Arizona's Hot Hybrid Programs

MBA graduates from The University of Arizona's Eller College of Management leave with a combination of business and technical knowledge, says Simone Pollard, associate director of Eller's MBA programs.

The career-services team assists 200-plus full-time MBA students. Median starting salary for the Class of 2005 was $60,000, with a salary high of $100,000. By graduation, 50% of the class found jobs, and 80% gained employment three months later. Now the program is focused on new dual-degree programs, launched last spring, which allow students to get the business knowhow of an MBA and the technical smarts of a Master's from the College of Engineering or College of Science, all in just two years.

Pollard has headed both admissions and career services at Eller for one year and is herself the product of a hybrid education. She graduated with a chemical-engineering degree from the University of Virginia and worked as an engineer for Monsanto (MON ) for four years before heading to the University of Michigan's Stephen M. Ross School of Business to earn an MBA. After B-school, she spent three years as a human-resources consultant for Sibson Consulting, then moved into her current position with the Eller MBA program.

Pollard recently talked with BusinessWeek Online reporter Janie Ho. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:

What are the strengths of your dual-degree program?
We have new dual-degree programs with the university's engineering and agriculture departments (see BW Online, 1/11/06, "MBAs Who Double Up"). If a student wants to get a Master's of some kind as well as an MBA, he or she can do that in two years.

Even if you stay technical, you still need to have management experience and business awareness to climb the ladder. The dual-degree program also allows us to tap into a different set of employers, especially in the Southwest, who are looking for strong technical capability.

Are there any more dual-degree programs on the way?
Yes. We hope to launch a dual-degree program with the College of Medicine and the College of Pharmacy in the fall of 2007. These will be accelerated like the other dual-degree programs.

How do you seek strong technical and functional students for these dual-degree programs?
We work closely with the undergraduate departments in the hard sciences, which are really strong departments, and let students know about the MBA program. If a top undergrad has great work experience, we recruit him or her to enter the MBA program right after graduation. We also reach out to local tech companies like IBM (IBM ) and Honeywell (HON ) to find prospective students.

What skills do you emphasize when marketing Eller students?
We have students with really strong functional skills. The college has very good MIS [Management Information Systems] and entrepreneurship programs. Our MBA program is unique because we allow students to take classes in the entrepreneurship program and MIS programs and still be an MBA student (see BW Online, 10/25/05, "Teaching the Startup Mentality").

How has the career-services department changed since you took charge?
I've started an executive-mentoring program, which benefits from the fact that Tucson is the second home to lots of dynamic business leaders from the East and West Coasts. We've also done a great job to look for seasoned individuals to provide career counseling and advising.

What are some trends for students' salaries in your region?
Our median starting salary was $60,000. Many of our students stay in the Southwest or in parts of the West, where employers just aren't paying $90,000 or $120,000 a year.

What sectors and companies typically recruit your graduates?
Google (GOOG ) is trying to penetrate the Southwest and links with us because Arizona has a strong science and engineering curriculum. [The Google recruiters] want to tap that market and get some of these engineering students who have MBAs. There are also many small companies that come here, especially from real estate development.

We attract companies that are looking for MIS [Management Information Systems], finance, operations, and marketing talent. We've placed students with IBM, Intel (INTC ), Raytheon (RTN ), Honeywell, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD ), PricewaterhouseCoopers, U.S. Airways (LCC ), Dial, PetSmart (PETM ), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ ), American Express (AXP ) and FedEx (FDX ).

How do you decide which employers to target?
We look at companies in the Southwest that are either multinational with a large presence in Arizona or that are just dominant companies. We also hope that our development staff generates awareness of the MBA program while doing development and fund-raising work.

How do you help students prepare for consulting interviews?
We work with them individually. When Accenture (ACN ), PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Deloitte come, we do mock interviews and workshops on networking. As part of regular classes, each student goes through an individual mock interview with an industry professional and is provided real-time feedback.

Continued on next page>>  | 1 | 2