Networking Reception with Louis Jordan & Wayne Winston

Kelley Direct students always talk about the sense of community they feel in the program. I have found that it extends beyond just the distance MBA program. I have enjoyed being part of the Kelley School of Business community. I try to attend any Indiana University or Kelley School of Business activity that is held in my home town of Seattle.

I had the opportunity to attend a Kelley School of Business alumni networking event last week hosted by Louis Jordan and featuring Wayne Winston. Mr. Jordan earned an MBA in finance from the Kelley School in 1980 and has had a distinguished career in finance. He currently serves as Senior Vice President – Finance for Starbucks Coffee Company. Dr. Winston is a professor of Operations and Decision Technologies at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

I enjoyed the event. It was fun to see how many Kelley School alumni currently live in the Seattle area. It was also inspiring to hear Mr. Jordan speak. The highlight of the evening was Professor Winston. I had followed him on Twitter and I occasionally check out his web site, WayneWinston.com to see how he uses math and metrics to predict the winner of sporting events.

Several of the people in attendance at the event had attended Professor Winston's MBA classes as students. It was interesting to see how beloved he is by his former students.

As if the evening wasn't exciting enough, I won a copy of Professor Winston's book, Mathletics: How Gamblers, Managers, and Sports Enthusiasts Use Mathematics in Baseball, Basketball, and Football. Professor Winston even signed the book for me. I look forward to reading it, but I won't have time until the current quarter ends. I have more than enough to read right now for my Marketing, Operations, and Supply-Chain Management classes.

The Decision

I can honestly say that I love the path I am on right now. For me, getting my MBA and MSSM while working full-time just makes sense. It is so rewarding to know that I am gaining marketable and practical skills on an almost daily basis and that I can apply these skills immediately to my current position. However, I have to admit that up until about 1.5 years ago, getting an MBA was never one of my goals. In fact, I never even considered it. The thought never crossed my mind. And then one day it did.


Now that I am in this distance learning MBA program, the decision seems so obvious. But this wasn't always the case. It took me awhile and quite a few different experiences to fully realize my passion for managing projects and cross-functional teams, developing new products, and working with intelligent people to solve difficult problems. I also realized that while I didn’t want my lack of a business degree to limit my career (I have a B.S. in biology), I didn’t want to become a full-time student again. When I found out that flexible MBA programs exist and that I could earn my degree from a top university without having to quit my job or move, I was sold.


Within a 3 month period, I decided that I was going to get my MBA, took the GMAT, researched schools, applied, and got accepted. During this whole process, I knew that if I was going to make the investment (time and money), I wanted to go to the best school possible. So, when I got into Kelley, there was nothing left to decide. I had the chance to attend a top business school without putting my career on hold, and I was going to take it. I was going to become a Hoosier.


Now it's one year later. My time as an MBA student has flown by. So far the experience has been challenging, fun, frustrating, rewarding, exhausting, inspiring, and more - all the things that you would except to feel when you do something worthwhile. And this most certainly is worthwhile.

Hey, Kelley Direct!!

Hey Kelley Direct!!


I hope this blog finds you well. My name is Emery Jordan, and I am a first year student in the Master of Business Administration/Masters of Strategy Management program. I, actually, also work at Indiana University in the department of Residential Programs and Services as a Residence Manager. In this role, I directly and/or indirectly supervisor close to 40 people, a budget of $4 million, and creating a positive healthy living environment for the residents of my area.


I actually already have Master’s degree in Higher Education Administration, along with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. I decided to go back to get my MBA at Kelley for a few reasons. First, I had always dreamed of getting an MBA – but my career path dictated a different initial Master’s degree. Since I worked at one of the best MBA granting institution in the country – I figured it was a no brainer to try to get on from here.


Second, the online KD program is really convenient for my lifestyle. I am also married with two wonderful children – Jalen (2 years old) and Gabriella (11 months old). So, having the flexibility to do work at my own pace during a week was extremely important. Moreover, my job is very time demanding at different times of the year for long stretches – so the added flexibility was a necessity.


