U.S. News and World Report has been talking about Case Western Reserve University quite a bit lately, announcing that the university’s biomedical engineering graduate program reclaimed 10th place nationally, in addition to the Weatherhead School of Management’s rise in the rankings. The business school’s full-time Master of Business Administration (MBA) program climbed 28 places in US News and World Report Best Business Schools annual ranking, which followed the undergraduate business program’s significant rise several months ago.
“Although I think it’s important to put rankings in a context, I feel that as a school we’re proud to be acknowledged because I know it reflects the really great work we’ve been doing,” said Hannah Dentinger, Ph.D., assistant director of publications in the Office of Graduate Student Services at the Weatherhead School of Management.
Between 2011 and 2012, Weatherhead’s MBA program moved up from number 80 to number 52 out of 441 AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools in Business) accredited schools across the world, and its undergraduate program moved from number 40 to number 36, within the top 10 percent. “The fact that we are in the top 10 percent of those 441 is wonderful,” Dentinger said. “That is a real feather in our cap.”
The US News MBA rankings highlighted graduate students’ job placement as a major contributing factor in their rise this year. “As a business school, we are really invested in our students being successful in the job market,” Dentinger said, referencing Weatherhead’s personalized career management office. “They’re really in touch with what our students want and need, [and] they have just been doing a wonderful job of making relationships with employers and connecting students with those employers.”
Although the school truly has something to brag about, Weatherhead values the less tangible aspects of a well-rounded business education. “I think that rankings are very important in that they are one of those tidbits of information that are very memorable for prospective students…[but] some of them don’t capture things that we think are really important about our school,” Dentinger said, reflecting on the impact that Weatherhead’s faculty research has internationally, their innovative courses that revolutionize management education, and the overall student experience.
“One of the unique things about our MBA program is that in the first year, our students take a class called Leadership Assessment and Development, where they use a technique called 360-degree feedback to learn about their existing management strengths and also identify areas that can be improved,” she said.“It can be a truly life-changing class for some.”
Another first-year class, called Management Perspectives and Dialogues, allows new students to work with local executives on real-world business problems in the classroom. The second-year course Design in Management: Concepts and Practices brings techniques and skills from the design world into management for cutting-edge solutions to business problems.
The rankings also do not display the remarkable research coming out of Weatherhead. “This is crucial, real-world research that impacts our economy,” Dentinger said.
Sue Helper, Frank Tracy Carlton Professor of Economics and expert on manufacturing and the automotive industry, recently published “Why Does Manufacturing Matter? Which Manufacturing Matters? A Policy Framework,” a study for the Brookings Institution on manufacturing in the U.S. and policies to help that sector thrive.
In addition, Peter Ritchken, Kenneth Walter Haber Professor of Banking and Finance and director of the Master of Science-Finance Program, recently published “Inflation Expectations, Real Rates, and Risk Premia: Evidence from Inflation Swaps” with the Cleveland Federal Reserve, explaining why the yield of certain financial products can vary.
“I like to think that there are some things that just can’t be measured about the student experience, and I think we really have those things,” Dentinger said.