Dear GWSB Community,
I hope you’re enjoying the final few weeks of summer!
We had a terrific — and very productive — 2018-19 academic year. I got to know the school and our people, and together, we accomplished a lot.
We conceived, designed and developed a revolutionary approach to graduate business education, expanding our specialized master’s degree offerings and already extensive range of certificate programs. In a radical departure from traditional methods of graduate business education, GWSB is ready to keep pace with changing demographics, employer needs, and student demand to create life-long learning opportunities. As stand-alone credentials, the graduate certificates are ideal for professionals looking to up-skill or re-skill to advance their careers. But what makes GWSB’s graduate certificate offerings truly unique is their customizability. Designed to be flexible, modular and “stackable,” graduate certificates can be combined to build a degree program tailor-made to perfectly suit a student’s chosen career path and personal goals.
We launched the very popular “George Talks Business” interview webcast series, hosting a diverse line-up of interesting guests. We are looking forward to the second season of George Talks Business beginning on September 16 when we host Mark Lerner, managing principal owner and vice chairman of the Washington Nationals Baseball Club. The entire fall schedule, which also includes some sessions “on the road” from Philadelphia and Shanghai, is available here.
We also held the first meeting of the Dean’s Corporate Council, a forum of key business leaders that convenes periodically for in-depth discussions on business and business education, and helps inform what we at GWSB can do to help ensure that our graduates are job-ready and up to accepting the challenges — and making the most of the opportunities — of today’s business world. The council will meet again before the end of the summer.
We have reason to be proud of our collective contributions — but instead of looking back, let’s look ahead. We must keep the momentum going as we have a lot on the agenda for the 2019-20 academic year. We have spent much of the summer reorganizing the F. David Fowler Career Center to better prepare our students with an eye on successful outcomes, working with GWSB Dean’s Advisory Council to further refine our mission and develop an action plan committed to excellence in all we do, and designing several events with our strong, engaged alumni base to strengthen our network in the U.S. and worldwide.
This fall, we will closely examine our undergraduate and MBA curriculum and redesign it based on competitive analysis and stakeholder input. Our goal is to increase their attractiveness, enhance our students’ marketability, and build closer relationships with employers through experiential learning. We will be discussing these issues in faculty and staff committees and meetings, conducting surveys and focus groups with our students, and hosting several input sessions with alumni and employers to inform our curriculum development process.
We are ready to move on our shared goal of securing GWSB’s position among the preeminent business education institutions in the world. Our planning and preparation are aligned with GW President Thomas LeBlanc’s vision for the university, which he recently outlined in GW Today. We’ll especially focus on four pillars as we strengthen our strategic action plan with input from all stakeholders: high-quality undergraduate education and experience, innovative graduate education that is responsive to the shifting needs of students and the business world, supporting world-class faculty and scholarship, and enhancing high-impact research.
There’s a lot to be excited about, and I am very much looking forward to the start of the fall semester. Together, let’s make it another great one for GWSB!
See you around campus (soon)!
All the best,
Anuj Mehrotra, Ph.D.
Dean