Welcome to Your Online MBA Residency Experience

Pam Suzadail:
My name is Pam Suzadail. I am the director of the online MBA program at the College of William & Mary. So one of the key features of the program is the residency weekend. We require our students to come to campus once during their time during the program. Each residency, we select a theme. The first residency we did was on crisis communications. This residency is on ethics and business. And we really felt passionately that we wanted to extend what really wasn't being emphasized in the curriculum.

We really wanted to make sure that there was really value add to the residency, which is one of the reasons why it's one credit. It's part of the curriculum. But also we wanted to make sure that it was about current events. What was going on in business right then? When something happened in the world or in business, that we were able to integrate that into the residency discussions. One of the things that makes the residency so important to the online MBA is the networking aspect. And we felt that it was really important that the online students had an option to do that in the online program.

You're able to get a personal connection when you meet somebody face to face in a way that is really meaningful. We start the residency with a network and reception on Friday night. Then Saturday morning, we do a breakfast. This time we have Thomas Jefferson coming. We do lunch with the executive partners. We have breakout sessions, discussions. We do a formal dinner the evening of Saturday with a keynote speaker, and then Sunday's really the wrap up. So they'll meet with the faculty and they wrap up. A big secret. We have the griffin that comes. We really do try to make them experience everything that William and Mary has to offer in 48 hours.

This program is a lot of creative thinking in it and innovation. And so in order to be able to build some of the best teams, we really are trying to build diverse backgrounds. We have students coming from the military. We have people that are involved in government. We have senior level executives. We have people that are new out of undergrad. We're really looking for a broad range of people in this program. These students are really passionate. They really are.

They're determined to not only earn the MBA, but they're also really passionate and determined to make sure that this is a high caliber MBA themselves. And so the residencies wouldn't even be as robust as they are without them. They're contributing to the weekend just as much as the faculty and all the participants. We consider the online students as part of the tribe. They're a part of the family, and one of the things we're just really excited about is welcoming them to campus.