Fifty top-performing students from historically black colleges and universities and Hispanic-serving institutions were at UCLA Anderson last month for the University of California Summer Institute for Emerging Managers and Leaders. Rotating across six UC business schools, the institute teaches principles of business development, entrepreneurship and other key management skills. Students attend classes for two consecutive summers, learn from world-class educators, participate in hands-on workshops and make valuable connections with peers and industry leaders.
According to Linda Baldwin, Anderson assistant dean of diversity and the UC SIEML director for 2013, the program helps the MBA school connect with students and forge a link before graduation. “Take a look of other graduate degree programs. They have a pipeline from their undergraduate departments,” she said. “With the MBA program, there’s typically a break. The students get scattered.”
This engagement strategy works for Anderson, as well as for the program’s corporate sponsors. “They too are looking at how to diversify their workforce and asking the question, ‘Where do we go to find the top-quality students in the country?’” she said. According to Baldwin, companies are looking for the best, strongest and most diverse workforce they can find and see the economics in supporting and promoting a diversity program of SIEML’s quality. “For the employers, it’s a relatively easy way to see students they don’t traditionally find—top performing students with a 3.8 and above,” she said. “In all likelihood, these companies would not have seen them.”
In the end, the program is there for the students, to help them see the possibilities available to them, regardless of undergraduate degree track or current career goals. When asked if this year’s program was a success, Baldwin quotes one of the students, “He said, ‘UC SIEML pushed us to what we thought was the limit. It challenged us, and it made us think outside the box to the point that we realized that there isn't a box.’”
And, as UCLA Today quoted Kayla McCollum, a sophomore business major at Florida A&M University, "'I had always thought about obtaining an MBA, but had not yet considered how it would fit into my future,' McCollum said in her written evaluation of the program. 'Now I have a much clearer understanding of how I can make it happen, and I want it to happen at UCLA!'"
To read more about the program, head to the SIEML website and UCLA Today.
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