a different business in the city to learn how they run their operations. The overall breadth of industries selected for this class is immense, ranging from Retail to Food to Fashion to Transportation. In addition to studying their processes from an academic standpoint, the aspect of how their operational challenges change in the urban context to serve a fast paced and populous city like New York, is one of the main themes of this class.

The visits are very engaging, with senior executives from the firms spending the entire three hours of the class duration with us. To elaborate, one visit was to the Maher Container Terminal in New Jersey Port, the single largest marine container terminal in North America. Ivo Olivera, VP of Industry Relations explained the entire flow at the terminal, from docking to the eventual road/rail transportation, while answering our questions about capacity considerations at each step and the effects of the Panama Canal expansion on their overall operations. We toured the terminal, following the path of a container from the time it enters the facility, to where the giant crane loads it on to the ships.

The next week, we were at the JetBlue HQ in Queens. The best part was seeing their Systems Operations Center, the nerve center of JetBlue’s flight operations including dispatch, flight monitoring and crew scheduling. We spent a significant time discussing Irregular Operations (IROPs) – how they handle weather emergencies and flight rescheduling, and the impact of the new FAA regulations for increased pilot rest time on their crew scheduling.
Upcoming visits include FreshDirect, Taxi and Limousine Commission of NYC, Hudson Condos and an entire day at the organic farms of Sylvestor Manor.
Oh! If you think this is purely a sightseeing class, we have challenge assignments and case analysis reports due every week, pertaining to the specific industry we go to. So, no getting away from core classroom Ops :-).   Professors Harry Chernoff and Kristen Sosulski have made this class possible.  They hold another popular class at Stern, Operations in Panama, in which you spend time dissecting the Panama Canal on location.

One reason emphasized for getting into business school is you broaden your horizons and perspectives. Only a few weeks into this class, I have realized the enormous complexity and importance of the hidden supply chain which keep businesses ticking, and how it impacts the front end customer service.
Operations is cool! There, I said it.