degree queens college my m b a at baruch college my m phil at the city university graduate center and my ph d is at the city university graduate center great yeah so let's go back in time before we get into what you're doing today  what when did you start thinking about going to college was a freshman your high school senior your high school when they were all star for you well i was really fortunate to go to stuyvesant high school in new york city a math and science high school he took a test to get in so we started thinking about college probably from the minute we walked in the door it was really a school geared up toward success and advancing education ok so you you get to college what's it like well i went to a commuter school i had wanted to go to some other colleges and applied to some really nice colleges and was accepted but financially it was hard for my family to figure that out and being the first person to ever go to college in my family there wasn't a lot of experience with how to get a student loan and how to pay them back and it just wasn't part of our our knowledge so it was overwhelming it was this a huge place my high school was not that large at the time and it was very confusing because it was darwinian and you had to figure everything out on your own we didn't have advisors for helping us figure out what classes to take everything was published and you looked up what you wanted to do and tried to fight your way into classes and that's kind of how it worked and it was also wonderful though because i met a lot of people from a lot of different parts of the city sure so let's get into what the students do in the school of management how did they get in and what do they do when they're  great what i really like about our school of management versus the others i've worked in is being part of a liberal arts college they also have their credits will come from a liberal arts corps so they're really focusing on writing and speaking and thinking in ethics and taking history and political science and all those things that will make them very rounded when they come to us in the school of management there's a very  layout of the courses they have to take it's sixty credits they can specialize in finance or marketing international business or human resources this is all undergraduate and they can choose i mean they have some freedom within there about electives and things that they'd like to take sometimes they could actually wind up having an emphasis in two things we have a lot of people who will either double major  the other major in the school of management as economics so they'll be an economics and finance major or they'll be a finance major in an economics minor or a marketing major and an economics minor or something like that so we can mix and match with a commitment that chen and we also if they're international and they want to being my advisee i make sure they're bilingual because how could you do international business if you only speak english we encourage them to study abroad either in the short or programs or the longer programs we push them into internships early some say by junior year i actually like to get my advice he's into internships by their sophomore year because just as my experience was maybe they won't like what they're studying maybe there's something different out there for them and i want them to have that experience of getting up going to work seeing what it's like seeing what the work is when they still have time to change their minds if they want to we have a lot of hands on experience as finance majors and they'll be working on bloomberg terminals in the investment center many of us in strategy those of us who teach that capstone we have real executives coming  try to give them real world experience even though they're in the classroom we try to make it a very applied not just a theoretical approach now do the students have to apply when they apply to school that they have to of management they can but they don't have to actually students can come in as a business major and then it's easier for us to really chart their course and to lay out their coursework so if they want to study abroad for a full semester we could make sure that happens without them having to take summer courses if we think there are other minors in other schools that would go nicely with what they're doing if you're international business maybe a minor in spanish is a good idea if you're marketing  minor and merchandising is a good idea we have the time to do that but but basically they could make that choice at any point it's just whether or not they'll still graduate in four years to get through the course work culture and then once they're management the two most popular finance and marketing we we do a really good job of preparing our finance students there being taught by people who used to work on wall street not just professors so they're getting a mix of experience as well as technique we have them using the equipment and learning the programs and the language that they'll need and we're pushing them as hard as we can into internships and the same is true with marketing we we try very hard to make sure that they have experience before they go in and the projects that they do are usually client based real word base real world based and we also work on the ancillary skills we work very hard on their presentation skills their writing skills and and really their thinking skills because no matter what they go into they're going to need those so the internships the speak about do you find that starting a sophomore is into the interns they work a lot better than starting as juniors in terms of some colleagues might disagree with me on this so this is my perspective personally i i think it's much better because they're starting to get the experience of showing up every day focusing on something specific working with a team that's very diverse we do a lot of team work in the school of management because the way people work now there's a lot of remote work but mostly going to be working in teams who people really get to work on their own so they start to get that experience and to learn a little bit about the politics and the flow and you know sometimes the stress and tension and also have to taste whether they like it and you know i really maybe because that was my experience i believe experience is the best teacher so how about studying abroad so what what happens when they study abroad well if they're going for a fall semester depending on where they go there are certain courses that they can take in the school that are accepted into the school of management were in a c s p accredited school are creating body is very strict about what types of courses could be taken outside the