Leadership transition to FY

So the second year students are going to be here only for a couple of more months. I can't believe more than half our first year is already over! They said it will rush past like no one's business, and boy it did! We are already halfway past the third term and lots of interesting stuff happening around in school. The MBA Association elections are over and we have new President and Vice-President to lead the MBAA next year. For the rest of the term, they will work with current presidents to take over the reigns from them. The elections were held last week. Two of my ILE team mates ran for the post, but unfortunately lost. I do have an ILE team that's absolutely awesome. (ILE team, for those new here, is the 5-member team you get assigned to, to work with during first year). I am fortunate to have an ILE team that has my section representative and these two awesome people who stood for MBAA!

Many clubs are also now having their elections to select their leaders for next year. I guess I got a little influenced by my powerhouse of an ILE team and am standing for a couple of posts myself, though I don't think I can disclose what exactly here right now. (It's not really a secret, but Fuqua is a no-campaign environment for student elections and it would be inappropriate! :-)). We have some tough competition and spent half a day over last weekend working on something called the 'platform' for elections. It is essentially a 1-page 'advertisement' that is submitted to the current presidents and which is put up on the notice board for club members to see what the new leadership plans to do next year in the club. So it's fun! I know a lot of people are bogged with term 3 and internship search, but working on this platform was totally fun and we'll see how it goes in the next couple of weeks.

In addition to the club leadershp, there are 'fellows' programs who are selected by various groups in the school. The fellows are: Leadership fellow, admissions fellow, career fellow, executive fellow and marcomm fellows. Some are paid, and some of these are not, but they are all great ways for SY students to get involved. As far as I know, all of them are selected through and application and interview process. I don't know intimately about each of these, but but here is the brief:

Leadership fellows: They run projects throughout the school, that have to do with improving leadership in Fuqua. I think the projects are varied and have a lot to do with conducting activities, workshops, working with MBAA and administration to help with leadership initiatives across the business school. They also work with FY ILE teams and facilitate feedback and periodic reviews of the working of the team and iron out issues, if any.

Admissions fellows: AFs are involved in admissions process. A subset of them travel around the country to conduct information sessions. They also interview prospective candidates. It is supposed to be the more time consuming job, with 45 minute interviews and another 45 minutes easily to write the review of the candidate. The crunch times are terms 2 and 3 and it definitely is a cool paid position. The AF travel team traveled internationally this year, thanks to increased applications from Asia and the alums there struggling with the load!

Career fellows: Career fellows work with FY students. Their essential job is to review resumes, review cover letters and conduct mock interviews for FY students. While AF I think impacts the school on the outside, career fellow is a much more in-school thing. It is of paramount importance I think because it takes FY students through the whole job search and a lot of scope of really helping people out.

Executive and Marcomm fellows: I don't know much about these and Marcomm is a relatively new fellows program. Marcomm deals with external marketing and communication of Fuqua. The brand of a bschool is extremely important to it, and marcomm, I think is a great way for students to take part in controlling that to whatever extent. Executive fellows, again from the little I know, help organize the Distinguished Speaker Series, where top leaders from top companies around the world come to Fuqua to talk on a subject. We had some great talks this year so far by UPS, Deloitte and few more (I know those 2, coz. those are couple of the DSS I attended and really liked!). It's probably a great post for people who have passion for contacting and hearing from industry leaders!

I am quite keen on career fellows program, AF, and Marcomm (though I don't quite well know the role much yet). Marcomm will probably have an information session soon that will give us an idea. It is probably not very easy to get into one of these. There seems to be fair amount of competition for these 'fellowships', probably more than club activities. They are quite prestigious I believe and maybe also probably because some of them are paid positions.
One thing that really catches my attention is that things move so fast here! We are about 3 months away from end of year and things are already happening! I signed up today for help with Blue Devil Weekend, the admissions weekend of Fuqua in beginning April where all the prospective students come and Fuqua shows them what it is!! :-) I was not able to attend BDW when coming to Fuqua, but it is supposed to be a weekend long party, true Fuqua style and some great activities for the incoming class. Beginning term 4, we will have new presidents of MBAA, new leaderships for all clubs, the second years would probably already be 'checked-out' of school! :-) We would be tumbling over to replace them! Wasn't it yesterday that I was sitting at Geneen, listening to some of the speeches by SYs and administration welcoming us to Fuqua and what not?! :-)

In case you are thinking what happened to partying at Fuqua, I am running over to one right now and will catch you guys later!