Ross Partners Blog

Graduation and Moving On

Last Friday we celebrated Jeremy’s graduation.  The ceremony was only a small piece of the proceedings, which also included an elaborate (and tasty!) Dean’s Reception and the ceremony for induction into Beta Gamma Sigma, the business honorary society.  There was also the university-wide graduation on Saturday morning at the Big House, featuring CNN’s chief medical correspondent and double U-M alumnus Sanjay Gupta as the speaker, though we didn’t attend that event. 

 The MBA ceremony was held in the historic Hill Auditorium at 6:00 pm on Friday.  Typically graduation is held in Crisler Arena, where the basketball teams play.  But Crisler is undergoing renovations, so we were relegated to Hill instead.  Hill is beautiful, but considerably smaller than the usual venue.  As a result, each student was granted just four tickets for guests.  Since there were six family members attending Jeremy’s graduation, Jeremy asked a couple of international friends if he could use their remaining tickets.  In return, he baked them strawberry-rhubarb pies!

The ceremony itself was very fast, perhaps because another graduation was due to take place at Hill right afterward.  The entire thing was finished in an hour and a quarter; how’s that for efficiency?!  On average there was two seconds allotted to each graduate.  Still, we got lots of nice photos of Jeremy in his full academic regalia.  Since I don’t think there will be many other opportunities for him to wear his cap, robe and hood, we wanted to be sure to preserve the moment.

Now that the whirlwind of graduation is complete, we are thinking ahead to our next steps.  Jeremy accepted a job at LinkedIn, the professional networking site, so we are moving to Silicon Valley.  However, we have a month and a half before we leave Ann Arbor.  We are enjoying a student-free (or nearly student-free) town now that the school year has ended.  And we aim to take advantage of all that Michigan has to offer before we depart for California; we are considering a weekend trip to Grand Rapids, for example.   Jeremy is joining some b-school friends for a relaxing trip to South Carolina.  And we are going to California this weekend to look for housing.  Meanwhile, I am continuing to work on my dissertation, and am jealous of Jeremy’s newfound (though temporary) freedom!

B-school has been quite an adventure.  We are excited to move on to new adventures, but we will miss Ann Arbor.  We can’t wait to come back for reunion!

 

Celebrating the End of the Year

It’s hard to believe, but the end of the school year is already upon us!  Ross exchanges a shorter winter break for an earlier end-of-year dismissal date than most schools.  As a result, this year’s commencement ceremony will be held at the end of April, in just over a week.  It’s too bad that the school session does not extend into the summer months.  Those are some of the best months to be in Ann Arbor; the city clears out, there are beautiful gardens, and the weather is gorgeous.

Exams are not quite finished, but there have already been a number of end-of-year festivities, especially for second (or third) year MBAs who will be setting off into the world in a couple weeks.  My husband’s schedule is jam-packed with celebratory final lunches, dinners and receptions – with group members from a finance class a few semesters ago, with colleagues from the Social Venture Fund, with fellow students involved in the Nonprofit and Public Management Center, with last home-cooked meals by international students, section picnics….well, you get the idea.

“Dis-Orientation,” the student-coordinated end-of-Ross experience has already begun, too.  MBA2s participated in the MBA Games yesterday.  This field day features competition between sections in a variety of physical and mental feats, from tug-of-wars and relay races to chess and Connect Four.  Dis-Orientation activities also include a trip to Detroit to see the Tigers play, a spring formal at the Big House, a picnic and movie, a bar crawl, and loads of other events.  Jeremy finishes exams today, but I think he’ll have more than enough to keep himself occupied in the week to come!

Welcome to GBR!

Go Blue Rendezvous – Ross’ annual pitch weekend for accepted students and their partners – kicks off today!  Hundreds of prospective MBA and dual degree students will tour Ross, sit in on classes, dine with current students, and see all that Ann Arbor has to offer.  We lucked out on the weather for the weekend.  It’s scheduled to be sunny, with only the slight threat of thunder storms on Saturday.  These are famous last words, but I think it may be safe to say that we’ve left the winter cold and snow behind for the year.  GBR participants will see the University and Ann Arbor in all their glory.

