Alumni Mentors Teach Networking to Undergraduate Business Students Competitions and Colloquia Help Wharton’s Undergraduate Business Students Succeed
Can you study networking at the Wharton School? Maybe not in classes. But alumni mentors draw on their real-world experiences to teach undergraduate business students this indispensable business skill.
Wharton School alumni participate in a wide variety of programs to advance these mentoring relationships. “The truth is,” says David Feldman, W'82, L'85, chairman of the Wharton Alumni Association Board, “if you want to move from mid-level success to high-level success, you almost certainly will not be able to do it without networking.”
Business Plan Competition
The Wharton School’s annual Business Plan Competition helps undergraduate business students connect with the mentors who can give them real-world business advice for their fledging entrepreneurial ventures.
Open to any student, the competition attracted some 200 student teams last year, as well as some 300 volunteer mentors and judges, including representatives from St. Paul Venture Capital, Canaan Partners, Johnson & Johnson, and Microsoft.
Eliot Jarrett, a Wharton School senior whose team won the undergraduate award for its plan to launch a computer animation company, was paired with mentor Paul Hynek, CEO of Santa Monica-based Spitfire Ventures. Hynek offered Jarrett not only his own counsel but also that of his brother, Joel Hynek, who won a 1998 Academy Award for his visual effects work on the film What Dreams May Come.
Hynek told Jarrett that most venture capitalists care first about one thing: return on their investment. Next, they look a candidate in the eye and size up whether they think he or she can deliver what’s promised. Then — and only then — do they ask, “Okay, what are you making?”
Jarrett calls his mentor “a fantastic match” because Hynek had specific knowledge about the film industry and remained available after the year ended. “Paul was only assigned to me for sophomore year,” Jarrett says, “but he continued to answer my e-mails. It was good to continue the relationship.”
Wharton Colloquia
Each fall, on the day before classes begin, student leaders of the Wharton Undergraduate Alumni Relations Council (WUARC) organize a day of alumni presentations to incoming freshmen, collectively called the Wharton Colloquia.
This educational and networking event focuses on topics not often found on a undergraduate business class syllabus, such as “Managing Your Career Like a Brand,” “Being a Young Woman in Business Today,” and “Becoming a CEO Before You’re 40.”
The sessions attracted some 350 students in 2004, up from 273 in 2003, according to Joshua Choi, W'05, chair of WUARC.
Wharton Alumni Association Board president Feldman’s own presentation this year was titled “Effective Business Networking.” He covered such topics as: the appropriate times to ask for a business card (always at a business function, rather than a social or charitable event); what to do once you have it (follow up with an invitation to meet); and how to keep up contacts that could be useful in the future.
Another popular colloquium was offered by Vige Barrie, CW'74, WG'76, director of media relations at Hamilton College, who covered presentation skills and dressing for success.
Beth Hagovsky, senior associate director of the Wharton Undergraduate Division, reports that sessions like Barrie’s ran overtime because the audience swamped alumni mentors with questions. “These are topics that every business school should be telling the kids about,” she notes. “Everything about it is great for the students.”
So great, she adds, that Wharton plans to launch a similar program this spring open to undergraduate business sophomores, juniors, and seniors.
