The Sam M. Walton College of Business and Clinton School of Public Service celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the first graduate of the MBA/MPS concurrent degree program.
In 2008, the University of Arkansas’s Sam M. Walton College of Business and Clinton School of Public Service announced a new Master of Business Administration and Master of Public Service concurrent degree program.
The program was designed for highly motivated students from all academic backgrounds interested in pursuing and connecting public service and business on a graduate level. Concurrent students can earn dual MBA and MPS degrees in three years. Former and current students describe the rich curriculum, diverse cohorts, high-quality internships, extensive field experiences and study abroad opportunities as transformative.
In celebration and recognition of the 10-year anniversary of the first graduate of the MBA and MPS concurrent degree program, we spoke with several program alumni. Sarah (Clark) McBroom (2010), Kellen Utecht (2013), Jessica Andrews (2014), Kristen Raney (2016), Sean Street (2020) and Molly Bombonato (2021) share their reflections on the concurrent degree program.
Sarah (Clark) McBroom (2010)
Sarah McBroom, equity officer at the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, is an Arkansan dedicated to a life’s work in Arkansas. She is passionate about creating a more prosperous state that benefits all Arkansans. McBroom says her interest in business and public service led her to the Walton MBA and Clinton MPS concurrent degree program. She became the first alumna of the program in 2010.
Today, 10 years later, McBroom echoes the sentiments of other Walton MBA and Clinton MPS concurrent degree students – the program offers a transformative experience. McBroom received an undergraduate degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Coming from a non-business background, McBroom says the diversity in the curriculum, the skills learned, the perspectives shared, the international and field experience gained and relationships built with two cohorts created a rich experience that she does not believe any other graduate program can duplicate.
While a student, McBroom completed a practicum with the Rural Heritage Development Initiative, an internship with the Arkansas World Trade Center, gained field experience at Green Valley Development and completed an International Public Service Project in Bolivia. After graduating, McBroom served six years at the Arkansas Economic Development Commission before joining the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation in 2016.
In her current role, McBroom believes a comprehensive approach, one that includes investments to build community wealth, to strengthen community power and to support high quality education and childcare for current and future workforces, is essential to building a thriving, inclusive economy in Arkansas. McBroom says she is building on 10 years of experience that started with the concurrent degree program to aid Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation’s new mission to relentlessly pursue economic, educational, social, ethnic and racial equity for all Arkansas.
Kellen Utecht (2013)
Kellen Utecht, regional sales manager for Phigenics, graduated from the Walton MBA and Clinton MPS concurrent degree program in 2013. Utecht received an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of North Dakota before joining the North Dakota Small Business Development Center and later serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bulgaria.
Utecht started the University of Arkansas’s MBA and MPS concurrent degree program in Spring 2011. Utecht says he learned the language of business and acquired new skills in sustainability and supply chain management at the Walton College while gaining skills in project management, needs assessment and working with NGOs and nonprofits at the Clinton School.
Utecht says the diverse cohorts and curriculum made the program unique and transformational. When asked about his favorite experience while a student, Utecht reflected on a day in Spring 2011:
“In the morning, I had my ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning] class and we ran an SAP simulation where we tried to optimize a supply chain. In the afternoon, I had my Dynamics of Social Change class where we studied the Salt March. It did not dawn on me that day, but as I reflect on the experience the overlap of the two curriculums and this notion of optimizing supply chains and optimizing services while also taking into consideration human rights… It tied the two programs together so well for me. One can’t exist without the other.”
Utecht says “being able to link business development and social change is more important than ever… Companies value the type of individual that comes out of the concurrent degree program.” Phigenics recently hired their second Walton MBA and Clinton MPS alum, Sean Street.
Jessica Andrews (2014)
Jessica Andrews, chief executive officer at 7hills Homeless Center in Fayetteville, graduated from the concurrent degree program in 2014. Andrews received an undergraduate degree in anthropology and says she had never studied “or really ever been interested in” business. She was initially only interested in pursuing the Master of Public Service degree, but then learned about the Walton MBA and Clinton MPS concurrent degree program at a career fair.
Although she has never been interested in traditional business as a career path, Andrews says business is “still very much an element of the non-profit sector and a big part of its success.” She says pursuing the concurrent degree program accelerated her path into non-profit leadership:
“Going into both programs, not knowing a ton in one area, knowing a little bit more in the other, but exiting knowing a lot about both and being able to blend those professionally has really been an asset.”
During her time as a concurrent student, Andrews served as a social research assistant at The Sustainability Consortium and as a development consultant for the Habitat for Humanity in Bogota, Colombia. After graduating, Andrews worked at the Cisneros Center for New Americans and served as the executive director of Startup Junkie’s Community Venture Foundation before deciding she wanted to work with more vulnerable populations and moving into her current position at the CEO of the 7hills Homeless Center.
