Organization encourages blacks to pursue MBA

Organization encourages blacks to pursue MBA In the movie "Pursuit of Happyness," Chris Gardner, played by Will Smith, tells his son: "You got a dream, you gotta protect it. . . . You want something? Go get it. Period." Paulette Evans, an MBA student at Stetson University and an electrical engineer at General Electric, has the same philosophy. "You can't wait for someone else to plan your life. You take charge and go for what you want," she said.
Gardner went from being a homeless single father on the streets of San Francisco to a Wall Street legend.
Today, 20 years after Gardner's advice to his son, Evans seems to echo his words. Her parents instilled the same principles. "My folks taught us we could do anything we want," she said. "If you want something, fight for it, no matter what."
Evans, 27, grew up in South Carolina. Her mother was a math teacher for 33 years before her recent retirement and her father was an electrician. She doesn't remember hearing her parents talk about discrimination or the problems they may have faced on their jobs.
"I'm sure they did," she said. "They didn't really talk about it. But we knew we were growing up in a new age. Not that discrimination is not there today, but it is not as prevalent as when they were growing up. But they didn't focus on that."
The National Black MBA Association, which has its annual conference in Orlando Sept. 11-16, doesn't focus on the past either.
"The lead character in the 'Pursuit of Happyness' exhibited the same spirit of empowerment and perseverance the National Black MBA Association tries to instill, from teens right on up through the CEO suite," said Dana Gleeson, spokeswoman for the association. "It is deciding what you need to achieve in life and putting in place a plan and being aggressive."
No one is saying it isn't still tough for black professionals. "There definitely have been improvements, but there is some work to be done," Gleeson said.
Black students still make up a small percentage of MBA students in the country. Of the 69,371 MBA graduates in 2004, 5,010 or 7 percent of them were black.
At Stetson University, Evans is one of four blacks out of 80 students in the MBA program. Jeanne Bosco, who administers the program, said the school doesn't have statistics on how the number of black students in the program compares to years past. But in the 25 years she has been at the university, she has seen a slight increase in the number of black students, mostly of students from Africa.
She said she couldn't explain why more black American students don't seek an MBA. "We are trying. We just don't have that many applications," she said.
Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach has undergraduate degrees in business, but does not offer an MBA.
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach offers an MBA in aviation. Of the 79 students in the program, five are black.
The lack of black faculty hurts ERAU's efforts to recruit more black students, said Daniel Petree, dean of the College of Business. "The main barriers are that there are very few African-American Ph.D.s in business and related disciplines available each year, and our industry focus and relatively small size makes us appear risky to those who are available.
"Without visible role models among the faculty, it is difficult for us to persuade potential MBA students that we are a welcoming place. We need to do better," Petree said.
The University of Central Florida in Orlando offers an MBA through Daytona Beach Community College. The program is not offered every year and alternates with other campuses. It was last offered in 2005 and may be again in 2008. The school as a whole has 32 black MBA candidates this year, up from 28 in 2006. In 2006, UCF granted MBA degrees to 18 black students, down from 21 in 2005, but well above 10 in 2004, nine in 2003 and eight in 2002.
Education remains central to the mission of the black MBA association, Gleeson said. "The organization really tries to stress education as being the vehicle to achieve intellectual and economic wealth in the black community," she said.
In its Leaders of Tomorrow program, the MBA association will pay for 125 high school students from around the country to attend the conference in Orlando. "We are targeting students who are not your typical A students. Their grades are in the C range and they may not have the opportunities or get the extracurricular activities the A students get," she said.
"The program gives them the opportunity to see someone who looks like them doing something remarkable in the business community," Gleeson said.
The organization plans to give $55,000 in scholarships to college and MBA students.
Gleeson said more work needs to be done to promote blacks into the CEO suites of Fortune 500 companies.
"We are working with corporations to make those senior and executive level opportunities available to African-Americans," she said. "We are saying African-Americans are part of this organization who are highly skilled, knowledgeable and innovative and have been making great contributions, who are certainly ready to take the helm at the head of the organization."
But Gleeson and the MBA association also are sending out a strong message to students and professionals. "If you have aspirations to be a CEO or eventually own your own business, no longer should you rely on an employer to map that out for you. You have to chart your own course," Gleeson said.
Evans will finish her MBA at Stetson in May and is thinking about the next step in her "Pursuit of Happyness."
She believes the demand for educated black professionals will continue to grow. "More companies realize having a diverse work force is the way to go," she said. "The more views and opinions you have, the better off you are going to be."