Welcome We are thrilled to have so many admitted students here this weekend.
Welcome to each and every one of you!
Your visit comes at a pivotal moment in our School's history.
And I am not just talking about our new digs. Although I think we are all enjoying the new spaces we've inherited from Executive Education and the Executive MBA program, the real excitement around here is that these facility upgrades are just part of a coordinated strategy to move us forward on a variety of fronts.
Leading in Thought and Action
You see, several years ago we set the goal of establishing a sustainable position as one of the world's premier business schools. To do so, we devised a strategy aimed at making us the number one choice for a particular set of students, faculty, staff, and recruiters.
If you've been visiting our website and reading our brochures, you've probably seen the tagline by now - "Leading in Thought and Action".
Believe it or not, this is really much more than just a slogan or advertising copy. It is a positioning statement that captures the essence of our strategy. It summarizes what we view as our objective as well as how we aim to achieve it. More importantly, it guides what we do around here whether we're planning long-term investments or making day-to-day decisions in the trenches. It's our 'battle cry.'
The 'Leading' part refers to our objective. Where students are concerned, this means our goal is to develop leaders. At the end of the day, we want Ross graduates that will have a significant impact on business and society. Ultimately, our success is really about whether the ideas that come out of our community make a difference in the world, what you do with your lives, and how well the work we do together prepares you for the journey ahead.
My guess is that you have probably heard peer schools talk about developing leaders, too. It is a natural goal for a top business school. After all, who wants to be known for developing followers? ("Following in Thought and Action" just isn't as catchy).
So, if the twenty or so schools that claim to be in the Top 10 all share the same goal, what is it that differentiates Ross?
The key to our strategy lies in how we develop leaders - via the two-pronged approach embodied in the words 'Thought' and 'Action'. This is the part of our positioning statement that has real 'bite' and helps guide both planning and execution around here. It is even driving the motivation for our building project and its design, as one of the main goals is to give us the right space for the type of learning community we've set out to create.
Thought
The 'Thought' part of our value proposition constitutes the lion's share of what we do. We offer a 'strong-across-the-board' classroom experience to help students master fundamental knowledge and skills across all the major business disciplines. The aim is to ensure Ross graduates receive a well-rounded education that will enable them to be successful no matter what the future brings.
This general management approach clearly differentiates us from many of our peer schools. Along with the small group of other peer schools that strive to excel at offering a well-rounded, general management education, our community is quite different from those of schools that focus primarily on one discipline or another.
Action
The part of our strategy that truly distinguishes us from our peers is the way in which we build on our 'strong-across-the-board' approach in the classroom through our commitment to action-based learning.
At RSB, we believe that action-based learning (ABL) is the best way to develop our students' critical thinking and leadership capabilities - how to spot problems and opportunities early; form, lead, and be part of a team to address them; think innovatively about possible alternatives and solutions; arrive at fact-based and reasonable judgments; communicate recommendations clearly and persuasively; and, once an action plan is determined, how to make it so. Action-learning also complements classroom learning by helping students integrate what's been learned the classroom and develop the skills needed to apply those concepts and tools in new situations.
In fact, we place such importance on action-based learning that our flagship ABL course, Multi-Disciplinary Action Projects, or 'MAP', comprises a full 25% of the first-year learning experience. This design makes our core curriculum very different from peer schools. While the first three-quarters of the year focus on classroom learning that is very similar to what you would find at any school with a general management core, none of our peers has yet taken the step of creating a capstone field-based experience like our MAP program to help students integrate and apply what's been learned in each of the individual core courses that have gone before. Perhaps more importantly, none have created a vehicle for leadership development that is as powerful.
Of course, action-based learning at RSB is far more than MAP. There are 'action-based' co-curricular and extra-curricular activities that have been built up around the core curriculum - portions of the Michigan Leadership Program and Executive Skills workshops, case competitions, club-organized conferences, and so on. And, in the second year, there are a variety of action-based learning opportunities offered to students through the Wolverine Venture Fund, the Frankel Fund, Non-Profit Board Memberships, and additional 'MAP-like' experiences such as the Global Projects course. While most of your education will still occur in classroom settings, the set of non-credit and for-credit action-based learning opportunities RSB offers is hard to match.
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