BusinessTN

Less than one year ago, Chris Burch, 35, found himself stuck in what he called a dead-end job. He asked for more opportunities and even approached his boss about attending a graduate program he had heard about at Trevecca Nazarene University. According to Burch, his boss told him that further education would not be beneficial. Burch felt that one door after another was being slammed in his face. Then his company was bought out by a firm that offered tuition reimbursement for extended education, and Burch jumped on the opportunity. He enrolled in Trevecca’s part-time Master’s program and shortly thereafter had an MBA and a management job at a new company.

Executive MBA programs are emerging as viable options for both small business owners, and technical workers with little business education, who wish to push themselves further both in their personal and business development. Eleven such programs are available in Tennessee now, many of them fairly new and adapted to the demands of an increasingly competitive market. With programs offered at colleges and universities of all sizes in various price ranges and levels of commitment, more and more individuals feel that completing an EMBA program later in their career gives them the boost they seek.

Kenneth J. Burger, director of graduate business programs at Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, says, “Students come back for at least two main reasons. One, they are happy with their current employment situation but believe the graduate degree will help them to gain a promotion with more responsibility. Two, some students are more entrepreneurial and wish to start their own businesses.” Trevecca caters its program to adults, offering a part-time Masters of Science in Management (MSM) as well as a part-time MBA program that requires an extra three courses in addition to the 47-credit-hour MSM program. Classes meet one night per week and last for six to eight weeks, with contact being maintained through e-mail and a virtual classroom throughout the week. “We do not offer a daytime, traditional program since we do not target that segment of the market,” Burger says. “Statistics show that the financial sacrifice and loss of business opportunity are quite high, so most working adults simply are not interested in a full-time, traditional program.” Burger says the average age of a part-time MBA or MSM student is around 35. Similarly, the University of Tennessee’s average Senior EMBA student is 42, and for Milligan College of Johnson City, its average student in a similar program is 36 years old.

Students on a tight schedule and budget find such part-time programs appealing and manageable. Like some students in the program, Burch was not necessarily planning for a serious career move when he enrolled, but he was at a dead-end and thought education would help one way or another. He had been in the workforce for four years after four previous years as a nuclear engineer in the navy, and his career had stalled. “I didn’t see any way out,” he says. “There was a stand-offish attitude in my office among those with more education. I went into it more for the challenge than for my career.”

Burch now finds himself working for SY Coleman, a technology and research company in Huntsville, Ala., as a missile defense systems engineer. The job requires him to analyze missile defense priorities for the government while taking on a leadership role as a project manager. He says Trevecca’s program was realistic and applicable to his job. “It required a lot of teamwork. I benefited from that because I became used to taking charge of projects. I got so much experience,” he says. Burch is currently one of the youngest individuals in his company to hold a leadership position and says that his MBA allows him to do less grunt-work and more analytical work.

Burch does not regret that he could not be a full-time MBA student. He says that although he may have jumped into a higher-paying job with a regular MBA, with Trevecca’s part-time program, “I was able to be a full-time dad, student and employee.” Burch adds that after going through the part-time MBA program, which required him to create a business startup plan for investors, he can envision himself one day owning his own business.

Like Burch, Beverly Cawthon, 40, did not have any previous education in business, but she had earned her undergraduate degree in chemistry. Unlike Burch, though, as the operations improvement manager for Aegis Sciences Corp. of Nashville, she enrolled in the Senior EMBA program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to help the growing organization achieve its corporate goals. Aegis Sciences, a $4 million company with 31 team members, paid for her extended education. During her studies, she developed a business plan for her company that the firm has since implemented. “With the effective deployment of the business plan in ’06, the Aegis management team anticipates a 77% increase in revenue and 162% increase in profits,” she says.

Cawthon chose the EMBA option rather than an online or full-time program because it is specifically geared to individuals wanting to continue to work full time while obtaining a degree. She says the coursework was designed “to practically apply the information studied between residency periods to our company, thus helping me to gain a better understanding of the organization.”

Tim Dempsey, 40, also a graduate of U.T.-Knoxville’s Senior EMBA program, is the executive director of Chattanooga Endeavors, a small nonprofit organization in Chattanooga that seeks to place former prisoners in meaningful employment. Dempsey, like Burch and Cawthon, had not previously studied business. His bachelor’s degree was in English literature, and his master’s was in English language and literature. “I was concerned that I didn’t have the skills necessary to grow my organization and compete successfully in the private sector,” he says.

Yet, his intention in going back to graduate school was “more along the lines of personal development than career advancement,” he says, although he also hoped to aid his nonprofit in the process. Dempsey covered the costs of an extended education himself. “It was absolutely worth the investment—not only for me and my family, but for my organization, the community we serve and the men and women who come to us every day seeking help,” he says, While in Tennessee’s EMBA program, Dempsey created a new business model for his company which challenged the typical nonprofit model by building a revenue-generating arm, CEi Works, for the company. The plan, he says, “combines the mission-focus advantage of the nonprofit sector with the management discipline of the private sector to gain a unique position with stakeholders throughout its value stream.” Dempsey says that he and his co-workers, who founded the company together, had previously been overly focused on operations, and were driven by their passion to help their clients. “Successful business, however, requires more than just successful operations. The Senior EMBA program not only sharpened my leadership skills, but it rounded my business knowledge so that we are now spending adequate time on other aspects of the organization in order that it might grow to scale and continue to exist for future generations,” he says. In doing another assignment during his EMBA studies, Dempsey also came up with a vision of establishing a multi-tenant nonprofit center that would allow for the collaboration of many like-minded nonprofit groups. He feels this model has not yet been realized in Tennessee, and his company is working to bring the idea to fruition.