Executive MBA students from the London Campus of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business will this week be awarded their diplomas in a graduation ceremony at the University’s campus in Chicago, Illinois (USA).
 
On March 21, 2008, the programme’s 81 students, from a record 33 different nationalities, will graduate alongside a total of 270 students from Chicago GSB’s other campuses in Singapore and Chicago.  As the first and only business school with three dedicated campuses in North America, Asia, and Europe, Chicago GSB’s EMBA is one of the world’s most international programmes, attracting executives from as far afield as Shanghai, South Africa, the UAE, the Philippines and Brazil. More than 70% of the extrovert class reside in countries other than the UK, with particularly large contingents from France (17%), Germany (12%) and Russia (12%).
 
“I was looking for a top American school with a campus in Europe, ideally with a strong focus on financial subjects,” says London graduate D'Arcy Salzmann, Director of Product Management at Nokia in Finland. “The opportunity to study with students from the other campuses in Chicago and Singapore was massively valuable in getting maximum exposure to the student body's experience, whose breadth, both in nationality and work experience makes Chicago GSB unique. I looked at two nationally-ranked MBAs in the US, and one internationally-ranked MBA in Europe and still found the GSB to offer the best exposure to different ways of thinking.”
 
Also among the graduates is 32-year old Lebanese graduate Ibrahim El-Bitar, Director of Planning and Budgeting at the Dubai World Trade Centre: “None of the students from either of the three campuses want this program to end because it has been such a great experience,” he explains. “We are used to shedding ourselves from the “real world” for one week every 40 days and then sharing our experiences together. This is something we are going to remember for the rest of our lives. Today I am known in my company as the Why-Man,” he continues, “because I always ask the why’s and how’s... This is a mindset I have learned at the GSB where I keep on challenging the status-quo and I understand the underlying causes of the day-to-day problems at work.”
 
This class will be the second to complete their EMBA in London following the relocation of the school’s European Campus from Barcelona in 2005.  With proximity to all European business centres, studying at the London Campus means that executives from the world’s leading companies can study for their EMBA without interrupting their career. Executives from the outgoing class are currently working for a wide range of international companies including Intel, Maersk, Ernst & Young, ABN AMRO and Barclays, among many others.
 
The Chicago GSB EMBA programme is structured as a series of 16 one-week modules – thirteen of which are held at the London Campus and three of which are divided between the school’s campuses in Chicago and Singapore.  Courses, held over a 21-month period, are taught by the same world-class professors who teach in the school’s full-time MBA programmes.

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