|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Leadership at the Golisano Institute for Business and Entrepreneurship believes a strong foundation has been laid for their school, which starts its fourth year in September.
Since opening as an alternative to traditional business schools, the Golisano Institute has had two graduating classes at its site in Rochester and will soon have another class up and running in Buffalo.
The school offers two-year certificates for business and entrepreneurship as well as shorter programs for AI and business and strategic AI implementation. Tuition is $8,900 with small cohorts currently made up of about 30 students.
The school’s current focus is not expansion but instead on proving excellent graduate outcomes through job placements and alumni success. President Ian Mortimer says 86% of its first cohort are fully employed at businesses, as entrepreneurs, or as founders making at least $4,000 a month.
“I think (those numbers) are very much in line with our expectations,” he says. “In fact, I think if there’s one area that we’re overachieving, that would be job placement.
“That’s one of the things with a nontraditional program; now that our graduates are going into the workforce and we can share the success stories of them, it’s going to make it a lot easier to be very candid,” he adds. “Most people are smart enough to understand that they want to see evidence that this new model is effective. We have lots of evidence now, and now it’s just a matter of articulating it.”
One such piece of evidence is Jack Kearney, one of the institute’s roughly 50 graduates and a recent Speaking from Experience keynote speaker at the school.
Reflecting on his own journey, Kearney admits he had some uncertainty about his plans after high school graduation. In fact, he originally heard of the school through a Facebook ad from his grandmother.
“I didn’t really know what I wanted to do at all. I was going to go into construction at MCC, but I did come in for an interview (at the Golisano Institute),” he recalls. “The place was all under construction, and I was a little skeptical, I guess.”
But Kearney says he was hooked by the description of the program itself and the passion of the staff he met. He felt it offered a chance to jump into the business world immediately by mimicking those same conditions while studying. He signed up the same day as his interview.
Kearney went on to intern at Herzfeld Advisors, a Miami-based investment firm. He was hired by the company following his internship, based on elements preached by the Golisano Institute, says Thomas Morgan, chief operating officer of Herzfeld Advisors.
Morgan still remembers Kearney’s answer to an interview question, one he calls “the single best answer” he ever heard.
“I said to him, ‘Jack, how do you feel you’re going to compete with the other interns that are all from elite four-year colleges?’ And he said, ‘Well, the question is, how are they going to compete with me? I’ve been working hard for two years, honing my skills, while they’re going to frat parties and they’re taking English Lit. I feel like I’ve built the skill set, and I’’m ready to do it,”’ says Morgan. “I was immediately just like, ‘I’ve got to have this kid.’”
That experience convinced Herzfeld Advisors to help fund student relocation costs.
“I think the premise of the institution, which is to educate people at a reasonable cost so they don’t come out of here with $100,000 of debt and they can start their business careers, I think it’s very laudable,” Morgan says.
The Rochester building at Westfall Road has slowly but consistently grown its student body. It currently has about 200 students with the goal of eventually reaching 450. Capacity at the former Buffalo News Building in downtown Buffalo will be similarly sized, Mortimer says.
The expansion into Buffalo was driven by a variety of factors, including building availability and a connection to the city by two institute board members and Tom Golisano himself.
“It’s important to Tom. I mean, Rochester is his hometown, but Buffalo was his work town for a long time. He has a lot of commitment to Buffalo,” Mortimer says, adding that “part of what we’re trying to do is regionalize the mindset of Western New York.”
Mortimer believes the two cities have the potential to be much closer in the business world, combining to create a regional economic power past their siloed identities. He points to St. Louis as an example of this.
“There’s a lot of small cities in St. Louis. There’s Clayton, there’s St. Louis proper,” he says. “And the benefit of that is, if I live in a metro that has maybe a 100-mile radius, I can view maneuvering within that metro with all the available and opportunities that exist within it.
“We have in Buffalo and Rochester two very culturally singular cities that don’t really cross-pollinate a lot. And that hurts students,” he adds. “If I’m graduating and I’m from Rochester and I’m looking for a job, I want to look across the whole 2.5 million people metro, not 1.1 (million) in Rochester. We want to try to shape people’s understanding that 60 minutes apart is nothing. If you can open up the geography like most metros do, then you have more opportunities for people.”
Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.
The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. See “Leave a Reply” below to discuss on this post. Comments of a general nature may be submitted to the Letters page by emailing [email protected].