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Mills MBA program plans expansion

The school recently broke ground on a new $30 million building that will open in fall of 2009 and bear the name of Lorry I. Lokey, founder of Business Wire and a major donor for the program.

"(Lokey) is an example of a Mills man who thinks the way we do," Thornborrow said. "He understands the challenges women face in the workplace. He totally believes in what we're doing."

Mills has a female-only undergraduate program, but it's graduate schools, including business, are coed.

The MBA program currently has 77 students, two of which are male. That makes the program 99 percent female compared with other Bay Area programs such as Stanford University Graduate School of Business that has 38 percent female students, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business with 31 percent, Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business with 34 percent and San Francisco State University with 41 percent.

With the new building, Thornborrow expects enrollment to double to about 150 students within the next several years.

"There's a startling lack of female participation in going to business school," she said. "It filters down to the method of teaching."

Some women may shy away from pursuing MBAs because of misconceptions that the courses are too math intensive or that a career in business means compromising one's personal life or that the programs are excessively competitive.

Thornborrow said what makes Mills program different is in its approach to building confidence and creating an open learning environment.

"If students feel like nobody is going to jump on them when they have a different opinion or speak up in class, they learn to develop their own voice," Thornborrow said. "I don't know that going to an overly competitive school where people try to put you down or dismiss you has the same effect. Business schools do have a reputation for being pretty competitive."

Crunching the numbers

No one tracks exactly how many women enroll in MBA programs, but the Graduate Management Admission Council, the group that runs MBA.com and administers the test most MBA programs require for admission, found that for the current school year, 2007-2008, 73 percent of MBA applicants were male compared with 27 percent female.

Other survey results found that while 64 percent of schools saw an increase in application volume overall during the current school year, only 54 percent of schools reported receiving more applications from women.

Schools that actively recruited women pulled in three times as many applications from women as schools that do not actively recruit women.

"Men and women still need to understand business and an MBA is an MBA is an MBA," said Cristina Banks, a senior lecturer at Haas School of Business at the UC Berkeley who has been teaching in business schools for more than 30 years. "But, there are issues that women bring to the table that aren't typically addressed when women are in a program."

Mills' program mirrors other school's requirements for business fundamentals including accounting and finance courses, but has some woman-friendly features like accelerated degrees for students who took business classes as undergraduates or career planning that addresses work and life balance issues.

Despite many changes in workplace policies over the years, Banks said women still face a dilemma between pursuing a career and having a family and many women do not develop as many support or networking contacts for their careers as men do.

"It still comes down to the fact that there is a finite pool of resources that women can tap into and the job realities in corporate America," she said. "You have to travel, work weekends and have an unpredictable schedule. Anybody who's good at what they do and is at the top of their fields, this is what happens. ... We're talking about people who really want to excel, not just be a professional, but to excel."

Banks said she agrees with the idea that a woman-focused program could help more women develop qualities such as confidence, authority and ambition.

"Males tend to be more dominant than females in business," she said. "If you take the gender element out, then you have ample opportunity for women to test out their leadership skills."

Traditional programs can also afford those skills to women, but Mills students say the school makes those ideals a centerpiece.

"I feel really empowered that Mills has taken the proactive stance to encourage women in business and made it the top priority for the school to advance women in places where there is a disproportionate number such as in executive positions," said Kassandra Kappelos, a student in her first year of the MBA program. "In the business program, we are building a really strong women's network. When we do go off into the work force, we will have a professional network at our fingertips."

Putting it all together

Kappelos, who finished her undergraduate degree at Mills last year, had originally applied to a master's in public policy program at Mills, but was approached by the business school about switching disciplines.

"I really enjoy that we just added the corporate responsibility aspect," she said. —It's the idea of the triple bottom line... you strive for profit, social and environmental responsibility.... I love the business model. I wanted to work under the private sector, but also with my passion of building better communication between stake holders that would then result in policies geared toward social enterprise."

One student said that while she appreciates the empowerment element of the program, sometimes the focus seems too female-centric.

"It's nice to have that male voice or the voice of both males and females in the classroom," said Victoria Harris, who is first year student in the program. "It would be more realistic to have more males in the program in terms of getting people used to working in the real world."

She's also noticed that sometimes professors use phrases "as a female business manager" instead of addressing both genders.

Nonetheless, Jackson, the alumna, said the program teaches women that while building relationships is important, women also have to set and accomplish their own goals.

"Mills had a competitive edge, but you weren't competing with another person, you were competing with yourself," she said. "There was this desire for everybody to perform the best they could."

Blanca Torres covers retail and consumer issues. Reach Torres at btorres@bayareanewsgroup.com.

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