Last week I had the pleasure of hosting a few students from the Instituto de Empresa (IE), a world renowned business school located in Madrid, Spain. IE is a truly international business school, approximately 50% of professors are foreign to Spain and each class has about 80 nationalities represented. The fifteen IE students who visited Tuck last week were no exception; if I recall correctly only three were Spaniards, while the rest were from various countries including Venezuela, Brazil, Portugal, France, Italy, and Romania.
Prospective students often wonder how a tiny school in rural New Hampshire could provide a global reach. In fact, last week there were two events that brought the world to Tuck. In addition to the IE exchange, Tuck hosted the 8th Annual French MBA conference.
I really enjoyed how students from all over the globe came to Tuck and complimented our community. Residents of some of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world (London, Paris, Madrid) were enamored with our quaint New England town (to be fair, the fall foliage and unseasonably warm weather didn’t hurt). Aside from the physical beauty of our educational setting, our visitors admired some of Tuck’s intangibles, like the energy that resonates throughout our campus. One very attractive visitor from Brazil noticed that there was something different about Tuck, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She thought I might be able to help her identify the intangible by describing the best part of my day. Without hesitation, I told her that the best part of my day is between 10AM and 10:20AM.
During the first year core, 10AM marks the end of our first class and the beginning of a very exciting twenty minutes. Students rush out of class to do a number of things like check their mailbox, grab a cup of coffee, or make a short phone call before the next class begins. I thoroughly take pleasure in the “morning mixer” because of the countless positive interactions it generates amongst students, professors, and administrators. For example today’s morning mixer included greetings like ‘good morning Edgar’, ‘what’s up E’, ‘great blog’ (ok, so I made that one up), and ‘hey buddy, how are you’, and gestures such as high fives, fist pounds, bright smiles, winks, and pats on the back from several members of our community. In short, the morning mixer is a daily twenty minute reminder that Tuck is tightly knit community where each individual is valued. Indeed, Tuck is truly a business school with a unique combination of global reach and personal scale.
EBSO – This week’s EBSO goes out to my man “Real Deal Neil”. One of the things I enjoy most about Tuck is how comfortable everyone is in their own skin, and no one embodies this more than the Real Deal himself. Neil, thanks for always keeping it real, even if it means dancing to a Miley Cyrus song on a cold walk home.
Read the full article: “Morning Mixer” – the Best Part of My Day