Our 1,300 part-time students create a unique MBA experience in the Windy City

By Rebecca Lindell

There is a small copper vase from India, a golden Egyptian statuette. A tiny wooden canoe from Colombia bears a fisherman and his bounty of vegetables. Two kimono-clad Japanese statuettes preside mutely over the scene.

Francis, associate director and registrar of The Managers' Program, picks up a soapstone sculpture from South Africa. The rounded form suggests a mother cradling a child. Like the rest of the items, it was a gift from a student in the Kellogg School's Part-Time MBA Program. "She said it reminded her of me," says Francis, who has served on the TMP staff for 30 years.

The sentiment only hints at the depth of trust students have placed in the small, tightly knit staff that operates The Managers' Program, based in the heart of Chicago. For the working professionals who attend TMP, life is a crush of school, career, community involvement, extracurricular clubs and, often, family. The TMP staff is the support team that helps them stay on top of it all.

"They're always available, they'll always call you back, they definitely do whatever they can to help you," says part-time student Jack Philbin. "They seem to have a lot of respect for what TMP students are trying to do."

Certainly, TMP attracts a particular breed of student — one who thrives on multiple challenges and doesn't mind eating dinner on the way to a 6 p.m. class. TMP is as academically demanding as the Full-Time MBA Program, but is designed to complement the lives of those who don't want to interrupt their careers.

That would be someone like Philbin, who has muscled his way through the program, taking two courses per quarter while running his own fast-growing company, Vibes Media.

"It's kind of a crazy schedule, but I like it," says Philbin, president and co-founder of the Chicago-based firm. He added dozens of employees to his company last year, flew on 90 business trips and welcomed his first child in December. "I thrive on doing as much as I can."

For Philbin, that means getting involved in the Kellogg community. He enjoys attending events sponsored by the TMP Marketing and Hedge Fund clubs and catching as many on-campus speakers as possible. "I am really trying to wring every drop out of this experience," he says.

That's exactly the attitude Associate Dean Vennie Lyons hopes to foster among students in The Managers' Program. "Our goal is to have a part-time program with a full-time experience," says Lyons, director of TMP since 1972, the same year he graduated from Kellogg.

That means a vibrant student culture, a responsive administration and plenty of leadership opportunities. TMP now boasts 11 students clubs and nine committees, far more than most part-time graduate management programs. The groups plan more than 125 social, educational and professional activities each year.

It also means a facility on par with that of the Full-Time Program's Donald P. Jacobs Center in Evanston. Indeed, Wieboldt Hall, TMP's venerable home at 340 E. Superior St., underwent a $15 million renovation in 1998 to bring the building, which opened in 1926, into the current century.

Students now sit at "smart seats" in many of the building's 17 classrooms, where they can network computers and share data during class. Wireless and wired Internet connections are available throughout Wieboldt, and a computer lab provides students with printers, scanners and other technological resources.

The redesigned building also hums with the teamwork so evident at other Kellogg facilities: It features 20 rooms for group study, as well as an expansive lounge and cafeteria. The fourth floor, meanwhile, provides ample space for quiet study.

There's good reason for Kellogg to provide equal opportunities to both full-time and part-time students. Lyons describes the groups as very similar in terms of their academic skills and achievements. Indeed, the same professors teach in both programs and the curriculum is nearly identical. But TMP classrooms have a dynamic quality all their own, notes Tim Calkins, clinical associate professor of marketing and recipient of the 2006 Lawrence G. Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award.

"Teaching TMP students is terrific, because they can apply things in real time," Calkins says. "As a professor, I can bring up a topic and a week later they've had a chance to try out those insights in their jobs. Or, they bring topics to class that they've experienced at work. They get to connect things in a way that they might not be able to in the full-time program."

Part-time students also tend to be a bit more advanced in their careers, with an average of six or seven years of work experience, as opposed to five for those who attend Kellogg full-time, notes TMP Director of Admissions Donelle Broskow.

"Most of them are progressing professionally while they attend classes here," says Broskow, who has been with the program since 1998. "They see the value in the career and they don't often want to make a drastic career change."

Photo © Nathan Mandell

Aparna Katakam '05 was typical. An engineer by training, she had spent a half-decade working in product design for GE Healthcare prior to Kellogg. "I'd spent my entire career in healthcare, and I wasn't looking to completely shift directions," she says. "I wanted more learning, more skills and functions."

Katakam had set her sights on a new role as a marketer of healthcare products, and had just moved into that area when she began the TMP program. "I found I could very quickly apply what I was learning there," she says.

Of particular value were the courses on finance and international marketing. Katakam says she easily found practical applications for those skills and was soon promoted to a position as a product manager for GE's maternal and infant care division. "A lot of opportunities have opened up for me," she says.

Philbin, too, notes that his TMP experience has helped him to become better at what he does. Certain classes, such as Technology Portfolio and Project Management, have been directly applicable to his work with Vibes. The company specializes in text-message marketing, and Philbin says it is easy to become overwhelmed by the ever-expanding menu of technology options.

"That class helps you figure out which technology projects are the best ones to concentrate on," he says. "I put that to work right away."

He has also used other courses, such as Entrepreneurship and New Venture Formulation, to get feedback on new directions for his company. That course requires students to write a plan for a new business and to pitch it to a panel of actual investors. Philbin seized the opportunity to write a plan for Vibes, and says he benefited immensely from the insights he received.

"We hadn't done a business plan in a few years, so that was very valuable," he says. He ultimately submitted the plan to the Kellogg Cup, the school's business plan competition.

Philbin's team reached the finals, and he was delighted when news of the achievement reached investors he was to meet with on a separate matter for Vibes. "I couldn't believe it," he says of the high-powered word-of-mouth. "That was pretty cool."

Such synergy between work and school is the whole idea behind TMP, according to Lyons. "That's ideal, because it helps reinforce what our students are learning," he says.

In such a fast-paced environment, it would be easy for a sense of community to fall by the wayside. Lyons is all too aware that The Managers' Program could acquire the aura of a "commuter school," with students rushing in and out for class and then off to their many other commitments. "We want students to have a deeper relationship with the school than that," he says.