Finally, I really believe that getting an MBA would help me in any career that I was interested in. Working in higher education now, it gives me a great foundation for understanding how to apply business principles in this field. While the natural ties between the business world and higher education are hidden, we are work with millions of dollars, plan for the long term future of an organization, and/or deal with supervision of several people and groups of people, among other things – all business issues. Moreover, I really loved the options that it gave me for working outside of the field of higher education. I am really starting to understand myself and my interests much better through the lens of this experience.


Outside of MBA stuff, I am an avid reader and athlete. I especially love weightlifting and basketball – they do a good job of helping me work off some of the desserts that I love to eat. As for reading, I love business management texts – and I’m sure that I talk about them a lot in the blog, I’m always reading something.


Well, this is my first ever blog and it was fun. I look forward to sharing my experience with you all out there in internet land…


Catch you later, KD.

The First Bill

Nothing can really prepare you for the first bill you get when finally start your MBA program. It is a time of thoughtful reflection for sure as you work through the loan paperwork or dip into hard earned savings. However, as I was recently paying that first bill of mine, I realized that my experience in Kelley Direct was already starting to pay off.


After a very long, but engaging week at my first in-residence (C511 Organizational Development and Change), I returned to work to find a number of projects and assignments in a state of disarray, including a very large project where I am the technical adviser and a key stakeholder. Initially dismayed at missing a week and seeing such an important project fall even further behind, I met with some other members of the steering committee to see what needed to be done to get things back on track. As we began to discuss the issues, it was quite an exciting feeling to realize that the tactics and strategies I had just learned about from Prof. Sheri Fella were very applicable to my current dilemma. And, instead of continuing down what would very likely have been a path of failure, I was able to apply the techniques Prof. Fella had shared with us to the change process this project was trying to manage. Long story short, instead of weeks, even months, of fruitless work, mounting frustrations, and loss of interest, I was able to diagnose and recommend actions that have immediately put the project back on track, renewed interest and energized the project team, saving us a significant amount of time and money.


Why was I able to have this impact? At Kelley Direct, you learn from the best faculty of any business university online. Not only do they really know the academic side of business, but they have amazing real world experience. Sure, I could have chosen another part time MBA college at a fraction of the cost and likely have covered the same theories and subject matter. But world-class faculty make a difference, and that is where Kelley Direct has really distinguished themselves from other online MBA colleges. Prof. Fella was not only one of the most engaging instructors I have ever had, she was excellent at making sure we all understood how to take the material she was presenting and turn it into something concrete and actionable. Being able to immediately act on what you are learning is definitely key to making it pay, and is why I am glad I chose Kelley Direct. Plus, paying that first bill was a lot easier knowing that I had already used what I had learned to save my organization time and money, earning some much valued career credits along the way.

The Workload at Kelley Direct

My grandfather recently posed a question to me in an email. He wrote:

I would like to hear about the program for your Master Business Administration degree. My experience in grad school was that many of the professors felt that their course was the only one we took so they seemed to load us up on things to do outside class. This is not a problem for you? What do you experience?

I don't know about other Online MBA Universities, but I would say that the faculty completely respects our time. As a distance learning program, 100 percent of the students in my cohort have full-time jobs (in addition to spouses, children, pets, hobbies, etc). The faculty seems to understand the competing demands in our lives. Through the technology we use, the professors routinely poll us as to the best time to conduct virtual office hours or conduct live lectures.


So do they ‘load up’ on us? Only to the point where we learn the material. Many of the classes have group assignments so we can ‘divide and conquer’ and rely on each other’s skill sets to enhance our learning. For example, I just got off of a video conference call with my Econ C530 group and one of my team members is a financial analyst. He led the discussion on net present value and answered many the group’s questions. I believe the three of us would have struggled had it not been for the fourth’s subject matter expertise.


The professors themselves are available anytime through email (with a response time between two and 24 hours). My econ professor offered to meet with me in person (as I am local to Indianapolis) should I have trouble with some of the concepts (and by concepts I mean calculus … what is a derivative of a function, you ask? Me, too).