school and we have schools that have similar designations and distinctions so we can guide them that way  if they really want to go someplace where we don't have business courses available then we'll save some of their general lead and core courses to take while they're away many of our study abroad since also do internships so they'll take a couple of courses and an internship and work in another country as well so you know we we do that in most places and in australia london spain you know they're able to have that experience do you find do you find any students they go to do the merest college in italy yeah they do they go to florence and hoping i'll go to florence from day to to teach for a semester and you know we do have courses in the school of management that are available there but also all the core courses bit about the book well it's really my experience from teaching i'm also a consultant so i've always consultants i work with business i work with executives i work with students i work as an executive trainer  and one day i was out with robin torres who runs our emerging leaders program which is really if you recommend all students try to get involved with that and i said you know robin everything i do i feel like i learned all those skills when i was  and the second year i said that's her she said ok you're going to do a presentation on that to the emerging leaders program so i wrote the book orally for about eight years and then wrote the book and was lucky enough to have simon and schuster publish it and it's stories about me behind the bar and how those experiences showed up in my work life and the lessons i took from that and the model if you will the cocktail for leading is called advice action determination vision integrity communication and moon there's somebody who's brought to work in more for how she looked than her skills and how do you help her move on to what she really should be doing without creating animosity there's stories about people from other countries who come to work with you and who they really are it's pretty rich and the whole purpose of the book the message so here's the spoiler alert is to lead yourself because if you can and how to lead yourself then you can lead others and that's what we're hoping to do in the school of management at marist college in general i just came right now from a presentation from outside the school of management to our students about leading yourself and putting the best of yourself forward sure sure and the kind of saying do more and say less show what you can do and don't be afraid to take risks determination is deep get things done with ingenuity and civility never step on somebody else to make yourself hi r vision know where you're going and put the lights on so others can follow integrity tell the truth always don't play into drama and if you do something wrong on it it's ok no one's perfect communication it's just hard to try to create understanding and understand that understanding doesn't just come from words and then empathy during a care everybody has a to care about them and their to care about yourself and then there are two more lessons about being who you really are and not being afraid of change and you're going around the country do to around the world pretty much but also around the country  time i mean our alumni there there like a cult almost homecoming weekend is jammed and any time i reach out to any of them to give advice to look at a student who i think is really talented to be the company that i want my students to study and then to be the q and a people they are all over it they love really engaging with the faculty and with those who are coming up they have a very strong connection to the school and i find that they're they're really helpful especially when kids are a little lost and not quite sure you know kids come into college how could you know what you want as an eighteen or nineteen year old i mean sometimes you do but oftentimes you don't and it's good for them to meet people who have changed their minds who have changed careers and to see that that it's ok that they leave here prepared really to conquer whatever they want to do management than the students is there is there an amount of credits that they have to take in school there are sixty credits that they have to take there are four courses in each specialty and then there are core courses that they have to take that that are more broad they have to take economics and accounting management courses business and society course organizational behavior human resources finance everyone has strict finance  also and then the capstone course which is strategy which regardless of what their emphasis is or what they really focus in on it helps them pull together everything they've learned in their business career so that they could be better decision makers and you're running just one of the courses in yeah i and some very very recently i primarily only taught the strategy course because that's where my consultancy is and what i do but of late i've also started teaching one of the first courses which is called business and society so in i could actually get sophomore and help them start thinking about what it is to be a person in business and then get them later and help them think about what is it to be a key ingredient in the strategy of a company and once they're in that these these different courses and they come out and they graduate are you hoping some of the students as well in the world are real world i some of them  i believe they become mine i don't know when their babies are born in get invitations to some of their weddings but you know i have i've i've placed a lot of my students into jobs i've introduced them to people i know being a consultant always working with people who are always looking for talented young people yeah i get calls from them when they get their first jobs and they hate it and i tell them to quit and we help them find another job i'm a reference for them i even hire some of them myself both when they work when they are in school to help me on a project and when they graduate if i have special needs like social media everyone the it's a millennial in their life or people who are really good  in male and female in the school as well in the undergraduate program it's still i would say it tips more to the men but it's there quickly catching up it's not when i first came here where you might have had five women in a class that doesn't happen anymore so it's very close and i would dare to say that in our m b a program it's probably fifty fifty the women might even have an edge why m p a program i can't speak to i don't teach do to get to do in some type of management at the college level well we do have a summer business