Walking into a class full of 47 people and walking in a week late (thanks to the Visa process!), I was excited and nervous at the same time. More than anything else, I was curious to know if my class was as diverse as the school claimed! As I entered the class, a positive vibe welcomed me into the room full of smiling faces. Looking around and after talking to a few people, I was so enthralled by the range of nationalities and experiences we had in a batch of 47. From Irish engineers to American sales managers, from Vietnamese bankers to a Canadian telecommunications expert, there was so many to learn from in the coming year.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
The MBA team here in UCD Smurfit wishes you and your family a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year !
– Orla, Mary, Rikke, Roisin, Brian, Elaine & Michael.
Click here to view card animation!
Instead of sending you a card this year, we’ve made a donation to the Simon Communities
What is an MBA all about? Top 5 questions about the MBA
Over the holiday period, you may be able to give more time to the thought of doing an MBA.
Dave Lawton is a Process and Chemical Engineer from Cork. He has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for seven years, prior to starting his full-time MBA in UCD Smurfit Graduate School of Business. In writing this blog, he thought he would answer the more common questions out there about an MBA.
What is an MBA all about?
I was in this situation six months ago, and despite some extreme environmental conditions the exit from full time employment and entry back into education has been and continues to be a rewarding decision (hmm, something tells me the transition may not be so smooth – but more of than anon). So what would I have liked to have known prior to starting out? These are the top five questions.
Continue reading What is an MBA all about? Top 5 questions about the MBA
Meet the Class of 2011
My name is Patrick Hillis but all of my new classmates here at the Smurfit MBA have taken to calling me, “Paddy” (affectionately, I think). I come from the Pacific Northwest region of the United States — home of the space needle, Starbucks and fine folks like my good friend Billy Gates (not exactly, but I did come within a mile of his house on a boat once).
Congratulations MBA Class 2010 !
This week saw the MBA Conferring for the classes that completed this summer.
Conferrings are always a huge event for us and for the Smurfit School in general as they mark the culmination of so much work and effort for everyone involved, it’s a chance to celebrate a tremendous personal achievement with graduates, their families and the academic staff. This years ceremony was added too by the festive atmosphere provided by the approach of Christmas and the truly impressive Christmas tree which dominated the top to the O’Reilly Hall and which became a favoured backdrop for post conferral class and family pictures. MBA graduates were joined by two other classes, the Master in Accounting and the MSc Finance stream and this made of a busy and vibrant event.
One thing which is always commented upon at MBA conferrals is the large number of small children who attend, a testament to just how good many of our participants are at juggling both academic and personal lives. Throw in work for the EMBA classes and you can see what an amazing accomplishment the obtaining of an MBA degree really is.
This particular conferring ceremony was unusual in that it was actually our second of the year. The previous one -for the classes finishing in Summer 2009- was in March and was the last of the March conferrings since the University decided last year to move conferral up to December.
Congratulations again to the Smurfit MBA Classes of 2010 !
– Roisin O’Loughlin, EMBA Programme Manager
First coaching experience
Walking into a room to meet a complete stranger, I was unsure what to expect and how much to reveal myself. I was greeted with a noisy door but a very warm “Good morning”. It was my scheduled meeting with my coach at the MBA program at UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School. The coaching sessions are designed to help the students chalk out a plan for their future, under expert guidance from trained coaches. Armed with experience, the coaches help you identify your strengths, prioritize your goals and guide you in the best possible manner.
My coach was a wonderful lady (thankfully!). She made me comfortable so I could share my aspirations, future plans, as well as, apprehensions with her. She was a very considerate listener. She gave me time to settle down before she asked me what my future plans were. It helped to share with another lady as she could fully understand me. I told her how the course was shaping, how I was getting along in the course and how demanding and draining it was, both physically and mentally. She asked me about where I wanted to see myself in the future and what I am doing in the course towards achieving that dream. She then asked me what my long term and short term goals were, and we discussed how I could work on myself to become fully equipped to achieve them.
One thing that really impressed me was that there were no strings attached to the session. I could openly discuss anything, professional, as well as, personal. This helped me discuss all parameters that will help form the perfect equation of life for me. My coach, because of her experience and knowledge, could relate to a lot of things I mentioned and advised me accordingly. She helped me envision my future more clearly as she had examples to share from her own life and from the lives of the people she knew. I learnt from her experience. Real life examples helped me gauge the pros on cons of all my plans.
All in all, I think the coaching is a very useful part of the MBA program at Smurfit. It really gives you an insight into what you “really” want in life and what is best suited to your strengths. I expected my first session to be another one of those add-on features that Business schools talk about in their advertisements but I am glad they proved me wrong. The invaluable guidance I received has made me more focussed on my end goal. I am already looking forward to meeting my coach again next month!
-Amneet
Remembering the first day…
I was very nervous as I walked into the main hall of the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School. There was a group of standing around near the door, chatting. It didn’t look like a close-knit group, so I walked towards them. One was talking about the life he’d just left in Bermuda.
“Aw, it was paradise”
“Really?”
“Heh, no. It’s about a mile wide and very violent.”
The group turned out to be a mix of Full-Time and Executive MBAs, all male. There was even a comment of “sausage-fest” just before the first female student arrived which put us out of our misery.
Given Ireland’s small size, the odds were in favour that I’d know at least one person on the MBA. Sure enough, in walked Ruairí, a classmate of mine from Oatlands College, where I had attended secondary school. We’d gotten along well in school and we had a lot to catch up on. But, while it felt good to see a familiar face amongst 40 or so strangers, it was not necessary. The dynamics of the class are such that close bonds formed very quickly. Within the first week, friendships had formed, and everyone was doing their best to help others with accommodation information, travel, or simply advice on where to get a good pint of Guinness.
