"Engineering Management Thought of the Week" Jeff Glass

To end the year, I would like to reflect back on our past students and
thank them for the culture they have created in the MEM program.
Whatever success the MEMP has enjoyed, has been a direct result of the
students who have come before you. Their thoughtful input, tireless
efforts to improve the MEM program and positive, proactive approach to
solving problems has been a cornerstone of the MEMP. These students have
identified problems, brought them to our attention and then helped us
solve them. Many of you in the current class have kept up this
tradition. There are three characteristics that tend to stand out in
these students and that are also very important in a successful career –

Their ability to:

1. identify and prioritize problems; then spend the valuable time they
have on the most important and highest impact problems faced by the
entire group of MEM students.

2. understand when their individual perception is different from most
other students and thus their opinion is not the opinion shared by the
group.

3. approach problems in a positive and constructive manner, including a
proposed solution, followed by the flexibility to develop new solutions
with additional input from both students and staff.

Thus, I encourage you to develop habits which will be valuable in your
jobs by developing these same abilities. This includes approaching
issues constructively and with a positive framework. One of my
frustrations in this area involves the course evaluations which our
students sometimes provide. Course evaluations are critical for the
program and have caused us to make major changes in courses and
instructors. But making emotional, belligerent comments about a
professor simply has little value. These types of comments are many
times discounted because of the way they are delivered. Providing
constructive criticism and ways that a professor can improve the course
while balancing your comments with what you learned from the professor
has much greater impact. It is also much better practice for what will
make you successful when trying to provide feedback to others in the
real world (you will have a Harvard Business School reading in your
management class discussing this in more detail). Admittedly, only a few
students in each course tend to make this mistake but I would like us to
strive for perfection!

So I will end this final Thought of the Week for 2008 by sincerely
thanking the students who have come before you, as well as current
students, who have had a positive impact on the program in any way; from
simply demonstrating the positive attitude and work ethic in your
courses to taking on a big extracurricular project for future students.
Keep up the good work. It is a pleasure to be associated with you and I
know I will be hearing about your future success for many years to come.