We are pleased to welcome back Dawna Levenson, Director of Admissions at MIT Sloan. Dawna earned her bachelors and masters in Management Science at MIT Sloan, worked in consulting, and then returned to MIT Sloan in 2007 as Associate Director of Academic Programs. She moved into Admissions in 2012 and became Director of Admissions in 2013.

Can you give an overview of MIT Sloan’s MBA program focusing on its distinctive features? [1:20]

My focus today is on our two-year MBA program. We have a one-semester core, and three semesters to shape curriculum to meet individual interests. We continue to have three tracks specific to the MBA program – entrepreneurship, finance and enterprise management. We also have three certificates - sustainability, healthcare, and this year we just introduced business analytics. These are designed in such a way that a student can do a track and a certificate, so for example if you want to do the finance track and apply it to the healthcare industry. One significant difference between tracks and certificates is that tracks are very focused on MBA students, and certificates are available to the entire MIT community.

So if somebody pursues a certificate are they likely to take classes outside of Sloan? [2:48]

Certificates are housed at Sloan, and I believe the majority of classes within the certificate (some are required and some are elective) are in fact Sloan classes. For the tracks they are exclusively Sloan classes.

What’s new at MIT Sloan? [3:42]

In addition to the analytics certificate, there is also an awful lot of activity around fintech – new courses and a club. We also have a new lab course which is USA Lab. We have been doing action learning labs for many years, mostly focused outside of the US, and we’ve added this one to really focus on the United States. It will be offered for the first time in Spring 2018. The focus of our lab courses is on development and opportunities for growth. Within the US there are many opportunities for growth – in Michigan and Mississippi, for example. The labs are entrepreneurially focused, with the idea being that a start-up business is aimed to help a specific geography and business in the area itself.

MIT Sloan is famous for its action-learning and its labs. Can you provide an example or two of Sloan’s hands-on approach? [6:16]

One company that is a great example is Sanergy. The company was born at MIT Sloan from the 100K competition, and is now a viable company. It started out in areas of rural Africa to provide water and sanitation and now is turning waste into fertilizer. Now they have come back to us and sponsor action learning courses so it is really nice to see it come full circle.

Can you describe MIT’s newest certificate program in Business Analytics, and the differences with the Master of Business Analytics? [7:25]

The Master of Business Analytics is a standalone degree program. We just graduated our first class of 16, our second class of 30 is currently on campus, and we are recruiting for our next class which will be 45 students. The degree is really targeted at early stage professionals, and the majority of our students are coming straight from undergrad. It is not that different from the profile of our Master of Finance program, just that students have different interests.