JOSEPH NICHOLS
MBA graduate '24 outstanding grad

WHY WEBER STATE?   

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My goal in pursuing an MBA was to understand the language of business a little better. Weber hit to sweet spot for what I was hoping to accomplish. I have a master's degree from the U of U, and I considered going ack there, but living in Davis county, the commute was too great, and the price was more than I thought justifiable for an MBA. So Weber was more convenient and less expensive than the U. I also looked at Western Governors, which seemed convenient, but I wanted to interact with people and network. So Weber State checked all the right boxes and sat in a happy medium while still being convenient and doable with a full-time work schedule. 

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WHY THE MASTER'S OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION?   

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I have a master's degree in bioengineering, but I've drifted from the engineering side to a more business-oriented role. I felt like I needed to learn the language of business and get some mastery over the concepts. Having the degree is helpful in being perceived as an expert when dealing with people and giving advice. At the end of the day, businesses pay you for your experience and your perceived expertise. Now that I have the degree, the trick is to put it to work on a day-to-day basis. 

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GREAT BALANCE   

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As a graduate student you don't interact with all of the services WSU provides, so I never went on the main campus except to attend a concert or a play. The MBA program happens in two rooms on the Davis Campus. What I did like was the range of backgrounds of both the students and the instructors. WSU does great job of servicing the Hill Air Force Base and local businesses, so I met tons of people with practical business experience, ranging from accounting to production to management. There was a lot of background diversity to draw on and understand. And the instructors were the same way. Professor Brett Horstmann, in Marketing, is an executive at Lifetime Products and offered a lot of real-world knowledge. Professor Shane Schvaneveldt, of Supply Chain Management, was more academic. The range was excellent and well-rounded, and the balance was good.

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FACULTY IMPACT   

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I had several classes with and thoroughly enjoyed Professor Doug Miller. He taught most of the business development certificate classes. He was very conscientious in laying out a methodology for establishing a new business, which I enjoyed as someone with an engineering/science mindset. Science and starting a business have a lot in common. You have a hypothesis about a need in the market, and you need to figure out how to conduct the practical experiments to test that hypothesis. Thinking of business as a kind of a science resonated with me. It was a great perspective and one of the main takeaways for me.

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ADVICE   

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Embrace the group work. Group work is where you are accomplishing two things at once. You are gaining knowledge through the coursework, networking, and having experiences working with people with different backgrounds to achieve a common goal. Human interaction is one of the great reasons to go face-to-face instead of online. Coming together with people to develop a project and a presentation is much more gratifying to me than an individual assignment. At the end of the day, it is not about the grades; it's about mastering the material and getting the concepts. Getting good grades is not the point of the program - lean into why you are in the MBA program and how you can accomplish your goals while here. Do the things that will make you successful. Being able to apply what you've learned out in the real world will be the measure of success.

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WHAT'S NEXT   

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I will continue with what I'm doing - I do a lot of market research for clients, trying to help them understand where to take their business and identify good investments. We plan to start a new retail brand in our office (a small family office) and I'm hoping to apply what I've learned to launch our own brand and see if we can establish our own operations arm.

 

Joseph's headshot courtesy of Embraceable you photography

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