The Ross administration smartly recognizes that partners play a big role in whether admitted students decide to come to Michigan.  So there are also lots of events geared specifically to partners.  The highlights include a reception, lunch, and special programming for international students.  There are also opportunities for partners to attend classes with admitted students.  This gives partners a sense of what students will be experiencing over the next several years.  And, if you’re anything like me, it may also reassure you that you, too, are capable of doing the type of work and thinking required in b-school!

There is also an Office of Career Development-led panel on finding a job in the Ann Arbor area.  OCD staff will be on hand to answer your questions about relocating and local job resources.  It’s not always easy, and I know quite a few folks who’ve had to settle for positions that do not make extensive use of their skills or expertise, but the Michigan economy is picking up, and the university has a number of positions available.  Partners may even be able to apply for jobs while they’re here for GBR!  To give you a sense of the diversity of experiences partners have had in finding positions, maintaining or adapting existing professional opportunities, we’ll run a couple of blog entries about finding a job in Ann Arbor in the coming weeks.  But if you’re in town for GBR, be sure to check out the OCD session.

GBR is a great chance to learn more about Ross and to determine whether it’s a good fit for your family. Have a great time, and be sure to ask lots of questions.  Everyone is more than happy to help!

 

Finding More than Books at the Ann Arbor District Library

Last night we attended “Noises Off,” a play within a play by Michael Frayn (of “Copenhagen” and “Democracy” fame) put on by the School of Music, Theater and Dance.  Last Sunday, I went to hear a free concert featuring university faculty and graduate students under the auspices of the University Musical Society.  We are going to see the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and famed jazz great, Wynton Marsalis in concert next Wednesday.  There are so many plays and concerts on campus that it is sometimes hard to remember that the city of Ann Arbor has a lot to offer, too. 

The Ark features folk and roots performers – both up-and-coming and established artists.  The line to buy tickets or gain entry to the venue often wraps around the block.  The Kerrytown Concert House is an intimate space for chamber music, jazz, folk and other small ensembles.     The Blind Pig has played host to a number of famous rock groups before they made it big – including Nirvana, R.E.M., Pearl Jam and the Smashing Pumpkins.  And Ann Arbor native Bob Seger’s “Mainstreet” is about A2.

But Ann Arbor also boasts a number of cultural attractions that are completely free.  One place to look for them is the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL).  I use the library’s traditional offerings quite a bit.  I check out books to read for fun.  I request books for my dissertation research via the library network’s interlibrary loan system.  I check out DVDs from the library’s extensive movie and TV show collections.  And occasionally I use the microfilm, electronic databases and paper back-copies of magazines and newspapers for my research.

But the library also offers a lot beyond books and movie checkouts.  There are lots of activities for kids – everything from crafts, to video game tournaments, to story hours.  And there are even more activities for adults.  We’ve gone to a number of jazz concerts, seen a couple of lectures, and watched a number of movies and documentaries at the library.  I’ve also participated in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads program, in which the library puts on a number of programs to accompany the year’s book selection.  This year’s theme was Language: How We Communicate, and the book was Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant. 

In addition to this innovative programming the library also has unusual items that patrons can check out.  One can take home a framed print to hang on the wall for the month, or a “book-club-to-go” kit complete with multiple copies of the book, discussion guides, movies, and anything else one would need to mount a successful book group.  The library also has museum passes for free admission to Detroit area attractions.  In addition, the AADL offers lots of mini-courses – from English, to computers, to publishing, to finding a job.

I’ve lived in a number of places with great public library systems, but Ann Arbor has them beat.  The library may not be the first place you think to go for cultural events, but if you move to Ann Arbor, it should rise to the top of your list!

Finding an Apartment – Part I

At this point in the Ross admissions cycle, some of you may have already decided that you are Ann Arbor-bound.  And some of you may take a little more convincing before taking the plunge.  In future weeks, we’ll include blog posts reaching out to the latter group.  In this post, I’d like to address a key “to-do” item for those who’ve already committed to Ross: finding a place to live.

Ann Arbor is the quintessential Midwestern college town.  This means that there are a lot of cultural resources, lectures, museums and political events.  It also means that there are a lot of undergraduate students.  And those thousands of folks in the 18-22 year old age bracket tend to hover within a one-mile radius of the campus.  The majority of college students at U-M don’t live in dorms, and much of the rental market in Ann Arbor is consumed with serving this population.

