Terry Connelly is dean of the Ageno School of Business at Golden Gate University and is frequently quoted on business, financial, and economic issues by Bay Area local, as well as national, news media.
Golden Gate University’s Ageno School of Business in San Francisco — a hundred year old institution catering to the needs of working adults – has initiated a unique program that delivers a full-scale MBA cohort program for employees at Gilead Sciences, a leading publicly-traded biotech company in the Bay Area, conducted “onsite” at Gilead’s offices, so that the scientists, engineers, lawyers, clinical research staff and marketing professionals can expand their potential for managerial leadership while minimizing the adverse impact of educational commitments on both their family and work life. Gilead is supporting this investment in its employee’s future because it makes sense for the company as well.
The program takes 28 months to complete, only slightly longer than a traditional “two-year” MBA at an elite school. And most elite schools would be delighted to have the Gilead matriculants in their programs — in the first cohort, all had significant post-college work experience; 40% had advanced degrees; and there are 7 PhD’s in the mix! The students attend class at the office from 4 to 6:40 pm each Tuesday, then can head home or go back to their desks to participate in their second class for the week, which is taught entirely on-line. The two courses rotate between in-person and on-line format each week. Two such courses are completed in each of three 15-week trimester cycles during the year. This combination of timing and delivery allows for “catch-up” time when business travel schedules impact on individual schedules occasionally. Most importantly, participants can get home for dinner with their families despite their educational course load — which is not typical of working-adult MBA program structures, unless they are entirely on-line. Our “mixed-mode” delivery enables us to combine the benefits of cyber technology with the advantages of personal interchanges with instructors and classmates.
We have launched a second cohort, with a total of over 50 professionals enrolled at Gilead. The diversity of educational and workplace background in these cohorts matches up well with any standard MBA program.
Our program directly addresses work/family/career life as it is today with a view to giving participants more control of their own destiny — not only in long-term career sense — but also in a day-to-day, down to earth sense, because we have bent our academic “clock” and made our programs truly “portable” to practice the “customer-centric” approach to business that we in fact teach in our programs.
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