Day 4 at Business School

I must say that I’ve been very impressed with the folks at Cass so far. Cass seems to be a teaching school — a university most concerned with its students’ ability to learn sound business principles to guide them through real-world scenarios. In contrast — and in hindsight, VT had much more of a research focus — it was less concerned with what its students took away (in my perspective) and much more concerned with being published with worldwide acclaim. That’s not to say that we didn’t get a good education at VT — we did — but Cass is now affording me a new perspective for comparison.

How so? During my first week at Cass, I’ve experienced professors who have crafted interesting, intriguing, and insightful activities that reinforce the main lecture topic and tie perfectly into the overall plan for the day. And they’ve filled ENTIRE days of class with these activities (we’re with the same professor from 9A to 6P) without boredom or student complaints. We leave the room wanting more…

In contrast, my professors at VT often lost my interest within their one to two hour blocks — their activities were taken from the book and their insights were lifted from their teaching manuals. In some cases, my professors at VT did share lessons learned from their research or life experiences, but not often.

Perhaps it’s just that I’m paying for it this time and determined to take more away? Maybe it’s just because this is the first week, or perhaps because the topics of our lectures (Strategy and Group Dynamics — a subset of Organization Behavior) are of interest to me. But I believe that there’s truly a diffence in teaching styles and abilities. Whatever the difference, it’s certainly a welcome change.

[Hopefully they’re not simply teasing us with short bits with their star professors before we dive into our more mundane first block courses (Quantitative Methods, Internet Technology, Finance/Acctg) the week of Sept 25.]

Whatever the case, I’m enjoying it while it lasts. Tomorrow, we have class from 9A-1P and we’ll then leave London for Portsmouth for an orientation weekend team exercise. We’ll sleep on a boat and pretend to drown. Should be interesting 🙂