Babcock School welcomes newest MA in Management class

Wake Forest University’s Babcock Graduate School of Management welcomes its third MA in Management class this week.

Twenty-eight students attended Monday’s orientation, which included an overview of the program, lunch with faculty members, campus tours and a billiards tournament in downtown Winston-Salem. Each student also received a Dell notebook computer.

“We are a small, high-quality program designed specifically for you,” Charles Iacovou, interim senior associate dean, told the newest group of Babcock students. “You have good timing. We just hired a new dean and over the next few months we will be integrating the business schools here on campus.”

Steve Reinemund, former chief executive officer and chairman of PepsiCo, took the helm of Babcock and the Calloway School of Business and Accountancy on July 1.

The 10-month MA in Management program is designed specifically for recent college graduates who have majored in liberal arts and sciences and want to learn fundamentals of business and management. The program, one of only a handful that are similar across the U.S., is growing. The newest class represents a 75 percent increase over the previous class.

“The first MA classes did very well so the bar has been raised and the expectations are high,” program director Scott Shafer told the new class.

Members of the newest MA in Management class come from 10 undergraduate schools, including Wake Forest, Cornell University, the University of Miami, the University of Virginia and the University of Texas. Seventeen different undergraduate majors are represented including art history, communication, English, environmental studies, film, French, Spanish and psychology.

Scottie Coleman is a member of the newest MA in Management class. An art history major from the University of the South, she minored in international development and did an internship last summer for Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which sparked her interest in social entrepreneurship. Grameen Bank is a microfinance organization and community development financial institution.

“Babcock and Wake Forest have a reputation for entrepreneurship, which is why I chose this program,” Coleman said.

Orientation for the full-time MBA students begins Aug. 18.

Wake Forest’s Babcock School offers five MBA programs: full-time, evening and fast-track executive MBA programs in Winston-Salem, and evening and Saturday MBA programs in Charlotte. The school also offers a 10-month MA in Management program designed specifically for recent college graduates who have majored in liberal arts and sciences and want to learn fundamentals of business and management.