BMCC graduate Bruno Ocamopo (’05) was one of only 78 students in the country selected to attend a weeklong summer program at Harvard Business School, which pits students into a scenario where they live and work as if they were actual Master’s degree candidates there.
The HBS Summer Venture in Management Program, founded in 1983, offers minority undergraduates — most of whom often have little or no background in business — the opportunity to explore the business sector through an interactive case method system of learning.
Quite the Experience
Ocampo and his fellow students took 14 classes over the course of a week, exceeding by one class the 13 that M.B.A. students typically take. His schedule looked something like this: each morning, he would participate in a small study group, then during the day he’d attend class, taking part in lively discussions that put him in the seat as a corporate executive grappling with immensely important decisions. Then, at night, it was all reading and studying.
A native of Colombia and currently a senior at Baruch College, Ocampo said he was previously unfamiliar with the style of teaching he experienced during the program. But, he said, that was a good thing.
“Why I find the case study so effective is that everybody has an opportunity to participate” he told The Harvard University Gazette in a recent story. “I get to learn different perspectives on how to approach a problem. … It’s the most effective way of learning by far.”
Ocampo also said the commonality students shared led them to become good friends in just one week.
“You create a really strong bond,” said Ocampo, who dreams of becoming president of his home country, Colombia. “I have probably 15, 20 friends so far.”
A Professor’s Point of View
Business administration professor Benjamin Esty, who has served as faculty chair of the program for the past eight years, said those bonds are a goal of the program.
“With the case method you learn by engaging in dialogue, not passive observance from the sidelines,” Esty told the Gazette. Esty teaches the very first and last case of the week, giving him the opportunity to see the students’ transformation.
“If Monday they are just dipping their toe in, they are diving and splashing around and having a great time by Friday. They’ve grown in comfort and confidence, in a lot of ways,” he said.
Esty told the paper that one of the program’s purposes is to “stop people from self- selecting out, saying ‘I’ll never get into an Ivy League school. I’ll never get into a business school, I’ll never get into Harvard,’ and just not even trying.”
And, according to Esty, it works.
“You actually, in a quite compressed time, see this transformation in how many of them think about themselves, their aspirations, their possibilities,” he said.
