Student-Run M.B.A. Networking Series

While countless group projects are completed on campus every semester, this particular group has turned their class project into an event at the Robert B. Willumstad School of Business.

Camille Pajor ’09 (left) and Angela Friedman, current students in the Robert B. Willumstad School of Business M.B.A. program, are working to morph a class project into an exclusive M.B.A. networking series.

Angela Friedman, Camille Pajor ’09, Dechuan Liu and Wei Xie combined forces in their graduate marketing management course last fall to design a student-run networking series for M.B.A. students, something that doesn’t yet exist at Adelphi.

Zachary Johnson, Ph.D., who teaches the course, called their project the perfect example of students helping themselves and one another to create opportunity within the School and University in the process. A “win-win-win-win” situation, so to speak.

The series the group is building is aimed at becoming a niche event for the School, designed to facilitate interaction, dialogue and relationship building among current M.B.A. students, while at the same time upping the allure for prospective M.B.A. students to earn their degrees at Adelphi.

“The more relationships students form through the course of their M.B.A. study, the greater the chance that these relationships will benefit the students in their professional lives,” the group’s official plan stated. “Once current students graduate, they will become alumni with strong loyalty to the School [and the event].”

Ms. Pajor explained that, although the group hopes for a large number of current alumni to attend each event, the majority of the first few events will focus on networking among current students.

“If the alumni feel more connected to the organization, they’re more likely to give back and help in other capacities, like working with current students,” Ms. Pajor said.

The interest level is high and the tentative attendance numbers are there. Following a feeler survey given to 81 current M.B.A. students, 100 percent were in support of a student-run business organization at Adelphi.

The first networking event in the series was conducted as an after-hours meeting in New York City for students and alumni to discuss the continued development of the series, network and celebrate the end of another successful semester. For more events like this one, stay tuned to the Willumstad School of Business’s event’s page.