Choosing A Major At Kelley Direct

It’s almost summer here in the Seattle area! This month I wanted to share how I came to decide on what I wanted to major in the Kelley Direct MBA program vs. when I first enrolled at Kelley. If you don’t know this – Kelley has 7 majors you can choose from including:

Business Analytics
Digital Technology Management
Entrepreneurship and Corporate Innovation
Finance
Marketing
Strategy and Leadership
Supply Chain and Operations

On top of that, a student can choose to take additional credits within the program and obtain two master’s degrees which is pretty cool. Will I do that in the future? We’ll see!

Anyhow, when I applied to Indiana University in early February of 2021, I had initially sought to go after the Digital Technology Management Major. My background has been primarily with tech companies – in fact, one of my first contracted full-time jobs was at Google where I worked on a team that supported a game called Ingress which is an augmented reality mobile game. I find that technology in the gaming industry to be ever-evolving so I thought it made sense to pursue this specific major and it includes all the business essentials to it. However, during my first quarter at Kelley, I had a chance to take a required class called “Leading Organizations” where we studied team decision-making and how to lead through motivation (including examining intrinsic motivations and extrinsic motivations).

We powered through many case studies within that class that were extremely engaging from my perspective (it also helped to have fabulous team members for group assignments!). Additionally, a few other required core classes kept me thinking about how businesses come to plan, form, and/or execute their strategies – spanning everything from marketing to examining the bottlenecks of team productivity in supply operations. Having been in the program for almost a year, I realized I’ll always be involved in technology in some way with the work I already do – therefore, I personally felt more motivated and inspired to pursue Kelley’s other major which focuses on Strategy and Leadership. I know everyone’s path is unique and different, so I wanted to share how I came to decide on mine, and that it’s perfectly okay to come to different decisions down the road. It’s all part of the journey!

In my next blog – I plan to touch on Kelley’s online class experience and how that’s worked with my constant jam-packed schedule!