Tepper Building An MBA Tech Uprising

Stephen Rakas of Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business. Courtesy photo

Stephen Rakas of Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. Courtesy photo

A FAMILY WITH DEEP ROOTS IN SILICON VALLEY TECH SOIL

Kaul is akin to many MBAs at Tepper. A native of New Delhi, the 26-year-old came to the school to transition from engineering into a tech-focused product marketing or project management role. “When recruiters see you are from CMU, they will pay attention to you,” she explains, adding Carnegie Mellon is well-known for tech even in India.

That reputation also also seems to be driving much of Tepper’s success in attracting analytically-leaning MBAs. “We acknowledge most of our students aren’t from Western Pennsylvania, nor are they going to stay,” Rakas explains. “It’s a reality of what happens at Carnegie Mellon, most of our students won’t stay in the area.”

But that doesn’t seem to matter much for an alumni base that is small but has dug roots deep into Silicon Valley’s rich tech soil. Jeffrey Housenbold, who earned his bachelor’s degree from Tepper and is now the CEO of Shutterfly bought all 40 MBAs lunch. Even Jim Swartz, another Tepper grad and founder and managing partner of Bay Area based venture capital firm, Accel Partners, met with students on the trek.

“It’s like a family,” Kaul says of the alumni base. “We have so many alumni rooting for us and who want us to come work for their companies. We may not have the depth of alumni that a larger program might have, but because we’re smaller, a lot of our host students who have gone on this trek, two, five, 15 years ago, are really paying it forward by helping to introduce the next generation of students to these opportunities.”

Jim Swartz is an alum of the Tepper School, a large donor to the school and founder and managing partner of Palo Alto-based venture capital firm, Accell Partners. Photo courtesy of Tepper School of Business

Jim Swartz is an alum of the Tepper School, a large donor to the school and founder and managing partner of Palo Alto-based venture capital firm, Accel Partners. Photo courtesy of Tepper School of Business

NEW CAMPUS-CENTERED B-SCHOOL ON THE HORIZON FOR TEPPER

And if there is anyone paying it forward in a big way, it’s Swartz. This past June, he gifted Tepper with $31 million for the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University which also provides for fully-funded entrepreneurial fellows. The new center is part of the new $201 million Tepper Quadrangle, which will serve as the school’s new building and rest smack-dab in the middle of the university campus. Unlike other B-schools that Tepper Dean Robert Dammon says often are “separated by a river” from the rest of campus, the new Swartz Center will sit literally at the center of Carnegie Mellon’s campus and will integrate students and faculty from all departments within the greater university.

“The new building is going to be more than just a business school,” Dammon explains. “It will also encapsulate many other activities from our own campus. It’s going to be very different from any other business school you see anywhere. This business school will sit right in the middle of campus and draw in faculty and students from different departments and the major draw will be the Jim Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship.”

Swartz, who was with Dammon on the tech trek, concurs. “Hopefully this will integrate the campus,” he says. “And integrate the business school with the engineering school and so forth in a unique way that doesn’t happen anywhere else.”

B-SCHOOL TO ‘ANCHOR’ PITTSBURGH’S ‘INNOVATION CORRIDOR’

Dammon explains that not only will the new B-school building and entrepreneurship center serve as a campus-wide hub, it will be the “anchor” of what Dammon and others are calling Pittsburgh’s “Innovation Corridor.” The corridor is a development of buildings along the mile stretch of Forbes Avenue between Carnegie Mellon’s campus center to the University of Pittsburgh. Along with university buildings, retail space, hotels and office space for companies have been developed in the ongoing project. Dammon says the idea is to create space for companies to come in and easily collaborate and work alongside faculty and students.

An example Dammon gives is Google, which had a building on Carnegie Mellon’s campus, but outgrew it and now has around 500 employees in a building along the Innovation Corridor. “The Swartz center will be the anchor that ties the universities and business together,” he believes.

“The experience goes beyond the business school,” he adds. “Our MBA students are working alongside the students and faculty from across campus. In the area of entrepreneurship and innovation, I don’t think you’re going to find that at a lot of other places. And that experience is a highly valuable one. Unique startup companies are going to be created because of the integrated approach to entrepreneurship we are taking.”

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