Base Camp: The Journey Begins…

Elizabeth Winborne
Video Transcript

Week One of the day MBA is Base Camp - an intensive four-day orientation designed to prepare you for your graduate business education at the Bryan School.

To hone the fundamental skills necessary to succeed in your coursework, you will attend a series of seminars on topics such as case study methodology and using Excel for data analysis and statistics. In addition to these practical skills, Boot Camp features several workshops on personality assessment and conflict resolution devised to increase your understanding of your individual leadership style.

Base Camp also serves as the official welcome to the Bryan MBA where you will be introduced to fellow students and the professors and administrators who will play key roles in your education over the next twenty-one months. With Base Camp taking place the week before the semester begins, it is a relatively calm week on campus for you to become familiar with your new surroundings and to take care of buying books, getting an ID card, picking up a parking pass, and other start-of-the-semester chores.

While graduation might still be a distant thought in the back of your mind, during Base Camp counselors from Bryan Graduate Career Services will meet with you for a series of presentations, workshops and panel discussions to familiarize you with career counseling services and to start a dialogue with you about your career development. “Field training is a distinguishing feature of the day program and from Day One we’ll begin coaching you to prepare you for meaningful internships and consulting projects,” says Brent Atwater, Director of Bryan Graduate Career Services. In fact, career development planning begins before you even step foot on campus. The first assignment for entering MBA students is taking an online career assessment test. Designed to pair your strengths and interests with matching career options and professional environments, you are expected to have completed the test prior to reporting to Base Camp in August.

Of course no Base Camp would be complete without at least a little basic training and that is where TeamQUESt fits into the Bryan MBA’s Base Camp. After three days of classroom instruction, you are taken out to Piney Lake, UNCG’s Experience Campus. While some of the challenges, such as orienteering and tightrope walking, have a physical aspect to them, the emphasis of the training is more mental than physical.

For one challenge, you will be outfitted in climbing gear and in pairs of two you will attempt to navigate across cable wires between trees as your classmates on the ground below cheer you to the completion of the challenge. The intent of this and other exercises is to teach you to brainstorm collaboratively, to develop strategic plans of action, and to work as a team to achieve your objectives. The exhilarating challenges at Piney Lake develop teamwork, communications, and leadership skills and you’ll also learn a few things about yourself that will be useful to you in your professional and personal life.

You will be presented with a great deal of information in a short window of time, but your experiences at Base Camp will translate into success in the class room. By the end of Base Camp, you will be familiar with campus and equipped with the skills and knowledge to thrive in your studies.