Queen's University's MBA for Science and Technology (No. 2 in BusinessWeek's latest B-School rankings of full-time MBA programs outside the U.S.) is very different from the MBA program that Shannon Goodspeed completed at Queen's in 1983. Since 1996, the Kingston (Ontario)-based school has required that all its students have a science or engineering background.
However, Goodspeed, associate director of the MBA for Science & Technology at Queen's, would have qualified for admission under the new rules as well as the old. She earned a civil engineering degree from Queen's before getting her MBA there, then worked in Europe as an engineer and has since worked at Hewlett-Packard and as a professor of marketing and engineering at various universities in Canada. She recently spoke with BusinessWeek Online reporter Mica Schneider about how she'll select the school's roster of 70 new MBAs in 2005.
Q: What's the draw of your MBA program?
A: The one-year option. And while our [students] often don't stay in their pre-MBA careers in science and technology -- some switch to investment banking or consulting, for instance -- they're in class with high-caliber students.
Q: Are certain science or engineering backgrounds more impressive to you than others?
A: No. In fact, we like the breadth. This year we're going to target nurses and physiotherapists, because we don't have enough women in the program. Some nurses also want to change their careers, just as scientists do, or want to go into management within hospitals.
Q: Just 22% of your class is female, a percentage well off the average of your peers...
A: We're working at it.
Q: How is David Saunders, the school's dean of one year, faring?
A: MBAs love him. If we have a function, he's there until the very end, talking one-on-one with students. He's got a great vision for the school and is looking to do a lot of work abroad.
Q: When new MBAs arrived at Queen's in May, 55% of them were from outside of Canada, up from 30% in 2003. Why did that international figure grow?
A: We're looking for a high quality student who can handle our program. We kept standards high, and whoever met those standards was in. We have eight countries represented in the class, not including Canada.
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