UCLA Anderson Continues Evolution in “Field Study” Options

Innovation is a hallmark of the UCLA Anderson experience. Nearly 60 years ago, the school became the first MBA program to require a field study project as its capstone instead of a comprehensive exam or thesis. The goal was simple: provide MBA students with an opportunity to serve as consultants for participating companies under the supervision of its world-renowned faculty.

The innovation would continue. As the school evolved its programmatic options, field study evolved as well. The school added professional Fully Employed and Executive MBA programs to the curriculum, bringing Global Access Program (GAP) and Strategic Management Research (SMR) into the field study fold. The MSBA and MFE programs were created with their own real-world capstone requirements. UCLA Anderson also offered budding entrepreneurs the opportunity to create startups under the auspices of the Business Creation Option.

Now, with the school commencing its new strategic plan, the capstone curriculum has undergone an evolution, and students will have new options for their final projects.

The school will now offer students capstone opportunities that broadly fall into three categories. One is client-facing consulting projects: AMR for students in the Full-Time MBA program, GAP for those in the Fully Employed MBA program, SMR for those in the Executive MBA program and so on. Students focused on entrepreneurship, many of whom may be attempting to launch startups, may opt for the Business Creation Program. Finally, there is a new option: faculty-led seminars that feature distinct but interrelated projects. As described by Senior Associate Dean Sanford DeVoe, “This is an opportunity to get faculty who are very familiar with all the different dimensions that we’re really trying to instill in transformational leaders at Anderson and have them build these elements into the capstone experience itself. The capstone is the culmination of what our students are doing at Anderson. We wanted to make sure that we had some of our best faculty really trying to bridge the gap between what happens in the classroom and actually applying it to the real world.”

Paulo de Rezende

In addition to serving as a longtime GAP advisor, Professor Paulo de Rezende now also serves as faculty director for strategic research programs, aka the client-facing capstone projects in which students serve as real-world consultants for participating companies. He recently sat down to discuss his new role and the recent changes in the capstone projects.

Why don’t we start with the basics, a description of the client-facing projects?

The Advanced Management Program unites all capstones. There are capstones that are client-facing projects, business creation projects and new faculty-led, area-focused capstone courses [AFCCs].

The first group, the client-facing ones, have another name: SRP, or Strategic Research Program.  This includes AMR for full-time students, GAP for the FEMBAs and SMR for the EMBAs. Because they are very similar but have different audiences, we have been working for over a year and a half to consolidate and make them academically consistent to provide a common and rigorous learning experience to all students.

How will students get distributed into the capstone programs?

All of the different capstone options will be available to students along the different MBA tracks. After Jeff Scheinrock retired, the supervision of the different options was split. I will lead the client-facing programs, Professor Olav Sorenson will lead the business creation program and Professor Elisa Long will be the point person for the AFCCs, the new capstone courses.

The students, at certain points in their programs, will attend information sessions where we talk about each of these three different paths, and then they will choose the option that is best aligned with their objectives. Those applying to a client-facing option are immediately accepted. In the case of BCP and AFCC, students must meet certain prerequisites and obtain faculty approval; if they don’t, then they are automatically enrolled into the client-facing program. Which means, in terms of full-time students, they’re automatically enrolled in AMR.

Before assuming this role, you were a longtime advisor in the GAP program and you also recruited Brazilian companies to participate. So you have many years of experience with our client-facing capstones. What are some of the challenges you’re facing and innovations you hope to see going forward?

One of the challenges is implementing a hybrid approach in certain client-facing projects that provides students with the same exciting and rigorous academic experience of a field study. Usually, we require all companies and clients to come on campus for company launch and final presentation events. Sometimes this meant that clients would come in for a meeting or fly in for what was basically a one-hour final presentation.

So in a post-pandemic hybrid world, we are evaluating how we can innovate to make these in-person events more valuable to clients so they would want to come to campus to interact with students. We believe that when client executives are on campus, the student experience is better.  We recognized that we cannot force executives to come, especially given the expense. So this is one of the challenges.

On the other side, I think we have a great opportunity to integrate better the core curriculum within each capstone project. Although students are now required to apply core frameworks in the capstones, we want to make that integration more transparent, a more integral part of their experience, so that students can practice everything they learned. This integration will help students better understand the content and the value of the core curriculum. From my experience as an advisor, this practice leads to breakthrough moments and increases their overall satisfaction with the program.

We can also leverage these programs to elevate the branding of the school, raise the clients’ awareness of the intellectual caliber of the graduate pool and give executives access to faculty research, and they in turn will see UCLA Anderson as a thought leader in a particular field. We should take advantage when client executives are on campus and offer them research collaboration opportunities.

One gets the feeling that we are breaking down some of the walls between which companies participate in what programs, whereas in the past, a GAP company was a GAP company and an AMR company was an AMR company, and so forth.

Yes, that is right. This has already happened because we are recruiting companies to participate in the process on an ongoing basis and always focusing on the best outcome for the students. You may have a set of domestic companies, a few international companies and even nonprofits available at a given time. We offer all of them to students, who will bid on the client projects with which they would like to engage. Typically, international companies fall under GAP. But this year, there are two that are domestic. So we have some flexibility.

Please talk a bit about the future of field study at Anderson.

It is a transition, but I have working on this for almost a year and a half, so it’s not necessarily an abrupt transition.

I think the most important thing that we started 15 months ago is to equalize the workload among all the different programs that are under my supervision. There were things that happened in one program and not in the others, and we asked ourselves, “Well, do we need this difference?” We learned multiple times that we didn’t. I think we are at that point where things have stabilized.

Looking forward, first and foremost, I think, is the integration of the core curriculum. That will increase the satisfaction of students when they understand what differentiates the capstone from the lessons learned in the core, not only the challenges of dealing with an external client, but also the opportunity to apply all that they have learned. I think this is something I would like to have the students recognize more and more.

I think this is a branding opportunity for the school because you are always talking to the outside world, so it’s a way to project a common message. I think it is particularly important, as it makes us feel better and it makes the students feel better. Clients will come to campus more often because they know the quality of what you’re doing.

Another positive change is that the students now have more capstone options. So the client-facing programs need to do a better job selling themselves to the students. We need to demonstrate to students that client-facing capstone projects are equal parts challenge and excitement, that they are an opportunity to apply their knowledge in a real-world business environment to solve a strategic issue currently faced by their client. In my opinion, there is no better way to cap the business school experience!