Students, faculty and staff recently enjoyed good conversation, free drinks and pizza during Town Hall with Taylor. This is the second town hall with Dean Taylor Randall this school year.

Whether you attended or not, we’d love your feedback about the Eccles School — what you like and what you’d like to see changed. Click here by the end of the month to complete a short feedback survey.

In case you missed the event, here are a few takeaways from the Town Hall with Taylor that may be of interest:

Scholarships

A concern was expressed that if a business student misses out on a scholarship in their first or second year, they’re out of luck when it comes to qualifying for scholarship assistance. That’s not true.

There are many scholarships available to students (even those in the last two years of their undergraduate program).

Currently, approximately $900,000 in scholarship funds is available each year. Some scholarships are even available to students in the last semester of their program.

How do you identify and apply for these scholarships?

Contact the Academic Advising Office. They’ll hook you up.

Also, stay involved with all school events. Then you’ll be more in-the-know.

Network with your fellow students and maintain open channels of communication with your professors, TAs and school support staff.

Be sure to find, follow and like the Eccles School on social media. We share scholarship and other important information there nearly every day.

In short, talk to people, be invested and do a little research of your own. There is a lot a funding available to students, and some of it might just have your name on it.

Salary

We discussed the progress we’ve seen just over the past three years in salaries for Eccles School graduates.

On average, the salaries of Eccles School graduates have increased 7.5 percent per year over the past five years.

Undergrad salaries have gone up $8,000 in the past three years; MBA salaries have gone up about $17,000.

Now is a good time to be an Eccles School graduate (or future graduate).

Flexibility

The topic of flexibility for working students came up at this semester’s Town Hall. Working and trying to go to school at the same time is a challenge, and trying to schedule school around work (or vice versa) can be an additional challenge.

To address these common challenges, Dean Taylor confirmed that there will be more flexibility in the future. Dean Taylor went on to describe how the Eccles School is implementing more hybrid classes starting this fall. They’ll include both in-class and online elements.

There are, of course, some challenges with the topic of flexibility. The first challenge is that as students take higher-division classes, there are fewer students are enrolled. Thus, fewer options are available for those upper-division classes. The next challenge is that some students prefer to attend a class in person as opposed to taking an online class. Online classes are a viable option for providing flexibility, but they’re not the best for every student and for every class.

Dean Taylor introduced the concept of a “flex schedule.” Though only a hypothetical option now, a “flex schedule” would allow working students to opt-in to the program and schedule classes two or three semesters in advance. This would allow for customization of work and school time well in advance and deliver a more predictable schedule for planning purposes. Many of the students in attendance thought this would make things easier for working students.

We received feedback from students for our faculty and administrators to address the topic of flexibility and work with one another, and students, to develop some creative solutions. You’ll hear more about this in the months and semesters ahead.

About Dean Taylor

Another discussion topic became an opportunity for us to learn a bit more about Dean Taylor Randall. Here are a few things we learned:

  • He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Utah. He graduated with honors in accounting in 1990.
  • He was a student in the first class Dr. Martha Eining taught here at the Eccles School.
  • He worked for Arthur Anderson for two years after graduating from the University of Utah.
  • He went to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his MBA and his Ph.D. from Wharton.
  • He started teaching at the University of Utah in 1999.
  • He has now been the Dean of the David Eccles School of Business for five and a half years.

Here is his response when asked what he would have done differently earlier in his career:

“One of the things that I think is the hard part of the job is trying to find ways to coach people. They have skills, but they don’t know exactly what they want to be…I want to think about that problem more, about how the school is organized. We have such a large school, yet education is so personal.”

Keep an eye out during fall semester for the next chance to mingle with your fellow Eccles School students, faculty and staff and to throw some questions to Dean Randall.