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I'm Jeff Dyson. I'm the Director of the MBA program at Lamar
University. I’m also a Lamar MBA. My experience with Lamar
MBA prepared me very well to own and manage my company for 30
years in a very competitive environment. When you’re
thinking about your MBA, It really comes down to four
questions. Where do I go? Why do I go? What happens when I get
there? And how does that change my life? But don't just take my
word for it; let's hear what our students and faculty have the
say. Students when they get there undergraduate degree, some
of them are really not ready to find a job and the Lamar MBA
program provides them a course of additional study that will
equip them and prepare them to have a better chance of getting
a job. Right now we have people from various areas that have
nothing to do with business that are in fact in the MBA program
because they've come to the conclusion that whatever there
area was they’ve either been promoted or they're moving into
a situation where more management skills are needed.
One of the ways that it is going to help me is to enter into
executive position to start new businesses in healthcare. There
are lots of things going on in healthcare at the present time.
If a student receives an undergraduate degree in
accounting only or any other undergraduate degree, they don't
have the qualifications to sit for the CPA exam and to have a
career in accounting you really need to have the CPA license. We
give them a set of experiences that in a sense levels them up
too quickly be able to be competitive in the place that
they are at. The very first decision about it being very
close to my house that's the first reason why I choose Lamar
MBA. Its close by, you don’t have to go to school in another
state or another city to get a great education. Lamar is local;
it’s affordable; the classes are convenient they are at night
when you can work it in your schedule. I usually work from
say around seven or eight in the morning until five or six and
the timings in the evening fit perfectly with my schedule. They
make it really easy for you, Dr. Major and Mr. Dyson they sit
down with you and they look at your schedule and work with your
schedule and work with what family needs. A lot of the
professors have a working experience outside school real,
you know, business experience. I think the main thing about a
business education at Lamar is that the faculty brings not only
a theoretical but also a practical approach to the
material. We're learning things that are not only classroom
applicable but they’re also applicable to the real world.
You feel like what's going on ABC right now, the news channel,
that's exactly what I’m studying right now in my classroom. I
would say one of the main things is value. Off course, it the
monetary thing also; you get a good program at a lower cost.
The students do have to get up and speak in front of other.
They have to do a lot of enough critical thinking, teamwork.
Definitely Lamar teacher’s student how to work with other
students. What I like is that a lot of our work is done in
teams. With the MBA program certainly a lot of the work done
was team orientated. They are going to be working with others
and they do have to work through situations where they have
disagreements with others. One thing that I like about it is
that the professors try to have a classroom environment that
really encourages open discussion. The interaction
between the student the faculty is one of the hallmarks of what
we can do here and it's truly interaction. It’s not here's the
faculty teaching down to the student but rather an
interaction in some sense among peers. You know, before I was in
the MBA program I always meet people who have professors that
are a reference for them or somebody that they can call on
or feel like they can lean on and I’ve never had that
professor-student experience but now in the MBA program at Lamar
I do feel like I have professors that I can call, I feel like I
can stop by and talk to them. You know I feel like with my
students, really by the end of semester I know them all and I
know where they are and what they’re going to do and that is
something that helps me to provide them with the type of, I
guess, legal advice that they need. That has a lot of value in
terms of being able to approach professors and really spend one
on one time with professors. I think it's really important to
understand how much that the teacher seem to care about you.
That they make it really fair classroom setting and they'll
really work with you to get through it. I really do feel
like they are genuinely supportive. I mean I feel like
they really want you to do well and they like hearing that
you’re enjoying the program. During my MBA program I got
pregnant and what was amazing about it was that the professors
they worked out with me. I think many times the professor serve
as mentors for the students and they just, as I said, feel very
comfortable coming to the professors. Teachers here at
Lamar University in the MBA program as well as the
undergraduate program are teachers as well as professional
role models. I think Lamar’s MBA program has undoubtedly given me
the skills and the resources that I need to execute any goal.
I think professionally what Lamar, the MBA program, has done
for me is it’s helped me to really focus my efforts And I’m
learning other ways to deal with conflict, with personally
disputes it’s just helping me in ways I didn’t think it would.
And it helped me to think more clearly and not to get entangled
in microscopic stuff in our day today business. With Lamar MBA
program, especially talking about accounting and finance I
started taking interest in that area which initially it was too
boring for me. And now I have become a much better public
speaker I feel more comfortable in front of people and
discussing my thoughts and ideas as a leader and I just feel like
the Lamar MBA program gave me the opportunity to learn that.
There are so many successful people out there in the business
world today that are so proud of their Lamar MBA and they have
really grown their companies and give it all back to Lamar and I
guess that's the thing that really impresses me most is how
many people out there in the business world are Lamar proud
and they come back and they share their experiences with the
students that are in the program now and tell them the value that
that Lamar MBA has given them in their careers.