ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: Military Students Thrive in Online MBA

It was 4 a.m., but Chuck Millison, OMBA ’15, was awake, attending class with his MBA cohorts at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. They were stateside, while Millison was in Qatar. Sometimes he was in Afghanistan or Jordan or Kuwait, but he stayed connected to his studies, thanks to the Smith Online MBA Program.

“The professors were very amenable to working with my schedule,” says Millison, a technical sergeant with the military at the time. “I had such great support that I didn’t have to take a hiatus.”

Millison was first stationed in Louisiana, then deployed for four months to the Middle East. He wanted an MBA program that was flexible, virtual and reputable in the Baltimore-Washington region, where he planned to move afterward. When he stumbled upon Smith’s new online MBA, he immediately applied.

The program, launched in 2014, has a new cohort starting each quarter. Students begin and end their program with an in-person residency to become acquainted with their fellow students. The face-to-face meetings were “absolutely wonderful,” Millison says. “It led to better accountability to my cohort members, and to stay in touch.”

The OMBA is rigorous and demanding, says professor Judy Frels, academic director of the program. It’s designed for “someone who is self-motivated, disciplined, organized and has a love for learning,” she says.

The program is currently made up of about 25 percent military students and also attracts many working parents who don’t have the time to commute on-site for classes. The students average about eight years of work experience from a wide range of industries.

For Millison, who didn’t have a business background, the OMBA helped him transition from the military to civilian life. Currently an analyst at Huron Consulting, a management consultancy in health care, he credits the OMBA for propelling him ahead of his onboarding class at his new job.

“My experience at UMD actually put me ahead of the rest of my onboarding cohort, to the extent that our facilitators invited me to explain certain principles in areas such as data modeling, accounts receivable and bond ratings,” he says. “Without the wonderful instruction from all of the Smith School professors, I never would have been able to find myself in such an excellent position.” /RY/

For more information about the online MBA program at Smith, visit: onlinemba.umd.edu.