This past week (Oct 19th – 23rd) saw students from the Full-Time MBA class participate in Global Network Immersion Week (GNIW). Global Network Immersion Week gives UCD Smurfit MBA students the opportunity to pursue intensive study at another network school, in a focused mini course that leverages the perspectives, programmes, and faculty expertise of that school. Alongside their counterparts from elsewhere in the network, students attend classes, tour local businesses, and meet with experts focused on current business problems.
UCD Smurfit School welcomed students from Koç University (Istanbul, Turkey), Yale SOM (Connecticut, USA), Fudan (Shanghai, China), Egade (Santa Fe, Mexico) and Sauder School of Business UBC (Vancouver, Canada). The theme of the UCD Smurfit GNIW was ‘Executive Decision Making’ and sessions included Executive Decision Making: Art or Science?, Corporate Decision Making: Respective Roles of Boards and Management and Individual and Social Psychological Effects on Decision Making.
Along with contemplating some Decision Making conundrums in the classroom, students went on a Company Visit to Accenture where the Director of the Centre for Innovation, Dublin discussed the decision making process around locating the new innovation centre in Dublin.
To balance the class-based learning the students took part in activities such as a Networking Event, a visit to the Guinness Storehouse, a Literary Pub Crawl and a wrap up lunch in Blackrock.
The class are just past the mid-way point in Semester 1 and having spoken to students who participated in the GNIW they viewed the week as a valuable opportunity to take stock and reflect on what has passed since the programme commenced in September and provided an opportunity through learning and social activities to energise for the remainder of the Semester.
Yvonne Harding ~ Full-Time MBA Programme Manager