Wanted: MBA Students Who Are Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

STUDENTS THINK THE SCHOOL COULD DO A BETTER JOB AT MARKETING

On the other hand, students say the school could do a better job marketing itself and should update and improve the facilities. In common with many MBAs, they also believe the career development center could do a better job helping graduates connect with their preferred employers. Yet, the top five employers at the school are an impressive bunch of brand name corporations: Philips, Amazon, KPMG, Samsung, and Nike.

For 2012, 73% of the MBA graduates stayed in Europe for their first post-MBA position, with the majority (52%) of MBA graduates remaining in the Netherlands.

While the school is keen to promote its international bonafides, administrators insist that students planning to pursue a career in a domestic business will also benefit from the international exposure at RSM.

INTERNATIONAL DIVERSITY IS KEY TO THE MBA EXPERIENCE AT THE SCHOOL

“I think Nairobi, Europe, wherever you are nowadays, it is fairly impossible not to have an international mindset,” says Luijendijk-Steenkamp. “If you are operating domestically in the US, what happens in Africa tomorrow (can) have an effect on your market. So you need to be able to read the global economic trends”

Her deputy Bart Scheenaard points to the tsunami-induced nuclear disaster in Fukushima two years ago as a tangible example of an event in one part of the world where the ramifications ricocheted around the globe. In particular he pointed to how Germany quickly moved to pull the plug on its own nuclear power industry shortly after the tsunami slammed into the Japanese coast, forcing ostensibly domestic businesses in Germany to suddenly reconsider their energy supplies.

As the world changes, Erasmus is constantly trying to keep pace. Luijendijk-Steenkamp ticks off a litany of new developments at the school in the five years she has been there: A field trip to the European Parliament in nearby Brussels, (“To get a sense of Europe as an entity and how does it interact with the rest of the world,” says. Luijendijk-Steenkamp); a field trip to China (for those who sign-up; a dual degree program with the Chinese University of Hong Kong allows students to split their study 50-50 between Rotterdam and Hong Kong. Most of those who sign up for the program are not Chinese students but rather foreigners who plan to work in China after graduation and want greater contacts and insights into the world’s second largest economy.

Gender balance is still a work in progress, according to Luijendijk-Steenkamp. She says woman make up just 33% of the 150-student body but that the number is up from 27% when she started working here five years ago, and that they are continuing to push for gender parity. “We do a lot of women empowerment type of initiatives,” she says, pointing to one elective for women that involves taking them up Mount Kilimanjaro.

Outside the classroom, “We’ve revamped our career development center,” she says. “We employ more career coaches who can really work with our students individually.”

Plus, they’ve also instituted an online mentoring program that brings together – virtually at least – current students with some 5,000 alumni of the school, scattered across 86 chapters around the globe.

“We assign an alum who has similar interests to a particular student,” Luijendijk-Steenkamp says, “to mentor him or her. Guiding them and helping them embark on their career search.”

Born and raised in South Africa, where she did a stint in corporate communications at North-West University, Luijendijk-Steenkamp was involved in hotel management in the United Kingdom just prior to joining RSM.

Luijendijk-Steenkamp, who originally signed on for a one-year contract says the ability to implement new programs in short order is part of what makes her job interesting, and compels her to stay. “We’re very adaptive to change,” she says.. “If we see something we think we need to change to stay ahead of the curve, we’re in a position to dream up these projects and make it happen in a very short period of time. It’s not like huge universities where the wheels turn quite slowly, and just to get a project approved can take three years. So that keeps it really exciting, which is why I love it.”

The Rotterdam School of Management is affiliated with Erasmus University and it taps heavily into the university’s research, Luijendijk-Steenkamp explains. “But we’re a separate entity in a sense, so we can operate like a business.” Luijendijk-Steenkamp says the school’s ability to respond quickly to the students’ changing demands will continue to keep RSM relevant.

‘RANKINGS ARE ALWAYS GOING TO BE A CONTENTIOUS ISSUE’