It’s now September, which means I’ve finished my fourth quarter – and my first year – at the UC Davis weekend MBA program. It’s been incredibly interesting and rewarding, and also a lot of fun, but let me tell you how much I’ve enjoyed a full month off!
During the Summer 2009 quarter I took two classes: Forecasting and Managerial Research Methods, and Product Management. Neither course was well aligned with the course title, they should have been called Regression Statistics and Product Marketing Management. Actually, that’s a recurring theme for the courses we’ve taken so far, the official title is often not what the instructors informally call the course, and doesn’t at all match the material taught.
MGB 203B: Forecasting and Mangerial Research Methods with Rahman Azari
Official course description: Introduces modern and practical statistical methods for managerial decision-making. Topics include regression analysis, time series analysis and forecasting, design and analysis of experiments in managerial research and contingency table analysis. Applications of these methods include marketing, finance, accounting, production, operations, and public policy. Case studies and examples of computer-aided analysis are provided to illustrate various applications.
The real course description: Regression analysis. More regression analysis. Not much time-series stuff, and very few applications or practical examples. Two stats projects on, yes, regression.
The professor: Rahman has the best intentions; I think he truly cares about his students. He’s a really nice guy, and he wants everyone to do well and succeed, but I honestly don’t think he’s an effective teacher. He uses an overhead projector. Seriously! The midterm and final are all hand-written. Come on! This is an MBA course. Everyone has a laptop. We’re all going to be using computers for the rest of our careers. We will never be in a meeting where laptops aren’t allowed and there’s a sudden need to bang out a regression analysis.
We all asked for a computer-centric course on day one, when he asked for feedback and we realized it was going to be pencils and calculators. No avail. I’m guessing this is the way he’s always taught and he’s not motivated to change. It’s a shame, because we didn’t spend ANY class time focusing on what we’re going to do in the ‘real world’: Excel’s regression analysis tools.
I think this course material could really be interesting. How cool would it be to analyze a ton of data and select the best site for a new shopping centre? What about analyzing baseball statistics and figuring out if the performance of players during the ’steroid era’ was really so different? I mean, math doesn’t have to be totally boring and impractical. Unfortunately that’s what this course turned out to be.
The book was the same as for Bill Ellis’ 203A course: it still sucked. Maybe I’m becoming numb to the suck, but it didn’t bother me as much.
Another nit to pick: Rahman introduced some material that was on the midterm a few minutes before the midterm. No kidding. He then proceeded to walk us all through the problem, gave us all extra time, and spent almost 10 minutes of our test time talking to the class. I couldn’t believe it. I eventually asked him to give us a break and let us do the test without interruption. That’s probably rude, but it’s the way I felt. He didn’t introduce new material on the final, but he did do a lot of yakking mid-test, and he did extend the time of the test (which we all needed, because it was quite long).
Ok, that’s it. I won’t go into the horrible hand-written analysis of the mathematical proofs for certain regression tests, or the inconsistent grading of the projects. I feel bad because Rahman is such a nice guy who obviously cares about us. This has been my least-favourite class so far. Most of the other students I’ve talked to have similar opinions. I don’t think his teacher review forms contained many positive comments.
The grade: I got an A. I give the instructor and the class a C-, saved from a D only by the two semi-interesting projects which needed Excel.
Now, on to better things:
MGB 293A: Product Management with Britta Foster
Official course description: The course is designed to provide an in-depth understanding of the requirements, issues, and tools involved in marketing existing products/services. The major topic areas covered include: The product management system, market planning, and control. Unifying and integrating marketing concepts from the core and the marketing electives (through the use of a marketing simulation).
The real course description: Accurate as stated above! Lots of product marketing stuff. Positioning, segmentation, strategy, tactics, etc. Big team project with three in-class presentations and ~60 powerpoint slides as a final deliverable. Case studies. Lots of work, but worthwhile.
The professor: Britta is great. She has 10 years of experience as Director of Marketing for Foster Farms, and I guess she liked it so much she married one of the Fosters. She has a lot of practical ‘product warfare’ examples, and was very familiar with all of the topics and material we covered.
Bobby, Evelina, and I joined three upper-year students, Tara, Anthony, and Jamaal, for our group project. We chose to assume the role of strategists for Trojan Condoms, and our project focused on the Chinese re-introduction of Trojan as an ultra-premium brand and the new launch of a low-cost (but highly reliable) brand we called “Safe Love Condoms”.
I think we made our project more challenging than it needed to be, but I can unequivocally state that I loved it. We continually revised our plan during four in-class presentations, building strategies that we thought would work in China, eventually focusing on attaching our low-cost brand to rural factory migrants.
In addition to the project, we also read six cases and prepared three written analyses. The cases were interesting and relevant, but pretty formulaic. I think everyone in the class came to the same conclusions, there wasn’t much (any?) disagreement about what the subject companies should do. I wonder if some cases are more open ended? I don’t like finding “the answer”. There’s no such thing!
Britta and the class content were quite similar to Jenni and the material presented just one quarter ealier in MGB204. Britta and Jenni both have cute names with i’s that should be dotted with little hearts. They both have 10yrs experience as marketers in the consumer goods space. Britta did a better job: the material was more structured, the grading scheme was more transparent, and the grading wasn’t “relative”.
The grade: I got an A. I give Britta and the class an A+.
Fall 2009:
After four glorious weeks off, everything kicks off again in October. Our friend group is splitting up. Brad is moving up near UC Davis and is switching to either the day program or the weekend David program. Half of the clique is taking classes starting on Sept 25th, me and a few others (Jillian and maybe Erika) start on October 2nd. That’s kinda sad, but I know our core group will keep in touch, there’s still seven more quarters to go!
For the first time the classes will be one per day, so I’ll be taking Marketing Strategies – hopefully not a third SWOT/strategy/positioning/segmentation marketing course, this one looks like a decision-making course – all day on Friday, and Negotiation in Organizations (yeah!!!) all day on Saturday.
