“MBA programs are targetedtowards the general public. If youhave a History degree, you go toan MBA program,” Professor Mi-chael Walls said in an info sessionon November 4 about Mines’s En-gineering Technology Management
program. “We’ve identied a niche
where we’re really trying to build acurriculum targeted toward engi-neers and applied scientists only,”he explained.Engineering Technology Man-agement, a Master’s degree offeredby the Department of Econom-ics and Business, was launched in2001. Walls explained the purposeof the program during Wednes-day’s presentation. “[We want] togive students who have engineeringand applied science undergraduatedegrees a stronger managerial andbusiness perspective.” The pro-gram “gives [students] a leg up inthe context of understanding muchmore about the business side of theworld and understand the compo-nents of that that might affect theirday-to-day job,” according to Walls. The ETM program, which hasturned out around 200 graduatessince 2001, typically takes a yearto complete. In addition to an eigh-teen-hour core, ETM students canchoose from four other classes tocomplete their degree. The classesthey choose coincide with two spe-cialties on which the program focus-es. The more quantitative specialty,Operations Engineering Manage-ment, is “a tool bag of methodolo-gies and technologies, particularlywith regard to operations researchand optimization, to really supportdecisions in the context of the…par-ticular environment you’re in,” Wallsexplained. The specialty focuseson operations research techniquessuch as integer and linear program-ming, and includes a decision anal-ysis class, which focuses on takingsystematic approaches to makingcomplex decisions. Associate Professor AlexandraNewman brought up applications of
this specialty, specically related to
her operations research program-ming courses. “We do work in mining,like optimizing how to plan productionfor open-pit and underground mines.We do work in energy, both withzero-energy building and also basedon operating energy systems,” sheexplained during the presentation.“I also have a project group work-ing right now on scheduling softballgames for the Rocky Mountain Ath-letic Conference…[W]e hope to takeover the Rocky Mountain AthleticConference schedules because wethink that [ours] are better than whatthe RMAC currently has.” The other specialty available forETM students is Strategy and Inno-vation. Courses in this specialty relateto entrepreneurship. Class topics
include entrepreneurial nance, pat
-enting, inventing and licensing. Mar-keting, business ethics and businesslaw courses are also included underthis heading. “The emphasis here ison developing strategic competitive-ness,” said Walls.
The nal-semester capstone
project and executive in residenceprograms round out the highlightsof ETM. The capstone class “is acombination of a business strategycourse and an internet based com-petitive simulation game,” Walls ex-plained. Teams of four ETM studentscompete with each other in the simu-lation, which immerses students indecision-making activities for everymajor aspect of running a high-techbusiness. “We think it’s a really greatgame…it’s a great experience for stu-dents who haven’t been in a businessenvironment. The idea is to get youexposed to a business environmentin a very quick way,” Walls said, con-tinuing, “Basically you compete overeight years…, and the idea is to beatout the competition and create somevalue for the company. Students giveus a lot of positive feedback aboutthat course.” The executive in residence pro-gram brings even more real-worldexperience to the ETM program andstrengthens the program’s empha-sis on leadership. Each fall semes-ter the ETM program brings a sea-soned professional on-campus topresent a semester of seminars andto sit down with students in a two-way discussion about today’s busi-ness issues. “The idea is for them togive you some practical perspec-tive and some industry perspectivebeyond what you’re getting in theclassroom setting. Some of our re-cent executives in residence haveactually helped some students intheir career planning,” said Walls.Previous executives in residencehave included Richard Herring,COO of Ball Aerospace and Ray-mond Colladay, former president of Lockheed Martin Astronautics. Thecurrent executive in residence, Tam-my Berberick, has twenty years of
experience in nance, HR, IT, strat
-egy and sales operation, mainly withrelation to Coors.ETM’s career outlook for stu-dents is varied but positive. With90% placement rates betweenthree and six months after gradu-ation, a starting salary $8,000-$10,000 higher than a typical Minesgraduate and an accelerated track toward management and leader-ship positions in graduates’ em-ployers, ETM presents a quick re-turn on investment for a one-yeargraduate program tailor-made forengineers and applied scientists.While at school, fellowships partially
nanced via an endowment from
Jerome and Rebecca Broussardhelp to defray the cost of tuition. Asan extra bonus for Mines students,GMAT and GRE test scores are notrequired for undergraduates apply-ing for the program, though lettersof recommendation and a state-ment of career goals are.More information on the ETMprogram can be found at http://etm.mines.edu.
