December 2010

Dean’s Message – Dr. Hugh Courtney, Vice Dean

Dear EMBA Alumni,

I know that many of you will be considering New Year’s resolutions in the coming weeks. I have one resolution that I plan to make (and I hope follow!) this year that I wanted to share with you. But first a little background.

Peter Drucker argued that organization leaders should always think of their employees as “volunteers.” He didn’t mean “volunteers” as we usually think of the term – people working for free. Rather, his point was that there is often a huge difference between the performance that most workers need to deliver to keep and even be very successful in their jobs and what they could deliver if they were fully engaged in their work. In other words, fully-engaged employees are almost always “volunteering” to a great extent, choosing to give their all not because they have to but because they choose to.

I think this is an extraordinarily insightful way to think about our roles as leaders and as employees of our organizations. It speaks to our human desire to motivate and be motivated, to work for something and someone that we believe in. So, in 2011, let’s all resolve to:

1. Think of and treat all those we work with as “volunteers” and seek ways to make their work more personally meaningful and fulfilling, and

2. Ask ourselves whether we are truly “volunteering” in our current positions or not. And if not, resolve to determine why we aren’t “volunteering” and whether it might be best to consider a new job or organization. If we aren’t fully engaged, don’t we owe it to ourselves and others to increase our engagement if possible, and if not, to find a place where we will “volunteer?”

I’m also resolving to read more Peter Drucker next year! Let us know what your resolutions are. My warm wishes to you and your loved ones for a very happy holiday season!

Best regards,

Hugh

EMBA Updates – Fall EMBA Alumni Happy Hour

Hello everyone,

It was wonderful to see so many faces on Nov. 17th as we celebrated the recent Wall St. Journal and Financial Times rankings. I hope you enjoy your gift and the opportunity to meet so many others in the Smith EMBA Community.

For those of you unable to come, we missed you but hope to see you at future events. To that end, we will be hosting a Spring EMBA Event that is tentatively scheduled for March 10th. We are currently considering a round table discussion of experts potentially led by one of your former professors. The topic will be relevant to what is impacting our economy, business and/or global community. We would then follow with a networking cocktail hour.

If you have a topic you would like to see discussed for this event, please feel free to contact Shelbi Brookshire at sbrooksh@rhsmith.umd.edu or 301-405-2386.

Happy Holidays to Everyone,

Shelbi

Upcoming Events

I. Monte Carlo Night
Save the Date: Feb. 19, 2011

II. CEO@Smith, featuring Pradman Kaul, President and CEO of Hughes Network Systems
Save the Date: Feb. 22, 2011
www.rhsmith.umd.edu/ceos

III. Smith EMBA Alumni Event
Save the Date: March 10, 2011

IV. Cupid's Cup: The UMD Business Competition
Save the Date: April 1, 2011
www.cupidscup.com 

Upcoming Continuing Education Courses

Held in Washington, DC at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.

miniMBA2.0: www.rhsmith.umd.edu/miniMBA2.0

• The Next Financial Crisis – Feb. 4-5, 2011, Dr. Pete Kyle
• Technology Led Transformation – Feb. 18, 2011, Dr. Joe Bailey
• Sustainability in Business – March 18, 2011, Dr. Rachelle Sampson
• Project Management 2.0 – March 19, 2011, Bryan Palma

Smith Consulting Edge – Apr. 28-29, 2011, www.rhsmith.umd.edu/consultingedge

EMBA Alumni Newsletter

Previous editions can be found online at www.rhsmith.umd.edu/emba/newsletters.aspx. 

Stay Connected

The Smith School launches the Smith Connector. The Smith Connector is a place to update your contact information and connect with other Smith Business School alumni professionally and socially. It links to Facebook automatically. And the Smith Connector can be used to search for jobs or to post jobs. In its first month 1,349 alumni updated their profiles! Make sure you check it out. For more information check out the article in Smith Business Magazine (Spring 2010)

We have two areas where we ask you to make sure your email and mailing address are up to date.

1.  UMD – Email university relations at bio_updates@ur.umd.edu. This is important if you want to keep getting the Smith Business Magazine and other UMD publications.
2. Smith Connector: www.smithconnector.com 

Don’t forget to look for the Smith School on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Announcements

Maryland Public Television spoke to two of our EMBA 9 alumni (Donna Blackman and Thomas Parsons) and current EMBA 10 students (Jennifer Reynolds and Marty Sullivan) on Salary Negotiations with Dr. Joyce Russell and Andrew Sherman. You can find the full clip at www.rhsmith.umd.edu/emba/overview.aspx.

Vaibhav Bakre (EMBA 6) promoted to AVP Client services at Infosys. Vaibhav now leads the business development in the Communications vertical at Infosys.

Finally, we would like to request personal updates to share with all of our EMBA alumni. We would like to highlight your successes! Please send any updates you want to share such as new job or new baby. Email the updates to emba_alumni@rhsmith.umd.edu.