This means that it is difficult to find housing that would appeal to graduate students, families or professionals in the immediate vicinity of the campus.  When we decided on Ross, I envisioned paying a small sum – at least in comparison to the New York prices we were used to – to live within a five minute walk of Ross, the graduate library, downtown restaurants, and the movie theater.  Yet when we started to check out apartments that met the proximity test, we found beer pong tables, red cups, blasting music, and ridiculous amounts of dirt.  Ten years removed from our college years, we weren’t prepared to go back.

My husband did the legwork on finding a place to live.  When we came for Go Blue Rendezvous (the admitted student extravaganza hosted by the Admissions Department in April), we hadn’t yet officially decided on Ross, but we were strongly leaning toward Michigan.  As a result, Jeremy decided he’d do some real estate scouting while we were in town.  Ann Arbor real estate tends to operate on an academic calendar, so listings for the fall are available during the previous spring.  A lot of the choice offerings are snapped up in the fall months for the following fall.  But when we came for GBR in April 2010, there were still a lot of possibilities.

Jeremy had spent the past several weeks perusing the apartment listings on Craigslist and arranged a series of meetings with realtors for the day before GBR.  (I had teaching responsibilities that kept me in New York a day later.)  Most of what Jeremy saw wasn’t what we were looking for, but in the process of viewing so many apartments in so many different parts of town, guided by so many brokers, Jeremy got a pretty good lay of the land.  He found a couple of good options.  We were able to see one of the apartments Jeremy had selected on the Sunday before leaving Ann Arbor.  We didn’t take it on the spot, but instead corresponded with the management company and the occupants.  After a month or so, we committed and signed the lease, moving in on August 1, 2010.

The apartment isn’t perfect.  We’d still like to be closer to downtown and to campus, though we are the closest we could be without encountering noise from undergraduates.  We live on the first floor of a house that’s been subdivided into three units.  We’ve lucked out with our neighbors, but there’s little soundproofing between the floors.  We had to pay full rent through the summer months when we were away for Jeremy’s internship (though we were able to recoup some of the cost through a subletting arrangement).  And we pay more in rent than if we were to live in one of Ann Arbor’s many housing developments.  But the prices sure beat New York, and we like the charm of the Old West Side, the neighborhood where we live.

This is just one story of finding housing in Ann Arbor.  Other blog contributors will offer their stories of finding a place to live in the coming months.  In addition, the Office of Student Life offers a housing portion of its transition resources, and the Partners’ Club maintains a discussion board on housing.  Good luck with the hunt!

FuturTech

Last week, I attended FuturTech, the largest technology conference at the University of Michigan.  I went to see why my husband had spent so many hours writing emails and organizing meetings over the last six months in his role as coordinator of the conference.  This better be worth it, I thought. 

I’m not what you might call a techie.  Sure, I use a computer regularly, but I’m just not that interested in the inner workings of the machine.  Nor am I particularly fascinated by the latest tech innovations.  Heck, I don’t even own a smart phone.  So I was not optimistic about the conference.  The theme for the day was “Disruption is the New Normal,” which made me a bit uneasy.  I don’t tend to think about disruption as a good thing. 

The conference surprised me.  Even though President Obama gave a speech down the street at the same hour, there were still over 200 people in attendance.  They came from all over – from Ross, from the School of Information, from the Engineering School, from departments in the liberal arts, and from the larger tech community in Michigan and elsewhere.  I spent time chatting with a business student from the University of Chicago, a BBA at Ross, a software developer from Ann Arbor, an IBM executive from Toronto, and a host of others from far and wide.

Everyone at the conference thought about technology in interesting ways.  Some of the panelists spoke in technical terms, but for the most part, the conversation was about society’s relationship to technology – the ethics of different forms of data mining, the possibility of developing ways of anticipating a user’s need before he anticipates it himself, privacy concerns in the use of social media, and how to encourage greater diversity in the tech sector.  Though I didn’t always agree, I found the speakers to be fascinating – from the keynote, Ross alumnus Dave Girouard, Google’s President of Enterprise, to panelists from tech start-ups and established companies like Amazon and IBM. 

