Building a Legacy
Executive Education Celebrates
Half a Century in the Industry
by Pam Losefsky
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“We need to be totally aligned with businesses—if we
aren’t, we couldn’t be in this business,” affirms
Chantal Delys, assistant dean for Executive Education
and a 25-year developer of the custom programs
component. “Our faculty have always been great content
experts; they know their disciplines and they know
business,” explains Delys.
For this reason, custom programs—course work specifically designed to meet the needs of a single company—have become a key growth area for the school. In a custom program, a class might consist of 15 to 25 managers or executives from one company all working toward a common goal or the solution to a company-specific challenge.
“When you have 25 managers from one company in a class, you can get deep into the real challenges that company faces.” Delys says. “Our professors immerse themselves in the company’s strategy, goals and objectives and then leverage all of that knowledge to help them improve performance.” This in-depth exposure benefits both the companies and the scholars, who use their time working on a company’s strategic challenges to develop new research topics and curricula that have a real impact on business today.
The school has built multi-pronged relationships with Austin’s newest companies. “Working closely with world-class companies such as Dell, Motorola and LG Electronics, for instance, keeps us at the leading edge of corporate education.” Delys says. “These companies have a choice and expect the best.”
The longevity of many of these relationships speaks volumes about programs that are built to be self-destructing—when the targeted problem is solved, the program ends. “By definition, when the population of next-generation leaders has been accessed in a company, the job is done and the program disappears,” says Delys.
But many of the school’s partners, pleased with the results of an initial program, signed on for multiple engagements that focused on developing different competencies. These relationships extended to other parts of the school as well. The companies also sent their executives to lecture in business classes, provided opportunities for students to intern and collaborated on new, innovative programs that proved beneficial to the entire school—not just to Executive Education.
It was the McCombs School’s reputation in custom programs that contributed to its recent selection as one of four university learning partners for Royal Dutch Shell’s global Project Academy competence development program. Representatives from McCombs and the university’s School of Engineering are collaborating with the other learning partners and specialists inside Shell to develop and deliver more than 30 customized learning modules across multiple disciplines. The program is focused on enhancing the project management capability of Shell project staff at all levels, and in all regions.
“The Shell Project Academy is a long-term investment that will help the company attract, develop and retain the industry’s best project practitioners,” says Abeln. “It is one of the most significant programs in executive education, because of its scope and scale as well as for its impact on the field of project management.”
A STORIED HISTORY
Fifty years ago, only a few universities had executive programs, and The University of Texas at Austin was one of them. For the first 20 to 25 years of its existence, the department drew most of its clients from the oil and gas companies that led the state’s economy. And since many of them had nationwide and international offices, students came from across the country as well as overseas.
“When the energy industry went into a recession in the early 1980s, all of those companies we partnered with were downsizing and laying people off,” remembers Delys. “Education is always one of the first things to go in down times.” The program had to diversify or die, right along with the Texas economy—Texas business and Executive Education at The University of Texas were intricately linked.
To help speed recovery from the recession, business leaders in Austin actively sought to bring new industries to Central Texas. The city successfully bid on the relocation of technology conglomerate MCC. IBM, Texas Instruments, 3M, and others soon followed over the decade, slowly reinvigorating the economy and attracting many supplier companies as well. These new high-tech companies presented many opportunities for Executive Education.
“It was clear that we needed a balanced portfolio of programs to target the newer industries in the state—we needed to appeal to high-tech, fast-growth companies, real estate firms, and service and manufacturing enterprises,” says Delys.
So Executive Education retooled, working with the new companies to offer a wide array of new open-enrollment programs like marketing strategy, accounting for non-financial managers and strategic management in addition to company-specific programs.
The group also added an MBA program in 1981 to meet the needs of mid-career professionals worried about leaving the workforce in a tight labor market to hold onto their jobs while they pursued an advanced business degree.
THE EXECUTIVE EDGE
The original Executive MBA Program in Austin, known as the Option II Program for more than two decades, was designed to enable students to develop a top management perspective. The renamed Texas Executive MBA Program helped—and continues to help—participants ascend rapidly into the general management ranks after graduation.
The program has undergone some renovation with a recent change in leadership when longtime program director Court Huber stepped down last year.
“I’m continuing the emphases on academic rigor, intensity and commitment to excellence that Court maintained for two decades,” assures the new director David Jemison, a former McCombs School senior associate dean with an 18-year history of teaching in the Executive MBA Program. “After a curriculum review last year, the faculty added coursework in global business, negotiations and financial statement analysis, and rearranged course sequences and material to make room for the new components,” he says.
