School’s in session at Emory’s Goizueta Business School! Just as students were beginning to stream onto the Atlanta campus for both the full-time and executive MBA programs, Associate Dean of Admissions Julie Barefoot made time to discuss all things Goizueta with Clear Admit. We are so grateful to her.
Barefoot has been at Goizueta since 1988, so if anyone knows the school, it’s her. She herself holds an MBA from UNC’s Kenan-Flagler School of Business, so she also knows MBA admissions from both sides.
In the interview that follows, the self-professed foodie dishes on the Atlanta restaurant scene, exciting developments in the school’s management practice initiative, the opportunities available to students interested in social impact and much more. She also goes into amazing detail about the admissions process, including giving advice on how to tackle the essay questions.
If Goizueta is one of your target schools, this is a must read.
Clear Admit: What change, event or development are you excited about most in the year ahead?
Julie Barefoot: There are a few. The first is that we hired an alumna who had been with Accenture for many years—Lynne Segall—to lead our management practice effort. Until recently it was led by a beloved faculty member who retired. It’s great to have an alumna who has been working in a top consulting firm take the role. She will be adding a lot more resources into the experiential practice we have and will be continuing to expand it across all of our programs. It began in our full-time MBA program, but now all of our students will have an opportunity to work with real clients and real-world problems.
Lynne is adding an even deeper framework—how to tackle problem solving. Her approach to the semester as she teaches the course is asking students to really think about “How do you dissect a problem? How do you know which of the analytical tools you will learn here in business school to employ to address a particular business problem?” She is a perfect fit for this job—she is so excited about it and she has been onboard all summer gearing up.
I am also excited that we are continuing to develop our entrepreneurship offerings. We will be offering a new entrepreneurship practicum course, which will give students an opportunity to work with someone in the Atlanta Tech Village. There will be an office there where they can collaborate.
And our Social Enterprise @ Goizueta program continues to evolve. Here again students have another great experiential learning opportunity. One example is Farmers to 40—a social enterprise that encourages sustainable economic development within the coffee-growing communities of Nicaragua. Our students have helped these farmers develop a direct trade model that produces excellent coffee for consumers while returning 40 percent of the profit to the farmers who grow the beans. This is yet another initiative that is available to our students.
Marketing analytics is a whole other area we are developing. I could go on and on.
