UNCW makes list of top business schools

This is a corrected version of this story. In the original George Hollen's last name was misspelled.

After working full time in quality assurance for PPD Inc., George Hollen heads out two nights a week to do hands-on work with other local companies as part of his pursuit of an MBA at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

It's part of the Learning Alliance in the master's of business administration program at the Cameron School of Business, where students work in teams to analyze a local business with the goal of helping the firm solve a problem.

Hollen, 33, who graduates next May, says of the experience: "I've thoroughly enjoyed it. It's changed my personality. It's gotten me out of my shell professionally."

Perhaps his experience and those of his fellow classmates help explain why the Princeton Review has included the Cameron School in its list of the "Best 290 Business Schools" for the first time.

The 2008 edition, published this month, focused on the school's MBA program and cited "hands-on projects with local and regional business" as one attribute of the program.

The 290 schools were picked through surveys of 19,000 business school students and school-reported data, said Dana Fischetti, spokeswoman for the university. Business schools that made the list were not ranked by number.

The Princeton Review also cited "faculty who are accessible and care about student success," "strong student diversity in experience levels, age and industry segment" and "a high level of student participation and learning coupled with an understanding of the pressures on students who work full-time."

The fact that the school's two-year professional MBA is part-time - meeting on Monday and Thursday nights - makes the listing especially important, said Vince Howe, associate professor of marketing and director of the MBA program.

UNCW's is a "lock-step" program, where students start at the same time and graduate at the same time, he said Wednesday. Harvard University and other schools have such programs as well, Howe added, but it's unique for a part-time program.

Under the MBA Learning Alliance, each student team is assigned to a regional business.

The teams work with their company doing projects like marketing audits and informations systems audits, Howe explained.

The first 13 months of the two-year program cover an environmental analysis of a company, Hollen said - "a look at the company and its industry as a whole and their marketing plan."

"The program culminates in a growth-in-profit program," Howe said. In this phase, Hollen said, the students take a problem that "you've learned in the analysis and identify, with the people who run the company," and help to solve it.

Hollen's team worked with Silver Coast Winery in Ocean Isle Beach.

"One of the areas we tackled was branding. We created a market plan to tackle customer expansion," he said.

In the second year, students participate in a practicum, doing a consulting project of the business or organization they choose, according to the Cameron School's Web site. Or, Hollen explains, teams turn an idea for a startup business into a business plan to present to faculty - and then to a team of potential investors.

Wayne Faulkner: 343-2329

wayne.faulkner@starnewsonline.com