As part of the #1–ranked Kelley Direct Online MBA’s curriculum, students participate in two in-person, immersive experiences. These intensive, week-long sessions are designed to offer hands-on applications and encourage networking with classmates, faculty, and staff.
In their second year of study, students convene in a handpicked US city for Kelley On Location. The experience is designed and led by a full-time faculty member (side note: all Kelley Direct faculty are full-time—there are no adjunct instructors here). This year’s student cohort traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, along with faculty lead and Clinical Professor of Management, Carolyn Goerner, who designed the experience and offered tools to enrich each participant’s workplace culture. The topic—the business of fun—was workshopped amongst the group to establish how fun can be incorporated into meetings and work situations that are otherwise mundane, explains Goerner. Activities, including improvisation and cardio drumming, to name a few, were applied to custom plans for each student to utilize in their organizations back home.
“If you want creativity, don’t ask the same people to meet in the same places all the time. In other words, shaking it up a little bit is what makes an organization not just more creative, but a better place to work,” said Goerner.
“I think most importantly, students walked away (from Kelley On Location) with a really strong sense of who they are, what ‘fun’ means to them, and how they can inject that into their own organizations.”
Watch the video for Goerner’s reflections on the recent Kelley On Location experience and learn more about how our in-person experiences are just one way our approach to business education is drastically different from any other online MBA program.