MBAs on the Move

Getting a Win-Win

St. Cloud State had demographic reasons for expanding its MBA program four years ago. Held three evenings a week at Data Recognition Corporation in Maple Grove, the program has allowed the school to expand into one of the fastest-growing areas of the Twin Cities.

“The future of our College of Business must include the Twin Cities business community,” Pesch says. “Having one of four accredited MBA programs in the state, we wanted to extend that competency down to the Twin Cities.”

Russell Hagen, founder of Data Recognition, says he agreed to open up the company cafeteria to St. Cloud State partially because he just couldn’t think of a good reason to say no. Letting the university use his facilities rent free is a way for Hagen and his company to give back to employees.

Though Data Recognition has hosted St. Cloud’s MBA since 2003, only four employees have graduated from the program, but Hagen says that having the program on site is a boon to employee recruiting. “It’s one more feather in our cap that says, ‘Here’s a company that I think will treat me pretty well if I go to work for them. I can just walk down a hallway and work on my MBA,’” he says.

Now that St. Cloud State has planted roots for its MBA program in the Twin Cities, it is primed to expand again. This fall, the school will launch an MBA program that’s specifically for employees of the Schwan Company. Professors from St. Cloud will travel every second week to company headquarters in Marshall to teach.

Schwan’s employees will learn from professors who are experienced at teaching middle managers. For St. Cloud, the alliance could open up opportunities, such as having Schwan’s employees speak at MBA classes in St. Cloud or Maple Grove.

“This is the kind of outreach activities that schools are doing,” Pesch says. “They are trying to understand the customers’ needs, and that sometimes means going to the customer’s site and seeing if there is a win-win arrangement that can be negotiated. That’s what we found here.”

A Shared Background

For Augsburg College and Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, both based in Minneapolis, mutual foundations in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America made for a natural partnership. It might even be called a match made in heaven: Thrivent was looking for a way to offer educational opportunities to its employees, and Augsburg sought a place downtown where it could hold MBA classes. The college started its program at Thrivent in spring of 2006 and currently has about 80 students. They’re not required to work at the company to participate.