All in all, I would have to say that these are some of the nicest people that I have ever met. I immediately felt comfortable and at ease with them, and I’ve made both new friends and great contacts for the future. The sheer wealth of knowledge held by my classmates is mind-boggling, and it’s always a pleasure to tap it. There’s a real feeling of camaraderie and of being a team. We help each other out with projects and study, running tutorials or bouncing ideas off one another.
And a team is what you need on this course. There is a lot of learning in a short space of time. It’s doable but intense. It is also highly interesting and at least one lecturer had to curtail our numerous questions about the economy in order to cover the actual course material. The lecturers themselves are experts in their field, and not only academic but also practical having worked in the real world thus gaining credibility with a class of students that has many years of experience.
To summarise, doing this MBA is turning out to be the best decision that I could have made. I wouldn’t change that for the world.
– Jamie
Smurfit School’s Vietnam Connection
Each year, a group of highly talented individuals from Vietnam gets the opportunity to study for a year at UCD Smurfit under the Irish Aid Irish Development Experience Sharing (IDEAS) programme. The objective of the IDEAS Programme is to share the lessons of Ireland’s economic and social development with Vietnam. This academic year, the UCD Smurfit School has welcomed 10 students on that Programme
In end November, Orla Nugent (MBA Director) and Gillian Flanagan (Smurfit Admissions) visited Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi in Vietnam to promote both the Business School and the IDEAS Scholarship programme 2011/2012.
In Ho Chi Minh City, Orla and Gillian attended the QS World MBA Fair in HCM. Here they met with over fifty students who were most enthusiastic about UCD Smurfit School, studying in Ireland and the Irish Aid IDEAS Scholarship programme. They also interviewed a number of applicants who have already applied to the Scholarship programme.
Later that week, Orla and Gillian attended a meeting in the Irish Embassy in Hanoi where they met with the IDEAS Programme managers at the Embassy. At this meeting the discussion centred around the applications received to date and a plan of action for the forthcoming months. Part of the programme for the visit to Hanoi was also a visit to the residence of the Irish Ambassador, Maeve Collins, to attend the official launch of the Irish Aid IDEAS Scholarship programme for the 2011/12 academic year. This event was very well attended by interested students who were able to meet also the IDEAS Programme Alumni from the 2009/2010 Programme.
“All in all, it was a very exciting trip. We met a number of interesting applications for the IDEAS Programme 2011/2012 and we now look forward to processing all the applications”, MBA Director Orla Nugent says.
Stay tuned for an update on the IDEAS Programme and to hear from the current students on the Programme.
– Rikke, MBA Programme Manager
For more information about the IDEAS Programme,
So near and yet so far!
And so we’ve made it through the first three months with only a few scrapes and bruises, and one major surgery. Nobody’s been killed thank God. Well, not yet anyway.
We’ve the first term done and mostly forgotten and we’re now fully immersed in term 2. The Christmas break is only a week away and it will be our first real holiday of the year. Hanging over us rather ominously before we can relax for a few weeks, are umpteen assignments and, of course, the end of term exams. So near and yet so far…
For some reason this term seems to be more manageable than the first, even though I’m working just as hard. I don’t seem to be as snowed under -no pun intended given the recent weather! Officially, it’s because we’ve had fewer group presentations to prepare. The real reason is that you learn to be a little more cunning in selecting what needs to be done and manage your time accordingly. The Time Management gurus call it ‘prioritising’.
I spoke to an alumnus about this. He said in the first term you try to do everything, in the second you try to do most things and in the third you just do what’s required. As the year progresses your grades improve!
But I think this is part of the MBA learning experience – it’s as much about the process as much as it involves the module material. You learn to prioritise, juggle and even say no. You learn to pick your battles as well; which assignments to concentrate on; where a good mark is possible and which ones to do an adequate job on because of the Law of Diminishing Returns. That’s something from an Economics module that I picked up during the first term.
– Donal
Meet the Class of 2011
Hello! I’m Christopher and I’m on the Full Time MBA programme at the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School. I’m 27 and come from a farming background in Sligo (in the west of Ireland).
In subsequent blogs, I hope to discuss in more detail both why I decided to do the MBA at Smurfit and what my application experience was. For the moment, I’ll just give you a quick background of where I’m coming from.
I finished my undergraduate degree in engineering in Trinity College Dublin (UCD’s arch rival here in Ireland!). Having become somewhat bored with the excesses of ‘Celtic Tiger Dublin’, I took a year out and headed to Australia for a year, and then to Scotland for four years. When the Irish economy went downhill, I figured it was time to spend some time in Dublin again!
My previous jobs have involved working in hierarchical companies where older colleagues tend to be in more senior positions and treated with more reverence. It took me a while to get used to this idea and I have some classmates now that are old enough to be my parents!
The following will hopefully give you an insight into our class diversity, while at the same time winding my group up. We have been doing quite an amount of data interpretation on the course, and I’m getting a reputation with my group for being chart-mad.
It’s been a big transition coming to Dublin and jumping straight into the middle of such a demanding programme as the MBA – some days I’m just not sure where on earth I am or what I’m doing. However, I can say that my class has been very good at helping each other out and giving direction freely.
When we all arrived on August 30th, seeing 44 strange faces was a little daunting but we spent about a week ‘bonding’ doing Team Building exercises, etc. Now I know that sounds pretty corny, and many of us were skeptical and reluctant at first, but it was a great way to break down initial barriers between classmates.
Check out some Team Building photos here.
-Christopher Kitchin