Students learn businesssense from ETM
Ian Littman
Asst. Business Manager,Web Content
CSM Republicanshost racewayowner
Daniel Haughey
Staff Writer
ago, when he was a kid, the speed-way would operate through the nightand into the morning hours. Today,the there are strict limits on operatinghours, with weekday events endingas early as 9 PM.Mr. Bandimere made a point thatwhen it comes to the roar of the ve-hicle and the rapid acceleration fromthe starting line, nothing beats whathappens at the speedway. He notedthat when the race starts, you canfeel the roar of the cars going downthe track like someone hitting you inthe chest. After speaking about himself, he
opened the oor and a lively discus
-sion of current events took place. The CSM Republicans meet ev-ery Tuesday night from 4-6 PM at thestudent center. Former congressman Tom Tancredo is scheduled to speak on November 11, Sherry Giroux isthe scheduled speaker on November17, and Ryan Frazier, an At-Largemember of the Aurora City council,who is considering runningfor the US Senate, istentatively sched-uled to speak the week after Thanksgiving.If no speakeris scheduled,movies or docu-mentaries areusually shown,according tomember Nick Mostaccero. The Faculty Senate held theirlast meeting on October 27
th
, andmany important topics were dis-cussed and voted on. Along withthe unanimous approval of theproposed core curriculum changesas presented by Dr. Wendy Harri-son at the Oct. 1
st
ASCSM meet-
ing, there will be a signicant policy
change for students.Starting in Fall 2011, the repeatgrade policy will be repealed, andstudents will no longer be able tosimply retake a class and only havethe newer (and potentially better)grade affect their GPA. This meansthat if you receive a grade of F ina course and wish to retake it fora better grade, you may certainlydo so, but unlike in the previousfew years, that previous F will im-pact your GPA. This repeal undoesthe repeat grade policy, originallyimplemented starting in Fall 2007:“If a course completed duringthe Fall 2007 term or after is a re-peat of a course completed in anyprevious term and the course is notrepeatable for credit, the grade andcredit hours earned for the mostrecent occurrence of the coursewill count toward the student’sgrade-point average and the stu-dent’s degree requirements. Themost recent course occurrencemust be an exact match to theprevious course completed (sub- ject and number). The most recentgrade will be applied to the over-all grade-point average even if theprevious grade is higher.”Since this policy was put into ef-fect, there have been a number of issues that have come up becauseof the policy. For example, therehave been graduating studentswith more than 20 F’s on their tran-scripts, but none of them countedbecause they either retook theclass and got a better grade orwere currently retaking the class.So, there is ‘student A’ who has20 F’s on his/her transcript, buthas a GPA of 2.3. ‘Student B’, onthe other hand, has 1 F on his/hertranscript, but has a GPA of 2.0. This hardly seems fair, and the fac-ulty took notice of this. In addition,they realized that letting students
Faculty senate rules on replacement grades
Rambert Nahm
Guest Columnist
graduate with 20+ F’s and award-ing them a degree from Mines thatwould technically be equal to an-other degree from a Mines studentof a 3.0 GPA is not fair and sendsthe image that Mines simply handsout degrees to anyone.In addition, this policy, as awhole, creates more work for thealready over-burdened Registrar,
and also has other signicant im
-pacts on the school. There aremany returning students who havecome back to replace their previ-ously failed classes and try again. There are also many current stu-dents who are retaking past class-es to attempt to achieve a bettergrade. However, both of theseconsequences also cause another:
they ll up registration slots for the
students who have not yet eventaken those courses. So, classes
are lled up with students who
previously have taken the class in-stead of ones that need to take the
class for the rst time.
It has been shown that this
policy had no statistically signi
-cant effect on average GPA’s, andit has been shown that athletes arelargely unaffected (even thoughmany of them may have the largestconcerns). The issue on the table was whatto do about this policy. Thoughsome senators expressed thatthey have seen some good fromthis, the bad clearly seemed tooutweigh the good. So, it was pro-posed that this policy be undonecompletely. The Faculty discussedthis for quite some time, and I men-tioned to them that the seniors of next year, who started with thispolicy in place and would obviouslyexpect it throughout their schoolcareer, would then have no wayto pull themselves out of a hole if they were in it (a student cannotgraduate if they have a cumulativeGPA of less than 2.00) without thispolicy. And especially since they
will have received no direct noti
-cation of this policy change exceptfrom sources such as myself and ASCSM, this would be especiallyunfair to the class of 2011. As a re-sult, the senate decided to repealthe repeat grade policy effectiveFall 2011 instead of Fall 2010 asoriginally proposed.Now, I realize that this policychange seems sudden and it prob-ably feels like there was no realwarning about it. Well, it was sud-den, but there were indications of change coming down the pipe (Ihave previously mentioned thatthey have discussed the problemwith numerous F’s on some tran-scripts at previous ASCSM meet-ings). This was an issue that thesenate brought up and deemedit necessary and appropriate totake action on right then and there. They were very adamant about itand voted unanimously that thispolicy be undone.However, to counter-balancethis policy change, there was an-
other signicant policy change:
the withdrawal date for all continu-ing students (non-freshmen, non-transfer) was bumped to 12 weeksinto the semester instead of theprevious 10. The withdrawal datefor freshmen and transfer studentsis still 15 weeks into the semester.
SEE GRADES ON PAGE 4
DANIEL HAUGHEY / OREDIGGER
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