WPI seeks to create business school of choice

PHOTO/Matt VOLPINI Michael J. Ginzberg, dean, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Robert A. Foisie School of Business

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Michael Ginzberg took over as dean of WPI’s business school on Aug. 1, after holding a similar position at American University in Washington, D.C. In just over a half year on the job, he has focused the business school to cater its programming to WPI’s strengths of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and sought to ensure every WPI student leaves school with some degree of business education.

What is your vision for the business school?

Over the next five years, I want Foisie to be the business school of choice for top STEM-oriented students who want to solve complex human problems. We should be globally renowned for our research and for our programs that are all at the intersection of technology and business. If we are the top one – or in the top handful of schools – that people look for that type of education, I will be very pleased.

How have the first few months gone?

We took a look at where we are, what we are and what we want to be; and the school has some real strengths in information technology, operations management and industrial engineering and in entrepreneurship and in innovation. We have to build upon those strengths. We have to reaffirm that we are the business school of a STEM-based institution. We will embrace that; we will make sure all programs recognize that; and that will guide what we do.

How can business classes help STEM students?

The focus now is really about technological entrepreneurship, managing a technological enterprise, how do you take advances in technology – the institution has terrific technology that is developed here – and making sure it is usable and used effectively. That really requires an understanding of the way institutions work and the way markets work.

How do you get the school to that point?

We need to be better known. If you get 20 miles outside of Worcester, our recognition goes down substantially. Even inside of Worcester, I am surprised by the number of people who don’t know there is a business school at WPI.

If we are able to enhance that recognition, we will be able to bring in more students in our graduate and undergraduate programs.

Ultimately, I would like to see more of the institution’s students in science and engineering take more business courses during their time here.

Will enrollment grow?

We are a pretty small undergraduate program at the moment. We have 200-225 undergraduate students. That is 5 percent of the university’s undergraduate population. What I am looking for is growing to about 10 percent, so in the neighborhood of 400 undergraduate students.

We are about to introduce some new options in the undergraduate program that will help us do that. It is more focused on information technology and the financial services industry – the back office of the financial services industry, the platform and the operations that make banks, brokerage firms and the entire financial services industry function.

How about the graduate program?

The graduate program is interesting because we are about 20-25 percent of the graduate students at WPI.

Graduate education is in turmoil in many ways. What students want is changing. We don’t offer a full-time MBA program any more, but that is OK because full-time MBA programs are a dying breed.

Students are changing what they want: they want more focus, they want more convenience, and they don’t necessarily want to leave the workplace.

We have moved to a blended learning, part-time MBA program and then four specialized master’s programs that are more focused and shorter. If you look at the 425 students we have in the graduate program, 125 of them are in the MBA program and the other 300 of them are in the four specialized master’s program. I expect that will grow. I am not ready to give up on the MBA yet, but I am not making big investments in it either.

How long will the rollout of your vision take?

I am always impatient. I would say we should do it in five years, but do I really think we can do it in five years? Probably not, but in five years we should be headed in that direction. In 10 years, it would be really nice for my successor – and I assume by 10 years from now it will be my successor – to say that every student at WPI is touched by the Foisie School of Business at some point in his or her career here.

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Ginzberg Shop Talk