Jemison also plans to change the destination of the annual international trip from London to China. “Our current students are much more likely to compete with Asian firms than with those from the European community,” he says.
For this reason, custom programs—course work specifically designed to meet the needs of a single company—have become a key growth area for the school. In a custom program, a class might consist of 15 to 25 managers or executives from one company all working toward a common goal or the solution to a company-specific challenge.
“When you have 25 managers from one company in a class, you can get deep into the real challenges that company faces.” Delys says. “Our professors immerse themselves in the company’s strategy, goals and objectives and then leverage all of that knowledge to help them improve performance.” This in-depth exposure benefits both the companies and the scholars, who use their time working on a company’s strategic challenges to develop new research topics and curricula that have a real impact on business today.
The school has built multi-pronged relationships with Austin’s newest companies. “Working closely with world-class companies such as Dell, Motorola and LG Electronics, for instance, keeps us at the leading edge of corporate education.” Delys says. “These companies have a choice and expect the best.”
The longevity of many of these relationships speaks volumes about programs that are built to be self-destructing—when the targeted problem is solved, the program ends. “By definition, when the population of next-generation leaders has been accessed in a company, the job is done and the program disappears,” says Delys.
But many of the school’s partners, pleased with the results of an initial program, signed on for multiple engagements that focused on developing different competencies. These relationships extended to other parts of the school as well. The companies also sent their executives to lecture in business classes, provided opportunities for students to intern and collaborated on new, innovative programs that proved beneficial to the entire school—not just to Executive Education.
It was the McCombs School’s reputation in custom programs that contributed to its recent selection as one of four university learning partners for Royal Dutch Shell’s global Project Academy competence development program. Representatives from McCombs and the university’s School of Engineering are collaborating with the other learning partners and specialists inside Shell to develop and deliver more than 30 customized learning modules across multiple disciplines. The program is focused on enhancing the project management capability of Shell project staff at all levels, and in all regions.
“The Shell Project Academy is a long-term investment that will help the company attract, develop and retain the industry’s best project practitioners,” says Abeln. “It is one of the most significant programs in executive education, because of its scope and scale as well as for its impact on the field of project management.”
A STORIED HISTORY
Fifty years ago, only a few universities had executive programs, and The University of Texas at Austin was one of them. For the first 20 to 25 years of its existence, the department drew most of its clients from the oil and gas companies that led the state’s economy. And since many of them had nationwide and international offices, students came from across the country as well as overseas.
“When the energy industry went into a recession in the early 1980s, all of those companies we partnered with were downsizing and laying people off,” remembers Delys. “Education is always one of the first things to go in down times.” The program had to diversify or die, right along with the Texas economy—Texas business and Executive Education at The University of Texas were intricately linked.
To help speed recovery from the recession, business leaders in Austin actively sought to bring new industries to Central Texas. The city successfully bid on the relocation of technology conglomerate MCC. IBM, Texas Instruments, 3M, and others soon followed over the decade, slowly reinvigorating the economy and attracting many supplier companies as well. These new high-tech companies presented many opportunities for Executive Education.
“It was clear that we needed a balanced portfolio of programs to target the newer industries in the state—we needed to appeal to high-tech, fast-growth companies, real estate firms, and service and manufacturing enterprises,” says Delys.
So Executive Education retooled, working with the new companies to offer a wide array of new open-enrollment programs like marketing strategy, accounting for non-financial managers and strategic management in addition to company-specific programs.
The group also added an MBA program in 1981 to meet the needs of mid-career professionals worried about leaving the workforce in a tight labor market to hold onto their jobs while they pursued an advanced business degree.
THE EXECUTIVE EDGE
The original Executive MBA Program in Austin, known as the Option II Program for more than two decades, was designed to enable students to develop a top management perspective. The renamed Texas Executive MBA Program helped—and continues to help—participants ascend rapidly into the general management ranks after graduation.
The program has undergone some renovation with a recent change in leadership when longtime program director Court Huber stepped down last year.
“I’m continuing the emphases on academic rigor, intensity and commitment to excellence that Court maintained for two decades,” assures the new director David Jemison, a former McCombs School senior associate dean with an 18-year history of teaching in the Executive MBA Program. “After a curriculum review last year, the faculty added coursework in global business, negotiations and financial statement analysis, and rearranged course sequences and material to make room for the new components,” he says.
Jemison also plans to change the destination of the annual international trip from London to China. “Our current students are much more likely to compete with Asian firms than with those from the European community,” he says.
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