In The Shadows Of Duke & UNC

Dean Ira Weiss

Dean Ira Weiss

‘NOT YOUR GRANDFATHER’S MBA’ SAYS THE DEAN

Weiss maintains that the program’s distinctiveness stems from its overall focus on technology, innovation, globalization, and entrepreneurship. “That’s the significant difference of who we are. Our students aren’t going to Wall Street as investment bankers or Procter & Gamble as consumer brand managers. Our curriculum doesn’t look like your grandfather’s MBA…Jobs of the future are all going to be associated with technology commercialization and innovation. And that’s why Jenkins targets these areas, along with new products and services, supply chain management, biosciences, and enterprise risk.

This approach obviously appeals to recruiters. IBM and Quintiles are among the largest consumers of Jenkins talent. And what have such employers told Weiss about his graduates? “They’re work-ready,” says Weiss. “There are no errors; they are productive from day one. Many times, they’ve already done either practicum or internships at these companies, so they walk in the door and are already part of the company to begin with. That’s a great, great benefit of our program.”

Of course, Jenkins could’ve been just another vanilla business school. Its founders, however, had the foresight to differentiate their program early on. “Our founders were incredibly smart,” says Weiss. “With two elite schools nearby, they realized we’d never have sunshine on our program if we didn’t do something very different to attract a different set of students, who were looking for a technology and innovation program to prepare them to truly be business leaders in tech or start-up firms.”

A $37 MILLION GIFT HELPED TO ELEVATE THE BUSINESS SCHOOL

A newcomer to the MBA space, Jenkins also benefited from a $37 million dollar gift in 2010, compliments of Lonnie Poole, founder of Waste Industries. An engineering alum (and Kenan-Flagler graduate), Poole believed that N.C. State needed a better business school to be a world-class university. “We’re young and needed an endowment of that nature to give it an injection of resources,“ says Weiss.

In real estate, it is all about location. And Jenkins has taken advantage of its close proximity to Research Triangle Park. RTP, as it’s called, is the largest research park in the United States, housing over 170 technology, research, and pharmaceutical companies that employ nearly full-time 40,000 workers.

Covering over 7,000 acres, RTP is home to leading companies like IBM, Cisco, and GSK and ag biotech companies like DuPoint, Monsanto, and Syngenta. What’s more, RTP Is growing after recently receiving $140 million dollars in Federal and private funds to establish a manufacturing institute managed by N.C. State.

LEVERAGING THE RESEARCH TRIANGLE AREA FOR STUDENT PROJECTS AND EMPLOYMENT

“The opportunity for us to be in an ag and tech hub like RTP is phenomenal,” says Weiss. “Those are the companies that provide 90% of our practicum projects.” Beyond the practical experience, company leaders often come into the classroom. As a side benefit, Weiss adds that many employees in RTP-based companies are enrolling in Jenkins’ professional and online programs (with Jenkins maintaining a campus at RTP for students). “The synergies between RTP and the university are phenomenal.”

Weiss also believes that big data has a bright future in the triangle. In 2013, N.C. State landed a $60 million dollar research grant from the National Security Agency to establish a Laboratory of Analytic Sciences. The area already boasts data analytics giant SAS, once a N.C. State-sponsored project that’s headquartered in nearby Cary. With SAS co-founder Jim Goodnight projecting 100,000 new jobs being created in analytics nationwide, Weiss expects Raleigh to become a major hub for big data analytics too.

To capitalize on this opportunity, Jenkins is already holding boot camps and teaching courses on big data. And they’re gearing up their Center for Innovation Management Studies (CIMS), a research arm that partners with various organizations, to work even closer with organizations both inside and outside RTP. “Every company is looking at big data as a source of innovation, to help them understand the environments they want to go into and how they are positioned against the completion. And we’re putting our students into projects with companies using CIMS.”

PART OF A THRIVING STARTUP AND TECH COMMUNITY

As a result, Jenkins “is positioned incredibly well for next boom in job growth not only here in Raleigh, but also nationwide,” believes Weiss. “We’re literally in the middle of a technology hub. Take a look at every major company in RTP. The majority wants to hire our talent. It’s a feeder system and it makes a lot of sense for us.”

The city of Raleigh is another asset. “People want to stay here. They love it,” says Weiss, who has lived in Raleigh for nine years. “It still has a very small town feeling to it. It never takes more than 20 minutes to get places…The ocean is two hours away, the same with the mountains. And the climate is great: Four seasons with a short winter.”

If you’re an intellectual, Raleigh is the place to be in Weiss’ view. “The public school system is excellent. There are so many schools nearby: East Carolina, North Carolina-Greensboro, North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest…With all these universities so close together, it has a real intellectual feel.”

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