In the afternoon, the conference hosted a showcase of over a dozen local tech startups and invited attendees to vote on the “most disruptive” technologies.  It was great fun to ask questions of a founder of a company devoted to helping professors gauge student understanding of lessons in real time.  I don’t think I’d be coordinated enough to use an iPad to analyze questions at the same time as I lectured to my students, but I am sure there are college instructors more adept at using technology than I.  I also enjoyed chatting with the CTO of an organization that pairs farmers’ harvests with local buyers.  What a great solution to the abundance of rutabagas in CSA allotments! 

Because Ross isn’t located near Silicon Valley, I think it’s often assumed that it doesn’t have real credibility in the tech space.  But the vitality of FuturTech – as well as the Ross Technology Club, and the Entrepreneur and Venture Club – shows that that simply isn’t true.  Not only do lots of Ross students – including my husband – enter careers in Silicon Valley after b-school, but there’s a vibrant technology community at Ross, at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, and in the larger southeastern Michigan region.  And, that community is open to all – tech-phobic partners included!

 

Celebrating MLK Day and Celebrating Detroit

It’s been a big week for big speakers at Ross.  On Martin Luther King Day, I attended a lecture by Adrian Fenty, the former mayor of Washington, DC.  Fenty presided over a vast educational reform project spearheaded by his schools’ chancellor Michelle Rhee.  He lost a reelection bid, largely because of opposition to his schools’ project.  I was excited to see Fenty in person.  I had watched the News Hour’s John Merrow’s chronicling of Rhee’s tenure in Washington.  As a labor historian, I was interested to see what Fenty would have to say about Washington’s teachers’ unions. 

Though Fenty’s lecture was held at Ross, it was attended by people from across the university and community.  This mix resulted in a nice diversity of questions – educators worried about an overemphasis on test scores in evaluating teacher performance, business students wondering about the potential to apply private sector models of assessment to the public sphere, policy students interested in how racial politics impacted Fenty’s reelection efforts, and local school board members wondering how to deal with parents resistant to reforms.  In general, the crowd was fairly supportive.  Fenty said many things with which I disagreed, but I was glad to be able to see him speak in person.

On Thursday, I attended the kickoff dinner of Ross’ Revitalization & Business Initiative’s Detroit Shift Conference held at the College for Creative Studies in Midtown Detroit.  R&B is entirely student-run, and aims to “change the conversation about Detroit at Ross and across campus” through a variety of programs.  The group sponsors student consulting teams tasked with helping socially innovative businesses and non-profits in Detroit improve.  The annual R&B conference highlights the exciting work of many of these organizations – from Fresh Corner Café, a business that offers affordable, fresh prepared foods to existing neighborhood grocery stores to Kiva Detroit, the Motor City location for the international micro-lending program. 

The conference also features speakers representing many companies headquartered in Detroit.  At the dinner, we heard from the CEOs of two of the largest companies with downtown locations: Bob Paul of Compuware and Dan Gilbert of Quicken Loans.  In addition, William F. Jones, Jr. spoke.  Jones is the CEO of Focus Hope, a community initiative concentrating on food, education, job training and other community services in Detroit.  Paul and Gilbert both discussed why and how they made Detroit the home for their respective companies, and presented encouraging news about the pace of business development in the city.  In addition to the speeches, I enjoyed talking with executives at GM – a sponsor of the conference – about the Detroit region and the changing landscape of labor relations in the automotive industry.

I was sorry not be able to attend the second day of the conference, but by all accounts, the line-up of speakers was tremendous.  This is par for the course at Ross and the University of Michigan, in general.  For me, the hardest part is keeping track of what lectures are taking place (culled from list-servs of various schools and clubs across the university) and deciding which ones to attend.  These events are generally open to the entire community, not just to U-M students.  So if you decide to come to Michigan, take advantage of all the learning opportunities on campus!

 

Feeling Better About Big-Time College Basketball

Last week, my husband, Jeremy, and I went with a friend – who received his undergraduate degree from Northwestern –to see the men’s basketball team take on Northwestern.  After some initial confusion about whether we could sit in the student section without wearing yellow shirts (and whether our friend could wear his purple Northwestern shirt in the student section), we settled in for the game. 

I like basketball well enough, but I am still getting used to the spectacle of big-time college sports.  Jeremy and I graduated from a small liberal arts college with NCAA Division III sports teams.  In college, I can’t think of a single team that cut players.  Twenty-five people turning up for a game was considered a big deal.  The school was once featured on ESPN for a football losing streak measured in years, not games.  And, the college eliminated its football program when I was a first year student – an event that I covered as a sports reporter for the college newspaper.