institute at marist college where high school seniors can take because seniors might also be juniors can take courses and see what it's like and some of them even for credit so that's a piece of it but the advice i would give students now rest is really and school management too we're really focused on building leaders and we like seeing students who do community service who are not who do real community service who help others who have worked already  and we have a lot of athletes are jocks here and they're known as the smart ones because they tend to put their school first and their sports second but you know we like to keep them busy with sports w should with real projects because it not only helps develop their mind and their character but keeps them out of trouble a little bit in your consulting work that you do with the companies do you bring some of them into the classroom and explain to students always what's interesting in this school of management is a lot of our faculty teaching is their second careers so they have that real world experience to make things come alive business is very hard to teach just from a textbook and when you can bring in your stories i mean sometimes i can't use the actual name of the company but i could say something like are ready to eat foods company or our company  the exploration segment of the oil industry in that we can do it that way and show them how some of the things we're talking about really came to be sure they they really relate to that we also like to use current publications i know i use the wall street journal quite a bit others use the economist or or the business section of the times but we want to keep students informed and show them how what we're teaching them isn't just book knowledge it's live and it's real and it's happening and this is how you identify you know this theory with this action that companies making and the you find that a lot of students that are in these classes do the and the graduating and starting the room business some of them do my advice is to always work for somebody else first make all your mistakes and then open your own business but we do we have a strong entrepreneurial bent in the school now even more so in recent years and also we started to focus a little bit on family business is family based businesses so we do have students who want to do that and we try to give them the skills and i go back to what we said earlier if we can help them learn how to think and speak and write and be patient and allies will have the tools pretty much to do that yeah and like you said you get a lot of alumni to come back to some of them have their own businesses some do and they tell their stories of the good the bad and the ugly of it and we have different management clubs that they'll visit also to share their stories not just classrooms so there's a there are honor societies for each emphasis is one  management there is one in economics there's one in accounting that's another one of our majors that we also now have a master's program so they could do a five year program and earn the credits they need for their c we bring speakers to those clubs and we bring speakers to the classroom and and the kids love it because it's one thing for a professor to tell you something and it's one thing even for a professor who is consulting with a company at the same time that they're teaching you but it's very different when somebody who's one of their own comes back sure and shares the stories and they tend to have some really good questions and they tend to get mentor and by those people to now with the usually  business related clubs that the you create in the school the management yes by the merest college there's there's a club for almost any interest so if someone's an international business emphasis will recommend they also you know look into global studies and do stuff with the international club not just you know the school management business club or our honor society club so you know we mix it up  what else can a student find by coming into the school of management in america but they're going to find our small classes with professors who are in their office once they finish their first year programming they then get a school of management faculty member as an advisor so they have close contact with someone who reflects their interests and who could guide them from their sophomore year on they're go meet a faculty who actually like each other so we we consult with each other about the students and if we see somebody struggling we might say hey do you have so and so in your class and did you notice there's a change and you think we should talk to them and  maybe we need to offer some extra help or just some guidance or just an ear so it's very personal so this is what i always wanted going to college and even though i got into some schools that had the smaller classrooms i didn't know how much of a big difference that really could make and now having been a big school person teaching the majority of my career now in a smaller school it's really very different and you really can focus on helping to develop that young person if it's a good fit yeah yeah so we're coming to the end of our show usually ask my guests what advice you want to give to the students but their interest income the merest college what advice would you like to g well first i would tell them to come visit us because i think once they come to our campus they make their decision pretty quickly as beautiful as it is here that's also how welcoming it is  we are a small close knit faculty even across schools we like to work together we like to do interesting projects we lecture even in each other's fields there's a lot to do here so really think about what you as a person the student needs to learn what kind of environment are you looking for do you want people to know your name do you want to be able to walk into someone's office for help whether it's your career or content do you want to work in close knit teams and and make close friends do you want to really you will learn from people who've been in business and can bring that real world experience in and we also have some scholars who are on the cutting edge of thinking so for a small place it's pretty diversified and its capabilities and i would also give them the advice of not only knowing what and where they really think they'll fit best because in the end students do best when they're with their people but think about what you can do to be helping others on your path through high school and if you like that kind of thing because we we like to bring in people who are leaders and it doesn't mean that you have to be the captain of a football team but it could mean that you are willing to lend a hand and help others