MBA Student Leaders Unite

Student government leaders from seven of the nation’s top business schools gathered last weekend at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School to finalize the charter of the MBA Peer Schools Forum.

The charter, which formalizes dialogue that has taken place among the institutions for the past several years, joins Harvard Business School, Wharton, Columbia Business School, Northwestern’s Kellogg School, University of Chicago’s Booth School, MIT’s Sloan School, and Stanford Graduate School of Business in an official consortium.

Patrick S. Chun ’04, co-president of the Business School’s Student Association, said that the charter addressed practical matters as well, such as the format of the annual conference and the addition of other schools. Monthly conference calls involving the seven schools’ student government officials have also been planned.

The Forum provides the MBA students an opportunity to discuss their “best practices and challenges,” said Justine K. Lelchuk, incoming co-president of the Business School’s Student Association.

“The Forum seeks to provide a platform for inter-school cohesion and collaboration among the different MBA student bodies from seven of the top business schools in the country,” Lelchuk said.

Chun noted that the collaboration and communication with other student government leaders has been very helpful, particularly in the tough economic times.

“This Forum helps us evaluate how we as leaders in MBA programs are adapting to a downturn in the recruiting environment, to the decreased budgets, and what that means about types of offering of student government,” Chun said.

Last year, representatives from the seven schools held a similar conference at Kellogg.

Chun said that one of the Student Association’s new initiatives, this year’s ski trip in February, was loosely inspired by a Kellogg event.

Lelchuk also said that the greatest benefit of attending the conference was the opportunity to learn from the experience of her peers.

“For me, the best part of the conference was at the end of Saturday reviewing my notes and seeing how much I had gleaned from what the other school said they were doing,” she said. “I am very excited about incorporating this into our agenda.”

Lelchuk added that “having six diverse perspectives in the same position lends a great amount of support,” especially for those students who do not have the benefit of a co-president.