Meet Carnegie Mellon Tepper’s MBA Class Of 2023

“THE INTELLIGENT FUTURE”

Traditionally, the liberal arts have been a major force at Carnegie Mellon. The program boasts a dozen Academy Award winners, along with over 50 Tony Award laureates. The latter includes Stephen Schwartz, who has written musicals as different as Godspell and Wicked. And you’ll find artists like Josh Grobin, Ted Danson, Holly Hunter, and Stephen Bochco have spent time on campus as well. Still, the Carnegie Mellon name is as synonymous with technology as MIT — and for good reason. In the 2023 U.S. News ranking, the school finished as the top program in the country for computer sciences and #6 for engineering. That enables MBAs to tap into a wealth of quantitative expertise, not to mention potential business partners among students and faculty alike. When it comes to full-time MBA specializations, U.S. News ranked Tepper #2 for Information System, Production and Operations, and Business Analytics (and #6 for Supply Chain).

And U.S. News isn’t the only outlet bullish on Tepper. Last year, P&Q ranked its online MBA program as the 2nd-best in the world. In a survey of MBA alumni and students conducted by The Financial Times, Tepper’s career services again placed among the world’s top ten.

In many ways, Tepper has hit a roll over the past year. In December, the school announced it would be launching online Master’s of Science in Business Analytics program. This year, Tepper has added an accelerated part-time MBA program. With greater capabilities come new branding. In September, the school unveiled its new positioning: “The Intelligent Future.” The line reflects the strengths of the program: a forward-thinking view of business that focuses heavily on how to best use data to identify new possibilities, markets, and risks.

“That is very powerful,” explained Dean Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou in an interview with P&Q. “It is the intelligent future of business, of innovation, of learning, of leadership and of community. It also can be used in a different way by asking what is the intelligent future? It is diverse. It is data informed which means we are coupling the data with the human element. Data should not drive decisions. The data is helping humans make the decisions by applying sound judgment. It is the interaction between human intelligence and artificial intelligence. It doesn’t mean one thing which would have been troublesome to me. It means so many different things.”

In P&Q’s 2022 Entrepreneurship ranking, Tepper finished as the 11th-best program in the world. Notably, the school awarded the second-high numbers of startup dollars at $4,398 per students. By the same token, 22% of all Tepper faculty teaches one or more entrepreneurship or innovation courses. However, there is one variable that P&Q didn’t measure: The Pittsburgh startup community. In a September 2021 report by the Startup Genome and Global Entrepreneurship Network, Pittsburgh’s startup ecosystem was valued at $5 billion dollars, with the area being particularly active in Robotics, Life sciences, and Cleantech as firms like Duolingo, Argo AI, and Gecko Robotics are increasingly becoming forces in their industries.

A Q&A WITH WILLIAM-JAN VAN HOEVER

So how does the Tepper School help MBAs dip into the networks and resources available in Pittsburgh? And how does the coaching culture of the Accelerate Leadership Center prepare MBAs to make a strong impact early in their careers? These are two questions that P&Q posed to William-Jan van Hoever, the Carnegie Bosch Professor of Operations Research and Senior Associate Dean of Education. Here are his thoughts on what sets the program apart and what Tepper MBAs can expect in the coming years.

P&Q: What are the two most exciting developments at your program and how will they enrich the MBA experience for current and future MBAs?

van-Hoever: “We are tweaking our curriculum to be more flexible and dynamic so that we are always able to pivot and change directions nimbly as modern business needs continue to evolve. One of the Tepper School’s competitive advantages is that we own the intersection of business, technology and analytics. Our goal is to maintain this advantage by ensuring that our curriculum is always on the cutting edge and drives innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship.

At the moment, we are looking into options such as a one-year MBA, which would allow students to complete a Master of Management, then gain work experience and return to complete their MBAs. We have undertaken a significant internal restructuring initiative to explore options and initiate these updates. Several administrative positions have been created in addition to appointing two new associate deans, one for Undergraduate programs, the other for Masters programs. The goal of these organizational changes is to create more synergy among our various programs and to allow for the creation of additional, specialized masters programs.”

P&Q: What are two biggest differentiating features of your MBA program? How do each of these enrich the learning of your MBA students?

van-Hoever: “The Tepper School is in a unique position to leverage the culture at CMU to be collaborative across disciplines and across campus. Our goal is to prepare students to be able to solve the problems we have not even thought of yet.  The world will need thinkers who thrive where data and humanity meet. Whose analytical skills drive solutions to the toughest problems. That is the intelligent future of business and business education.

Our MBA program prepares students to be the next generation of leaders at the intersection of business, technology, and analytics — ready to lead organizations that set the pace of progress.”