Kristen Raney (2016)
Kristen Raney, currently a doctoral candidate at Arizona State University, graduated from the Walton MBA and Clinton MPS concurrent degree program in 2016. Raney double majored in marketing and economics and says she considered other graduate programs in international relations before applying to the MBA and MPS concurrent degree program. Raney says she was able to directly use the skills she received in both programs to deliver meaningful, real-world solutions to the organizations she worked for.
As a graduate student Raney worked with ShurTech Brands, Heifer International, The Sustainability Consortium and the University of Arkansas. Raney says her International Public Service Project with Heifer International in Nepal was “one of the earlier opportunities to integrate her business background into the Clinton School curriculum.” Raney says she loved learning to think at the intersection of these two programs – seeing business through a public service lens and, at the same time, seeing the public service sector through an organizational management lens. She says Clinton MPS students are taught how to get to the root of the issue and identify the questions that need should be asked and Walton MBA students excel at developing and executing solutions. “The two together make a great fit,” Raney says.
In her role as assistant director of the MBA programs at Walton College, Raney says she had the opportunity to build a community with former and prospective concurrent degree students and to help students apply their experiences to achieve their goals. She says having the experience of both the Walton MBA and Clinton MPS programs gave her the chance to be a part of the program and was influential in her decision to stay in academia. Raney is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Business Administration and Management from the W. P. Carey School of Business.
Sean Street (2020)
Sean Street, account manager at Phigenics, received an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering in 2017 and was a student in the accelerated MBA program at the Sam M. Walton College of Business. Street received an MBA in 2018 and will receive an MPS from the Clinton School of Public Service in December 2020.
The high-quality internships, high job placement rate and affordability of the Walton MBA and Clinton MPS concurrent degree program, in addition to the research and study abroad opportunities, led Street to pursue the dual degrees. He says these program features, and, above all else, the people he met while in the program, “continue to provide real value and perspective.”
Street completed a marketing and strategy internship at Wishfin.com in India and a program evaluation internship at MassChallenge in Israel. He also contributed research to a new farmers’ market in North Little Rock as a graduate researcher with the Argenta Downtown Council and investigated the emergency food system in the United States for his capstone project.
By the age of 25, Street had worked with engineers, tenured faculty, business professionals, public officials and volunteers around the world and across the United States. He says effective communication with “different people in different places” was the most valuable skill he developed as an MBA and MPS student.
Reflecting on his experience, Street says he was uncertain about the careers the MBA and MPS degrees would apply to: “With a limited number of program alum, there was no clear career path. If you embrace it then it can be great, but it can also be terrifying.” Street encourages current and prospective concurrent students to “have a little faith, stay grounded and reach out to the program’s alumni.”
Street currently works with Kellen Utecht, regional sales manager at Phigenics and 2014 Walton MBA and Clinton MPS concurrent degree alumnus. Utecht says “being able to link business development and social change is more important than ever… Companies value the type of individual that comes out of the concurrent degree program.”
Molly Bombonato (2021)
Molly Bombonato, sales and category management intern at Henkel, is a current student in the Walton MBA and Clinton MPS concurrent degree program. Bombonato started the MPS program at the Clinton School in Fall 2018 and the MBA program at the Walton College in Fall 2019. Bombonato will graduate from both programs in Spring 2021.
Bombonato received an undergraduate degree in theatre from Wright State University. She spent most of her early professional career based in New York and touring internationally as a professional actress and singer. The Walton MBA and Clinton MPS concurrent degree program brought Bombonato back to Arkansas in 2018. She says she wanted to learn more about the intersection of business and the environment after experiencing the effects of global climate change firsthand as a singer on an Alaskan cruise line.
In her first year at the Clinton School, Bombonato served as a consultant for the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality. She also completed the Clinton School’s International Public Service Project that summer, serving as a monitoring and evaluation consultant for Awamaki in Peru. At the Walton College, Bombonato was awarded a graduate assistantship and is completing a year-long internship at Henkel. Pending COVID-19 travel restrictions, Bombonato will also complete a project-based Global Immersion trip to India with the full-time Walton MBA cohort this spring.
Bombonato says the hands-on experiences in both programs has been an irreplaceable learning opportunity. She says she is “thankful to be a part of both programs” and that she has already seen the value of possessing both perspectives: “It is important to have people within companies that challenge the company to think in innovative ways and come up with creative, socially just, equity focused and sustainable solutions.” Bombonato says having that mindset, the blending of business and public service, is “huge for trying to understand and solve systemic issues.”
