Dipak C. Jain, Dean of the Kellogg School of Management; Sandy & Morton Goldman Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies and Professor of Marketing meets with first-year students.  Photo © Nathan Mandell

Letter from the Dean

Dear Kellogg School Alumni and Friends,

Perhaps the quality that most defines our world is its interconnectedness: Information travels instantaneously and without regard for conventional borders. As a result, ideas and events occurring on one side of the globe quickly make their way around it to influence decision makers elsewhere.

Of course, it is common for businesses to have operations on more than one continent, with the various divisions communicating effectively regardless of the space between their physical locations. Such an arrangement offers efficiencies and market opportunities that can create powerful leadership advantages.

At the Kellogg School, we long ago adopted a similar approach to delivering our internationally recognized management curriculum. As you will read in this edition of Kellogg World, dedicated to our global portfolio of executive MBA offerings, the Kellogg School EMBA program spans several continents — from Asia to Europe to North America. Quite literally, the sun never sets on Kellogg scholars.

But many offerings, even excellent ones, only produce part of the desired result. At Kellogg, we have taken the additional steps to integrate our global portfolio to ensure all our EMBA students, no matter where they are in the world, receive the same outstanding education. Beginning a decade ago, we formed strategic joint-degree partnerships with schools in Hong Kong, Germany, Israel and Canada, enabling us to provide our students with the global perspectives and skills to assume leadership roles in companies anywhere in the world. This year, we enhanced our portfolio further by launching our Kellogg-Miami program to meet the needs of professionals from throughout Latin America and the southeastern United States.

Moreover, we have created unique opportunities for our students to take courses on any of the Kellogg partner campuses, greatly expanding their learning potential. To ensure the Kellogg School's unique cultural qualities are shared along with its intellectual qualities, we bring our various joint programs together regularly for Live-In Weeks in Evanston.

Just as these students exchange ideas with each other, and without regard for national boundaries, so too do our faculty import lessons from the EMBA classroom into our other Kellogg programs. In this way, our full- and part-time MBA students also benefit from having our professors' theoretical frameworks tested against real-world concerns of our executive practitioners. At the same time, our professors have an immediate influence on today's most pressing business challenges.

Supporting this global framework is another critical foundation, a model we call "The Four Pillars."

Instrumental in advancing the Kellogg School's dual mission of creating knowledge and producing socially responsible global leaders, The Four Pillars — intellectual depth, experiential learning, global mindset and values/people skills — provides our students with the balanced tools to succeed at the top levels of any organization. By cultivating in our students keen analytical ability, collaborative skills, ethical behavior, and respect for both theory and practice, we prepare them to achieve their dreams and make important contributions.

Indeed, the Kellogg School leadership model is one that strengthens the whole person, which is why once again our Full-Time MBA Program has been ranked among the very top management schools in the world by BusinessWeek magazine. Our EMBA curriculum, meanwhile, has remained in the No. 1 position since the ranking's inception in 1988.

While surveys such as this form only one metric by which we evaluate our performance, consistency in the rankings can indicate a program's overall robustness. For instance, our marketing curriculum, long considered the world's best, is now joined by our finance and general management curricula. We want to build on these successes.

To do so, we invite you to contribute your support to the Kellogg School as we continue to innovate. The opportunities for partnership are exciting and we look to you — particularly now that our Annual Fund effort has commenced — to help Kellogg remain a force for global leadership. 

Warmest personal regards,

Dipak C. Jain