Football and men’s basketball at the University of Michigan are entirely different animals than the sports programs I knew as an undergraduate.  They have loyal followers around the country and world – a fact that has been brought home to me by the fact that we are able to sell our parking spot on football game days for upwards of $40.  They generate tremendous revenue for the university.  And the players are minor celebrities.  Recently, the NCAA has undergone a lot of scrutiny for its promotion of big-time sports.  The historian Taylor Branch has written about the brokenness of the amateur system and the New York Times’ columnist Joe Nocera has called on Division I NCAA athletes to be paid. 

But regardless of what you think about these larger questions, attending a basketball game at U-M is a lot of fun.  The fans in the student section are incredibly knowledgeable and engaged with the game.  They have specific chants to respond to plays on the floor – a missed call by a referee, a three-point shot by the home team, a great defensive play.  These chants and motions are coordinated by a superfan, who also acts as the moral compass for the section.  When the superfan won a free pizza, for example, he delivered it to a young Northwestern fan.  When the referee made a bad call that benefitted Michigan, the superfan apologized to the families of the Northwestern players who were seated in front of us.  And, when the football team – who was being honored for its Sugar Bowl victory earlier this month – joined us in the stands to cheer on the basketball team, the superfan protected the players from overzealous fans who demanded autographs and photographs. 

The game was tremendously exciting.  It went to overtime, and Michigan secured victory only in the final seconds.  But what was even more exciting to me was the behavior of the students.  Here were genuinely committed fans who followed the game with great interest and who treated their fellow fans (Michigan fans or not), the players, each other, and the sport with great respect.  The fans made me feel that maybe Division I sports weren’t such a foreign concept, after all.  I’m looking forward to going to another game soon!

Here I am with fellow fans and with members of the football team:

No Car, No Problem

Ross is located a mere forty five miles from the car capital of the world.  From Chrysler’s “Imported from Detroit” ad campaign, to the North American International Auto Show, to the legions of autoworkers in Michigan’s labor market, to the region’s vast highway system, the tangible reminders of the auto industry are everywhere.  Another reminder: a severe lack of regional public transportation options.  But if you are planning on coming to Ross without a car, fear not!  My husband, Jeremy (an MBA2) and I are living proof that it is possible.

We came to Ann Arbor after six years in New York, a city in which having a car was a serious liability.  In addition, though both of us had driver’s licenses, we hadn’t driven regularly in more than a decade and were hesitant to get behind the wheel – especially in snowy conditions.  And cars are expensive.  So we decided to come to the land of cars without one. 

Instead, we rely on the free campus blue bus service, and Ann Arbor’s excellent public bus system, which is free for University of Michigan students and $1.50 for everyone else.  We can walk most places, including downtown and campus.  But the bus is convenient when the weather gets cold, or when we go grocery shopping.  (There’s only so much food one can carry during a mile walk home.)  We also rely on the kindness of friends (for excursions to Tigers’ games or Slows BAR-BQ, or home from dinner here in Ann Arbor).  And every once in awhile, we take out a Zipcar.  It sometimes requires significant planning, long walks, a willingness to wait, ingenuity in determining transfers and sidewalk conditions ahead of time, and the occasional inability to participate in an activity that is located outside of Ann Arbor, but living (well) in Ann Arbor without a car is definitely possible.

Indeed, for the entirety of last year, I commuted to Detroit every day from Ann Arbor without a car in order to access the wonderful labor history archives at Wayne State University for my PhD dissertation research.  No, I didn’t walk, and I didn’t hitchhike.  Instead, after a lot of sleuthing, I found Michivan, a partially state-subsidized vanpool service with various routes in the region.  For a monthly fee and a share of gas and parking expenses, groups of riders lease the van and take turns driving their specific routes.  Almost everyone else on my 15-seat van owned a car, but was drawn to the vanpool because it was less expensive than driving, because of the camaraderie of our group, because of the lessened environmental impact of their commute, and because they could sleep on the way to-and-from work (except during days when they were assigned to drive, of course!).  In the vanpool, I found much more than a way to get to work.  I also found a new set of friends, unconnected to Ross or the rest of the university. 

Most Ross students do have cars, but a sizeable number of folks do not.  Come join our ranks!