P&Q: In recent years, there have been several areas that have gained increased prominence in business school programming, including STEM, analytics, artificial intelligence and digital disruption. How does your full-time MBA program integrate these concepts across its curriculum?

van-Hoever: “Tepper has a history of an analytics-based approach to our curriculum.  We introduced a different approach to solving problems that’s based in data analytics. We look at the data to solve problems and that allows us to create solutions across many different disciplines by using the same foundational skills. We are proud of our history, and we will continue to build on this foundation in the future.

At the Tepper School, we believe this interdisciplinary style of education and research is the intelligent future of business and business education.”

P&Q: What have you learned during the pandemic and the shift to hybrid or remote learning and how will they impact the MBA experience going forward?

van-Hoever: “When the pandemic struck, the Tepper School was already prepared to quickly pivot and offer virtual learning. Our online MBA program is ranked #1 within the US, so we were fortunate that long before the pandemic, we already had a lot of knowledge on delivering high quality online education.

The virtual and hybrid teaching model is here to stay. We have discovered that some of our events and courses actually worked better in a virtual environment and were more inclusive to our broader community.

There are many lessons we have learned, and we will use those to shape how certain programs will be offered moving forward. If we are to properly prepare our students for employment, the university’s learning environment should mirror the new workplace. Our graduates may work remotely, in person, or more likely, a combination of both.

P&Q: The Tepper MBA has a reputation for teaching excellence. How does your program produce consistent excellence in the classroom? Give us an example of a professor who sets the bar for faculty at Tepper and what makes him or her so effective in the classroom?

van-Hoever: “We achieve consistent excellence in the classroom by annually evaluating and updating the course content and offerings.  We take into account feedback from students as well as employers to ensure that our courses continue to meet our goals and expectations.

One of our star teachers is Professor Laurence Ales, who introduced the new course “Technology and the Future of Work” last year.  The course is exemplary for the Tepper School’s approach, along multiple dimensions.  First, the topic is timely and of high societal importance, as it discusses how changes in technology will affect workers in the near future.  Second, it uses both formal theoretical and quantitative models, drawn from economics and engineering.  Third, a broad set of practical applications is discussed, ranging from early forms of automation to advanced robotics, additive manufacturing and AI, together with policies available to governments aimed at easing the transition of technologically-displaced workers.  The course delivery took advantage of the available remote technology by augmenting live classroom sessions with additional video recordings. In addition to the high-quality academic content, students were highly appreciative of Professor Ales’s flexibility, responsiveness, and ability to seamlessly manage an in-person class with remote Zoom attendees.”

P&Q: What makes Pittsburgh a great place to earn an MBA? How does the Tepper MBA tap into the area’s resources and natural advantages to create learning experiences and career opportunities for students?

van-Hoever: “The industry and companies that call Pittsburgh home are extremely diverse. Pittsburgh has a robust healthcare industry, several universities, technological services, large-scale manufacturing, among other businesses. The skillsets needed at the local level span across many areas of business. Earning an MBA in Pittsburgh allows our students to experience a variety of different types of business that all have different needs and challenges. As Pittsburgh evolves as a leader in technology, health care, and energy, demand for a workforce with a sophisticated skill set is increasing, and our students are directly exposed to this environment.”

P&Q: The Accelerate Leadership Center delivers over 2,000 one-on-one coaching sessions to MBAs annually. What is some of the programming and resources in that gives Tepper MBAs an advantage in growing personally and professionally?

LM: “Our strong focus on the different aspects of emotional intelligence in our workshops—inclusivity, decision-making, interpersonal skills, self-perception, self-expression—fully equip our students to face, head-on, all of the various challenges and trials of being leaders of the intelligent future. We also offer workshops that help with nuts-and-bolts leadership skills like leading effective meetings, time management, failure and perfectionism, and giving and receiving feedback. These are coupled with workshops that are a bit more outside-the-box like conducting a band, improv, and design thinking, which really work to develop the whole person. If you combine all of these experiences with our community-centered, empathy-building projects like Tepper Reads and the Curiosity Project, we offer myriad ways to help our students grow personally and professionally.”

SR: “The Tepper Masters Career Center’s mission is to serve as our students’ bridge to a rewarding post-MBA career.  To do this, our coaching team utilizes their deep functional and industry expertise to guide and advise our students on all aspects of career planning.  We provide a targeted portfolio of services and a curated experience that focuses on the individual.  Our coaches conduct thousands of individual student meetings each year and serve as advisors to our career clubs to align programming, events and career-related treks for content and relevance.  Our coaches also manage all aspects of recruiter relationship management within their areas of focus, which permits an integration of high-touch student coaching and proactive recruiter relations.  This synergy provides greater relevance for students and stronger relationships with our recruiters and alumni.”

Editor’s Note: This final question was answered by Leanne Meyer (LM), Executive Director of the Accelerate Leadership Center and Steve Rakas (SR), Executive Director of the Tepper Masters Career Center.