So far, I have been completely satisfied with the workload in my first two classes. I am feel that I will be able to earn my business degree online without sacrificing my family or work.

Yes, Your GMAT Score Matters

The Kelley Direct Online MBA program (unlike many other Distance MBA Programs) requires applicants to take the GMAT (Graduate Management Admissions Test). It is a critical portion of your application for a couple of reasons.


The first is that it is one of the few portions of your application that you can control. You cannot change your undergraduate transcripts (unless you have deep pockets, know the registrar and have no morals - if this is you, please apply elsewhere; the Kelley School doesn't need you). You can't change your work history or your accomplishments. Your GMAT score is something you can control.


The second is that it your score is important. I lost count of how many times the faculty mentioned our cohort's GMAT average (it climbed 10 points from the previous year). Your score is not everything, but it is something. The GMAT is an objective measure about how you perform against your peers. Don't get me wrong, I have yet to be asked in any of my MBA classes a standard GMAT work rate question. But, it shows that you have the motivation to learn (re-learn?) skills and apply them in a time-constrained environment. Further, it demonstrates to the admissions staff that you have the ability to operate autonomously (which is what an Online Masters in Business requires).


So what do you do? Buy a book. Get on Amazon.com and buy ONE study guide (I used the official GMAT book, but I think any would do). Start going through the practice problems. Identify ones you are struggling with (work problems, for example). If your book doesn't do a good job of explaining how to solve them, search for additional resources online. There are (literally) hundreds of free sites with additional practice problems, tricks on how to solve different types of problems, and strategies for the exam itself. Once you are confident, take one of the two practice tests that the GMAC (the folks that run the GMAT) provides when you sign up for the test. This will give you a good judge of how you are progressing.


Then, keep practicing. I say that because I was reviewing practice questions the morning of the exam and one that I reviewed was almost identical to a problem on the actual test.


So, study up. Remember that no one cares that you will can figure out the amount of water in a cylinder that is 4 feet high, has a diameter of 2 feet and is 60 percent full. What they do care about is that you are motivated enough to a) prove that you are smart enough to learn it b) demonstrate that you can learn it on your own and c) prove that you have learned it in the form of a standardized test. It is these characteristics that separate Kelley Direct students from those enrolled at other online distance MBA programs.


As soon as you are accepted, your score no longer matters to anyone. But until that point, it matters a whole lot.


Doug Huber is a first-year MBA student enrolled in the Kelley Direct program at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. You can read more about Doug here.

The Online Classroom Experience

Before starting the Kelley Direct Distance MBA program, I was curious about how the online classroom experience would compare to a traditional classroom experience. I was hoping to be able to have a high level of interaction with my professors and fellow students despite the distance MBA school format.

The Kelley Direct program offers a unique way to attend online MBA classes. The instructors utilize software to broadcast the class to the students via the internet. This way, students from all over the world can hear the professor's voice as he or she presents the material, and students can ask questions and provide input either using a microphone or the online chat feature.

What I found is that not only is this format very convenient to my busy schedule, allowing me to attend lectures anytime from anywhere, it also mirrors the way we do business. In my current job, I am always collaborating with employees in remote offices across the country. In fact, I rarely attend a meeting that doesn't have either a conference line or some sort of Adobe Connect/WebEx/Live Meeting component to allow collaboration with remote employees. I'm sure that the trend to use remote communication solutions rather than in-person meetings will continue as corporate budgets tighten and travel costs increase. It's nice to be a part of an MBA program that reflects the way business is done in the technical age.

I have my computer set up with dual monitors. That way I can view the class broadcast on one screen while I follow along with another application (such as Excel) on the other screen. This was particularly effective in my C520 Quantitative Analysis class, which I took fall semester. We used Excel extensively for regression analysis, forecasting, simulation modeling, and linear programming.

One of the great things about the lecture broadcasts is that they are recorded so they can be viewed any time if students are unable to attend the live lecture. I usually go back and review the lecture recordings to make sure I haven’t missed any important concepts.

Here is a screenshot of a broadcast of my C520 class: