BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
T he reasons why prospective students choose an MBA programme, or related postgraduate degree, are often very similar. First and foremost among reasons is, of course, the chance to acquire new skills and knowledge. However, many prospective students also cite wanting to expand their own network and obtain new career prospects. Although the areas of alumni relations and career services have many synergies in this respect, at many Business Schools they are organised separately. At Mannheim Business School, we realised a few years ago that this is not optimal and as a result, we merged the two areas into a new unit: the Alumni Relations and Career Development Office (ACO). At the heart of the ACO’s work are the MBS Network Clubs, founded in 2018 and open to alumni as well as current students of Mannheim Business School. After two years, we can justifiably claim that the establishment of these clubs was the right decision: high membership numbers, high rates of participation, very positive feedback and, last but not least, the AMBA & BGA Excellence Award for Best Lifelong Learning Initiative 2021 are the best proof of this.
The idea: a platform for exchange and lifelong learning
Founded in 2005, Mannheim Business School (MBS) now has a programme portfolio that includes full-time and part-time MBA programmes, a number of part-time executive MBAs, specialised master’s degrees, and customised programmes and practice-based open courses. Its network currently comprises more than 3,700 current students and alumni from more than 100 countries, nearly 1,000 of whom live and work outside Germany. Until 2018, apart from the usual events such as reunions or parties, meetings of the School’s regional chapters spread all over the world were the only opportunities for personal exchange and making new contacts. Regardless of the current whereabouts of network members, be it alumni or students, we wanted to create additional points of contact where ‘Mannheimers’ could meet, based on their interests, for lifelong learning, networking, or even personal topics. This is why the MBS Network Clubs were founded in the autumn of 2018. It was important to us that every topic of interest to our students and alumni could be clearly assigned to one of the clubs. Clubs have therefore been created in the areas of diversity, consulting, marketing and sales, technology and IT, finance, and startups. Within the Diversity Club, there are also separate communities for women in business and LGBT+, and within the Technology & IT Club, there is also an analytics community. These communities make it possible to form sub-units within the club structure for particularly current or important topics. Two other aspects were of particular importance during the initial setup. First, we wanted to make it possible for all the stakeholders involved to share their knowledge with everyone else, whether they are corporate partners, alumni, students, or professors. All of them have the opportunity to participate actively in the Network Clubs, as speakers or attendees, and can therefore share not only their experiences and ideas, but also their questions with fellow club members. Secondly, we wanted to give our network members
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