Welcome to the College of Business

Today is the first day of the fall semester. If you are new to the college, you are not alone.  We welcome more than 2000 new students to the College today along with several new faculty and staff.  You’ve probably heard that we are big: more than 8200 undergraduate students, about a 1000 graduate students and 225 faculty and staff. It can be hard to stand out in such a large crowd.  If you stand in the back of the room and wait to be discovered or provided the help you need, you guarantee disappointment and risk total failure. Fortune favors the bold here.  Don’t miss out on accessing the many resources we have to help you succeed.

But our scale does not define your experience in the College, the shared beliefs of our faculty and staff do.  We believe that no real learning occurs inside your comfort zone; that the most defining moments happen when you get to have a conversation with someone who has something interesting to say; and that a great education expands your horizons, helps you make good choices about how to spend your one precious life, and gives you the skills and confidence to know that you can compete with anyone anywhere.  We have created a culture and set of experiences that will demand that you engage with us in the pursuit of these objectives. These things are not negotiable.  If you are not willing to sign up  for this adventure, we are not the place for you.  Frankly your life here will be miserable.  If you are willing to go down this path, the journey will transform you.

For our undergraduate students, the journey starts immediately.  “Welcome to the Majors” is next Friday.   It is designed to introduce our newbies to the culture of the college and help them start to form a strategy for how to stand out from the crowd and “get to the one” (if you don’t know what that means you will).  Welcome to the Majors is complemented by “Street Smarts,” a workshop run by our student Ambassadors that gives new students tips on how to best succeed in the College, including how to succeed in our core courses.  The Ambassadors are part of the College’s leadership team and play an important role in shaping our culture.  They will be doing several “Street Smart” workshops each day for the first two weeks of the semester in The Exchange.

The Exchange is a place where we invite in community leaders who have interesting things to say to our students. Thanks to our friends at FAIRWINDS Credit Union,  we have a guest in the exchange almost every day.  Most days we have more than one Exchange. Many of our guests in The Exchange employ UCF interns and graduates. They are interested in identifying good talent while sharing their experiences and advice with young people like you.  At no other time in your life will you have so many potential employers coming to visit you.  Go early and often, but remember to reserve your seat before you go, there are only 120.

By October you will likely have had your first tests in your primary core classes and will need to start taking a hard look at where your interests intersect your skills and talents.  Many students come in to the College thinking they want to do something, only to change their mind mid-semester.  The Office of Professional Development can help you understand where you might best fit in.  Internships can also help. It’s why we do an Internship Invitational and Career Fest this month.  Look to get involved.

The goal of all this activity in your first seven weeks is to get you engaged outside of your comfort zone, to get you in the right major, plot an efficient course to graduation and have you develop an action plan for landing the job you want before you leave here.  Lonny, the Office Professional Development team, the Primary Core Faculty, the Student Ambassadors, and Jennifer Johnson who runs The Exchange are all here to help you make good choices as you start your time with us. And if you need some mid-course corrections, don’t worry we will have a follow-up to  “Street Smarts” ready  for you right after midterms.

Welcome to the UCF College of Business. Get your armor ready Knights. Charge On!

Knights Are Everywhere

I took a few days off last week to travel to Toronto for a little vacation.  Noel Gallagher and his High Flying Birds were playing there and so were the Blue Jays.   I am a big Oasis fan and the Blue Jays are one of just four major league stadiums I had yet to visit.  Those two reasons were excuse enough for me to convince Suzanne to hop on a plane and go Up North.

The Jays had an afternoon game and I was sitting on the deck of a restaurant on Lake Ontario when a young woman approached me and said: “I think I know you.  Are you Dean Jarley?”  Turns out she is an IB student, planning to graduate in December.  I never did find out why she was in Toronto, but the encounter made me smile for two reasons:  First, I can’t imagine when I was in college ever approaching the Dean (frankly, I didn’t even know who he or she was) to engage in conversation.  Maybe that’s just southern hospitality.  Maybe it’s Josh’s efforts to make me a micro-influencer (apparently that really is a thing).  But I’d like to think it’s our culture of engagement at work — the emphasis on professional development and how approachable we are in the College of Business.  At any rate, I’m marking it down as “a win.” Second, Knights really are everywhere — it’s a sign of our growing national prominence and expanding geographic footprint. On the plane ride home, I saw two more UCF shirts. I’m headed to San Francisco in a couple of weeks. We have a large presence in Silicon Valley.  If you see me on the street, stop and say hello.

 

Old School

Sometime last week, I had a meeting with Chris Leo.  Chris is teaching our Capstone Course this fall, and I was trying to coordinate some things with him. As the meeting was ending, it struck me that he was in a white shirt and tie: Normal teaching attire for Chris, but we are between semesters.  When I asked him why he was dressed up, he replied: “Well, I am meeting with you.  That’s a big deal for me.  I don’t get to do that much.”  I chuckled and told him: “Now if only I could get the economists to wear pants (they are shorts kind of people).”  More seriously, I thought:  We really do live in a graceless age. Nice to see someone who is still old school. It’s kind of like when you get a handwritten note from someone; it’s so rare that it sticks with you.

 

What Grads Tell Me When They Cross the Stage

Saturday was summer graduation. As is typically the case, I shook a lot of hands, more than any other dean on the stage. I also have short conversations with many students…

The most common conversation is me saying: “Congratulations!” (I say this to every student.). The graduate returns my greeting with: “Thank you.” Some say that as they look me in the eye, firmly shake my hand and smile. Others scurry by after a quick handshake dreading the moment or searching for the photographer.

Another common response to my greeting is: “Appreciate what you’ve done for me.” Or “Appreciate you.” I usually respond with: “Go be awesome.” A dozen or so tell me: “I got to the one!” This means they are graduating with the career they had hoped to embark on when they came to us. I smile and hope they told Lonny. One student asked for a hug. She had just earned her PhD. I am not a hugger, but threw caution to the wind and granted her request.

If the student is wearing a sash indicating they are a “veteran,” I thank them for their service and they give a nod of appreciation.

But the most meaningful conversations I have on stage don’t involve words. They involve non-traditional students, typically forty or older and typically female. They have the same look on their face as my grandmother did when I attended her high school graduation. She was born into a logging camp. Her mother died when she was young. She raised her siblings, was married at sixteen during the Great Depression and had my mother shortly after. She was dogged in her desire to make sure I went to college. After I did, she found the time to get her high school diploma at age sixty. It meant everything to her: respect, equality, and a sense of accomplishment that only comes from completing unfinished business that ate at her for years. When I see that look on a graduate, I know exactly what it means. Frankly, it doesn’t get more UCF than this. I smile, nod, think of her and am grateful I get to do this job.