Dean's Message
2016-17 is a year in which we continue to advance towards academic excellence and distinction—the top priority of the current Saint Mary’s College strategic plan. CEO Magazine ranked our hybrid EMBA program among the top 20 in the world. U.S. News & World Report ranked our hybrid non-MBA Graduate Business Programs, including the M.S. in Accounting and M.S. in Business Analytics programs, among the top 50 in the nation. And, the Online MBA Report recognized our hybrid EMBA program among the top 5 Catholic colleges, as well as #19 nationally, among private colleges. Since our business programs were not nationally ranked at all prior to 2014, these are amazing achievements for us.
2016-17 is also a year in which we progressed significantly in engaging the community and enhancing our school’s visibility, another top priority for the College. For the third year in a row, we partnered with the San Francisco Chronicle on the Annual Visionary of the Year Award. President Jim Donahue and I presented the award to Priscilla Chan, co-founder of the Chan/Zuckerberg Initiative. Our well-known Executive Speakers Series continues to attract top executives and leaders, including Brian Power, SVP of Yahoo, Tiffin Groff, Vice President and General Manager, Cold Crafts Division, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, Amy Vernetti, Director of Leadership Recruiting at Google, and Donna Uchida, Chief of Communications at Kaiser Permanente. To mentor students, bring real-life projects into classroom, and garner internships and jobs for our students, we established a number of advisory boards for our academic programs, including accounting and finance. The Elfenworks Center for Responsible Business organized a timely conference on “Harnessing the Power of Big Data for Social Good,” which drew audience from close and afar.
2016 - 17 also witnessed the launch of SEBA’s $500,000 undergraduate scholarship initiative, a two-year effort to address the affordability of higher education for students, another Saint Mary’s strategic priority. I am happy to report that we raised nearly $300,000 scholarship in the first year of the initiative, thanks to the generosity of the Dean’s Advisory Board members and other donors. We are confident that we will meet our scholarship goal by the end of 2017-18.
2016-17 is also a fruitful year for student success and experiences, a top priority as well in the current strategic plan of Saint Mary’s. 80% of SEBA undergraduate students either are fully employed or havebeen admitted to graduate school within 6 months of their graduation. PayScale ranked our undergraduate business program among the top 20 nationally for return on education. Our experiential learning approach prompted Master of Management students to conduct real life business projects in South Korea, involved students participating in the Business Ideas Competition, provided analytics students hands-on experience with big data projects from Macy’s and other companies, and led Global EMBA students to perform group consulting projects for nonprofit and NGO organizations in India. The Guyette Leadership Program continues to offer a high impact, interactive learning experience for emerging student leaders across campus, via its well-known luncheon series with distinguished guests.
By the way, have you stopped by the Power Plant building and noticed the 20 different national flags in the lobby? These flags represent the countries our faculty members come from. I have no doubt that our students benefit tremendously from these diverse, multicultural perspectives in the classroom. The SEBA Inclusive Excellence Taskforce, in partnership with CCIE and Chief Diversity Officer, is also designing programs to further advance diversity and inclusion within our school. All of these support the School’s strategic focus of, “Think Globally. Lead Responsibly.”
I look forward to continuing our work together to advance SEBA in the coming year!
Sincerely,
Zhan Li. Dean