Pepperdine Alums Aim to Help Business Classes Fly

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Some recent graduates of Pepperdine University’s two Executive M.B.A. programs wanted to help their school stand out from the competition.

So about three months ago, they came to the administration with a proposal: let them come back as unpaid full-time advisers.

It took some arm-twisting, said Noelle Nguyen, who went through a Pepperdine executive program a few years ago. Professors were not quite comfortable with the idea of business people trampling around their academic turf.

“I’ve got to be quite frank: I never thought that I’d be able to get it through,” said Nguyen, founder and chief executive of American Love Affair, a downtown L.A. online retailer of high-end clothing and jewelry made in the United States. “The reality is that faculty and their classrooms – that’s their thing.”

However, once the school bought in, the administration moved quickly, putting the program in place in time for this year’s spring classes, which started last month.

“Thankfully for us, our professors don’t just teach change management – they embrace change,” Nguyen said.

Pepperdine’s Graziadio School of Business and Management offers two Executive M.B.A. programs, which cater to employed professionals. To accommodate their schedules, classes meet more sporadically than standard M.B.A. programs. The Executive M.B.A. is a 19-month program designed for midcareer business people that meets about every three weeks, while the Presidents and Key Executives M.B.A. program meets one weekend a month over a 19-month period and is geared to senior executives. Both programs are small and selective, with a total class size of 20 to 25 each.

The PKE program is able to enroll students who live in or out of the area. The current class has members from as far away as Dubai and Kazakhstan who commute to attend nearly every session. Both programs are based at Pepperdine’s Westchester satellite campus, not the school’s main spread in Malibu, although classes are held at multiple locations, including Westchester, Malibu, Westlake Village and company sites.

The current classes are the first to include the alumni advisers, who will attend sessions and help with assignments – and not accept a dime for doing so. It’s expected to become a big selling point.

“When we tell people that other senior executives who have purchased this educational product think so much of it that they want to stay involved – and by the way, these folks are not paid – that’s a very compelling message to the marketplace,” said William Smith, a professor of marketing at Pepperdine who teaches in both the Executive and PKE programs.

Ready to reconnect

Pepperdine didn’t have to do too much convincing to bring the alums on board.

John Carnesale, chief executive of Las Vegas real estate finance firm Taylor Financial, said that he started the PKE program in 2009 when he was 47 years old after looking for an academic environment that was “at his level.” He’s now serving as a member of the first class of alumni advisers and he’s excited about the opportunity to reconnect with faculty and meet a new generation of business leaders.

Carnesale’s experience in PKE demonstrates an auxiliary value of the program. One of his classmates was Steven Siwek, a pain management doctor in Phoenix who wanted to move his existing outpatient practice to a hospital. The two ended up joining forces to acquire a hospital, with Carnesale using his expertise in financing real estate transactions to get the deal done. He’s looking forward to building closer relationships with the faculty and expanding his network to include the next class of students.

“I look at it as more of an opportunity than the current students do,” Carnesale said. “I’m probably involved with half-a-dozen other alumni in different business sectors as well as the doctor.”

Michael Desiderio, executive director of the Executive M.B.A. Council in Orange, a non-profit association of universities that offer Executive M.B.A. programs, said that having alumni advise or mentor current students has been done before, but it’s a trend that’s clearly on the rise.

Desiderio said Pepperdine and other schools have been deepening their relationships with alumni to boost their influence in the business world. That’s because reimbursements from companies that send their executives to these programs have been dropping, leaving prospective students to pick up more of the tab or decide against going back to school.

“We as an industry need to do more with alumni, because at the end of the day, alumni are the ones sitting in these companies that may have changed how they think about reimbursement,” Desiderio said. “It’s just good business to engage them.”

Pepperdine officials have embraced alumni such as Nguyen and Carnesale, and in return the two are doing their part to raise awareness of the school.

“We would like to see the name get stronger out there, because I don’t think people really know that a program like this exists,” Nguyen said. “I think we act as very credible reference points.”

So far, it seems to be working.

Gary Mangiofico, associate dean of both Executive programs, said inquiries are up since the announcement of alumni advisers, although it might not have much of an impact on enrollment due to the program’s strict admission requirements, which are necessary to maintain the small classes that make it an interactive experience.

Mangiofico, a longtime professor, also expects returning alumni will find the experience rewarding beyond just helping out their alma mater. He believes they’ll end up furthering their own business education – without having to pay for another semester.

“You never become as good a student as when you become a teacher,” he said.

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