As promised, we are back again with another article on our dear friend Flexible Curriculum and how current second years have leveraged the flexibility offered by Booth to reach their professional and academic goals. In this article, we will learn about the courses Daniel (Dan) Vandeveer found helpful in following his passion for General Management.
Dan Vandeveer, a current second-year student in the Full-Time Program, is the co-chair of the Corporate Management Group and interned in the Global Leader Program at Whirlpool. Dan’s experience before Booth was in Investment Banking and Private Equity. At Booth, he wanted to explore the functional areas of Strategy, Operations, and Marketing while de-emphasizing Finance and Accounting. Courses he found invaluable were New Products and Services Lab, Negotiations, New Venture Strategy, and Managerial Decision Making.
Although Dan had been involved in negotiations during his time in Investment Banking and Private Equity, he enjoyed learning the intricacies of negotiations in a classroom setting, particularly the weekly case-based simulated negotiations. Additionally, Dan’s coursework in the New Products Lab helped him better understand UserTesting interviews, and that exposure came in very handy during his internship at Whirlpool.
Dan leveraged Flexible Curriculum to understand better frameworks for building and managing new businesses, and the complexities of human psychology in workplaces, through classes such as New Venture Strategy and Managerial Decision Making (MDM). He recalls that Anuj Shah’s weekly recorded MDM lectures were so engaging and exciting-they almost felt like Netflix episodes!
Dan emphasizes that it is vital to utilize Flexible Curriculum to step out of your comfort zone and not fall prey to groupthink. While at Booth, he has taken courses across the seven core areas and twelve different subject areas. He also emphasizes the importance of quarterly academic advising sessions—since these helped him get unbiased feedback on classes, streamlined course planning, and allowed for maximization of bid point value.
Our conversation with Morgan Harden and Dan Vandeveer over the past few weeks has given us two additional data points that show the diversity in experience enabled by the Flexible Curriculum at Booth. We will continue this conversation with current students who have interests in Private Equity and Technology in the upcoming weeks. In the meantime, here is the link to other articles in our series on the Flexible Curriculum.
