Student Success Initiative - 2019 Report

BUILDING THRIVING CAREERS,

2019 Progress Report

STUDENT SUCCESS INITIATIVE

One Successful Ross Student at a Time

T

he University of Michigan Ross School of Business is filled with bright and ambitious students, both undergraduate and graduate. And these students don’t come to Michigan Ross simply to receive a business degree; they come to Ross because they plan to embark on impactful, thriving business careers immediately after graduation.

Thanks in large part to the Student Success Initiative, which is made possible through generous donor support, Michigan Ross is able to help these ambitious Ross students prepare for, and pursue, successful and prosperous early careers. Established in 2017, and operated through the Career Development Office (CDO), the Student Success Initiative offers a rich portfolio of practical and results-focused career planning and development resources, each tailored to the needs of students’ different academic levels and business interests.

The Student Success Initiative spent the 2018-2019 Academic Year focused on three core areas: 1) successfully meeting high student demand for career development services at Ross; 2) expanding and realigning CDO staffing and leadership for optimum effectiveness; and 3) pursuing a groundbreaking new technology solution­— developed BY students, FOR students—to help Ross students navigate important career planning decisions and activities during their time on campus.

ADVANCING CAREER DEVELOPMENT SERVICES

The primary role of the CDO is to provide Ross students with personalized coaching and advising to help them map out a successful career path. Michigan Ross is happy to report that the CDO provided both undergraduate and graduate business students with more oneon-one coaching appointments than the previous academic year—and did so with exceptional results.

• Undergraduate Student Coaching: Over the course of the school year, each CDO coach held an average of 336 coaching appointments with BBA students. Combined, these CDO staff members offered BBA students 1,358 coaching appointments totaling 871 hours. Interestingly, according to CDO data, students who participated in the most coaching sessions ended up receiving the highest starting salaries after graduation.

Students who did NOT take advantage of any CDO coaching

appointments received an average starting salary of $68,250.

While that’s a very respectable starting salary for a new BBA graduate, students who received six or more CDO coaching appointments received a compensation package more than 17% higher, with an average starting salary of $80,000.

• Graduate Student Coaching: During the 2018-2019 Academic Year, each CDO coach held an average of 617 coaching appointments with MBA students. Combined, these staff members offered MBA students 5,486 coaching appointments totaling 3,126 hours. Just like the BBA students, MBA students who took greater advantage of Ross’ careerconsultation services ended up securing the most lucrative positions upon graduating. Full-time MBA graduates who did not participate in CDO coaching appointments received an average starting salary of $142,000. At the same time, MBA students who took advantage of six or more career coaching sessions increased their compensation package by nearly 14.5%, with a starting salary of $162,500. MBA graduates who took advantage of 11 or more coaching sessions received a starting salary of $165,000—16+% more than their uncoached peers.

• Customized Resource for Recruitment Activities: This past year, the CDO significantly expanded its contract with a company called GradLeaders. This has allowed the CDO to customize its recruitment dashboard, a multi-faceted platform that both recruiters and students use for job postings, recruitment events, interview schedules, and more.

This has provided a better user experience for both students and companies.

BOOSTING THE CDO STAFF & LEADERSHIP TEAM

The productivity, effectiveness, and wellbeing of any organization is determined by the people who oversee it. The CDO has made—and continues to make—improvements in this vital area, for both its coaching staff and its leadership team. Additional staff enhancements are in process.

• Coaching Team: Thanks to support from the Student Success Initiative, the Ross CDO was able to expand its human resources to better serve our students. For example, the office opened and filled three new career coach positions and combined service to all specialty master’s programs (MSCM, MM, MAcc) under

one coach. With these changes, the team is able to better serve students interested in technology, asset management, and corporate finance. The CDO is also able to offer more consistent career development services to students across the three specialized master’s programs. This staffing expansion and re-alignment has also allowed our international career coach to focus exclusively on that population, with a focus on international MBA students. The CDO is in the process of hiring one full-time MBA career coach, a position that was vacated by a staff member who is now in a fully designated role serving the Part-Time MBA student community. The office is also in the process of pursuing a new BBA program coordinator role.

• Leadership Team: With the aim of being as strategic and productive as possible, the CDO also expanded its senior team during the 2018-2019 Academic Year. For example, the CDO added a new Senior Associate Director position to provide strategic planning and leadership exclusively for the BBA and one-year specialized master’s program team. This change has allowed the Sr. Associate Director for the MBA Career Coaching team to focus exclusively on the MBA career coaching team.

• Company Relationship Management: The CDO is in the process of hiring an industry manager and corresponding coordinator to manage Ross’ working relationships with company recruiters. Employers who come to Ross to interview Ross students give the CDO high marks for customer service (based on surveys); Ross intends to keep it that way.

LEVERAGING TECHNOLOGY FOR STUDENT SUCCESS

One-on-one career coaching is at the core of career development at Michigan Ross, and access to the latest technological resources is a fundamental complement to this service. That’s why the CDO is developing an innovative online planning resource for students called the Michigan Business Education Navigator (MBEN). What’s more, because Ross is a leader in hands-on learning, students in the school’s Living Business Leadership Experience (LBLE) course are

taking the lead in developing MBEN with Ross’ Office of Strategy and Academic Innovation. Please read on to learn more about what MBEN is, what it will mean for Michigan Ross students, and how talented students are helping to bring it to fruition at Ross.

• Michigan Business Education Navigator: MBEN is an intelligence/machine-learning enabled platform that provides real-time navigation to students looking to optimize the scheduling and value of their experiences in curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities while attending Michigan Ross. Leveraging the data from past students with similar backgrounds and career goals, MBEN will create a true personalized educational experience for each student. Incoming students will be able to enter their current skills and experiences along with their career objectives and MBEN will tell them: “To get from here to there, you should consider these courses, these clubs, these activities, and develop stronger capacity in these areas.”

• Students at the Helm: The Winter 2019 LBLE student team was given an investment of $250,000 from the Ross Innovation Investment Committee to hire a developer to build the first iteration of the MBEN tool (wireframe, user experience, user interface, algorithm). Two summer interns (two MBAs who have been with the MBEN project for three semesters and one School of Information master’s student) are spending the 2019 Summer working on MBEN’s data plan/ architecture, and they are collaborating with U-M Procurement to secure a vendor to build the tool.

In Fall 2019, a new team of LBLE students will pick up the development and testing work for this pilot product, with the aim of pursuing a full product launch with Full-Time MBA students in August 2020. From there, the tool will be further developed and adapted to serve other cohorts of Ross students and potentially students from other schools and colleges across the University of Michigan.

According to surveys conducted by Ross, career development is identified by students and alumni as a Top Three criteria for how they choose between business schools and whether they continue to support their school post-graduation. And, according to annual employment data from Ross graduates (the 2019 Employment Report will be available at the end of the summer), the school’s CDO services are making a positive difference in the career outcomes and ongoing success of our graduates.

Again, we are exceptionally grateful to donors of the school’s Student Success Initiative Fund. Together, we are fostering Leaders & Best at Michigan Ross.

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