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When Susanne Gstattenbauer graduated with her IMBA in August, it wasn't her first MBA ceremony. She has held an MBA from Germany since 1994. Once her husband took a job in Miami, she wanted additional credentials to make it easier to enter the U.S. and Latin American job markets.
After researching the options, she realized that the one-year, intensive IMBA program in the Chapman Graduate School of Business best met her needs. "I'm 36," she said. "I wanted to complete the degree in a year; I wanted to study Spanish . . . and the price was right." To add to her expertise in strategic management and marketing, she has been focusing on finance and worked on the Certificate in International Banking in parallel to her IMBA. This added dimension in her background will position her well to achieve her next goal: to work in mergers and acquisitions for a bank or multinational corporation. Despite its academic demands, the IMBA afforded Gstattenbauer the opportunity to form friendships. In fact, she is working on a yearbook to distribute to the rest of her cohort-the first such project an IMBA student has proposed. "I still look at the yearbook I got when I was an exchange student," she said. It's a big task and combined with taking her final two finance courses in summer school and launching her job search, it proved that she wanted an intense experience right up to graduation.
At the end of 2002, Shawn Flynn looked at the flagging job market and thought the time was right to exit the workforce for awhile, earn different credentials, and be ready with a new degree when the economy rebounded. An area resident for eleven years, he worked out of Nortel Networks' Caribbean and Latin American headquarters. He had a B.S. in electrical engineering, but when he decided to get an MBA, the IMBA attracted his interest.
Flynn wanted to take advanced courses in Spanish and liked the prospect of meeting students from other backgrounds. "The class included forty students, 75 percent of whom are international," he said. "We represent 22 different countries. So going to school in a lock-step program, on a full-time schedule, really allowed us to get to know each other and our various cultures. Even though most FIU programs have an international flavor, ours is special." He also appreciated being able to finish in a year, though he admits it's been intense. "I couldn't have done it without my wife's support," he said, noting that he had to work late hours in order to spend time with his family. Still, the dedication paid off: he has a 3.95 GPA and was inducted into Beta Sigma Gamma, one of only 33 business graduate students to achieve that recognition this year. And he's glad he'll have a degree from a school with an increasingly strong reputation. Though the telecom industry is starting to pick up, Flynn doesn't think he'll try to return to that familiar turf. He secured a paid internship for the summer in the worldwide planning and reporting department of Burger King Corporation's finance organization. "I'm excited to gain some experience in a completely different area, and in the future I hope to get a taste of other types of careers," he said.
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"I had worked in a consultancy company in strategic management
and marketing, including mergers and acquisitions, and was executive director of a regional telecom company,
for which I did business development and corporate strategy," Gstattenbauer said. "But if employers in the
Americas don't know the school you attended or the companies you worked for abroad, it can be a
disadvantage."
"Everything is going international," he said. "You can't stay
locally focused anymore."