The Tuck Business Bridge program, a four-week intensive summer program run presently at the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, lives up to its name by creating a bridge between academic classes and the corporate world.
The immersion program involves 80-some students from 40 different schools, many of whom are upper-level undergraduate students, grad students and graduates sent by their employers for training.
The program plunges them not only into the academia and ideology of business, but also gives them an introduction into the sort of workload the corporate world demands.
A heavy workload
"The work is extremely intensive," said Associate Dean of Tuck and Business Bridge Professor Robert Hanson. "Students work harder than they do at school," oftentimes working straight through the weekend.
"It's really intensive," Jon Howell, a graduate student in computer science at Dartmouth, said. "They promise that, and they deliver."
The program also deviates from the class schedule students are used to by using an integrated curriculum taught by Tuck professors.
Students attend classes 9 to 5, with much of their off-time taken up by group work and case studies.
Hanson himself teaches Managerial Economics while Management Professor Clyde Stickney teaches Financial Accounting, Management Professor Fred Webster tackles Marketing and Business Administration Professor Kent Womack teaches Finance. Management Professor Len Greenhalgh covers Organizations and Management, Management Communication Professor Mary Munter takes on Management Communication and Ken Tasker helps out with spread sheet modeling.
The program also employs two teaching assistants, one of whom has graduated with a Masters in Business Administration and one who is about to start graduate study.
Out of the classroom
The program also reaches outside the Dartmouth community to bring in experts from the business world.
Executives give speeches and presentations and a career panel introduces students to the various job opportunities in business fields.
An entrepreneur panel introduces students to the logistics and rewards of starting your own company. The students also participate in a marketing strategy game that simulates running their own company.
"The program is really eye-opening. They're trying to give you the big picture by giving you a little taste of everything," Howell said.
Students have more to show for their hard work than just a grade. Throughout the fourth week of the program students work to complete a real-life consulting project for actual clients.
As well, after resume creation and revision work, the program sends out the students' resumes to 140 different corporations, giving them a solid network for future employment.
The program's goal is to give intense business education to those with ambition but no previous business course work.
The program is attended by liberal arts students who want to receive career-specific instruction outside their normal, broad-ranging schooling, or by older students gearing up for business-oriented professions.
"I felt like I had no business experience," Howell said. "I want to be prepared to start a company or be involved in a growing company on the business side of things."
The program gives the students just what they need to be prepared -- a head start both when they are looking for jobs and in the workplace.
"We get them way ahead in the game, both in the interview and on the job," Hanson said. "We focus on material the students will use."
"Bottom line, if I were to go out into the real world I'd be wholly unprepared in relation to people who go to a school where they can graduate with a major in finance or accounting. I took the course to find out about a field I know I am interested in entering, but know little else about," Griffin Murray '99, who is majoring in history and philosophy, said.
This type of hands-on, pragmatic, high-energy program is found nowhere else in the country. The program started last year as a one-of-a-kind opportunity, and only one four-week session was offered.
This year the program offers two four-week sessions and has also spanned continents with the Global Business Bridge, to be held at Oxford University in England.
Held in conjunction with the Templeton College at Oxford, the Global Business Bridge program attests to the success and popularity of this program and extends the forum to the international business scene.
