New Master of Science Students Get Focused

Dean Says Deep Experience Will Give Edge to Incoming Class

Incoming Master of Science students will catch the attention of employers as they delve deep into specialized programs at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, Dean Alex Triantis told the incoming class during orientation Aug. 18-22, 2014.

“Five years ago we really started growing these programs,” Triantis told a mingling of 490 incoming students of finance, marketing analytics, supply chain management, accounting and information systems. “Employers are increasingly interested in new graduates with very deep experience in a particular area — especially in MS-oriented fields where our faculty have worked on Wall Street and at the highest spheres of marketing analytics.”

Triantis said access to world-class research gives the Master of Science students additional advantages. "You are about to practice under faculty at the leading edge of research and experience in their fields,” he said. “Sometimes it takes five to 10 years for research to be implemented in practice, but you will be ahead of the game by learning new ideas and concepts as they formulate.”

The school is ranked No. 6 for research in the University of Texas-Dallas global rankings and No. 4 by CEOWorld. Triantis said the combination of real-world experience and research prowess has the school at the cusp of “being among the very elite master’s programs in the world.”

Triantis said the learning is experiential and technology-driven. Students can manage a Global Equity Fund, speak with high-level investors at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in Nebraska and track a company's customers and the percentage of revenue those customers generate using the same tools with the same speed as Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms (see Wall Street Tools Give Edge to Smith Students).

The dean’s message complemented orientation workshops for career development, job search strategy and campus recruiting at the school’s Office of Career Services. Second-year master’s students and business professionals, including Smith alumni, presented the sessions. “Key takeaways included the importance of communication skills in successfully securing employment,” said Angela Vaughn, assistant director of accounting career services, who organized the workshops.

Program-specific activities — new to the Master of Science orientation — included a statistics boot camp for marketing analytics students and an “industry day” for information systems students. The latter involved Salesforce and Time Warner Cable managers walking the students through “a day in the life” of information systems workers in their respective companies.

The guests also provided company culture insight and detailed the soft and technical skills essential for workplace success.