Monthly Archives: April 2012

Looking in a student perspective, I think that the overall core values of the students in Baruch includes Education, challenge, quality recognition, and professional growth. Core values is defined by Collins and Porras in their article “Building Your Company’s Vision” as the essential and enduring tenets of an organization that have intrinsic value and importance to those inside the organization. Baruch College operates to become an institution that provides their students a challenging and quality education that is very useful in their student’s professional growth. Baruch students in turn live by Baruch’s core values and apply it in their individual selves. This set of values makes the school unique than any other college.

A student’s envisioned future will include professionalism, personal growth, and integrity among others. Whatever the student learned while in Baruch will have an impact in their future. As a business school, most students will envision the values I’ve listed because it is very important to assure ourselves that we can grow and live up a strong set of values in their professional lives.

Core values are those values we hold which form the foundation on which we perform work and conduct ourselves. From my three years at Baruch, I have learned that this is a college filled with diverse and different people who have their own set of beliefs and values, but if you dig deeper, you can see they aren’t much different than ourselves. I see a lot of students with wisdom, professionalism, pursuit of a goal, leadership, creativity and teamwork.  From these values they and I hold, I have made friendships and worked with very smart students which made me wanna strive to work harder. I have noticed how independent, social and open minded Baruch students are, which differs greatly from a college I went to my freshman year. What stands out is Baruch students willingness for hard-work and willingness to help and serve other students when help is in need. These are all traits that create a strong and wholesome environment, where diversity and holding basic values can create harmony and accomplishments.

In the article “Building Your Company’s Vision”, it explains that “core values are essential and enduring tenets of an organization.” It also points out that core values are naturally in us and doesn’t require us to validate it in order to prove to the world that we contain it.  Collins adds that there is “no universally right set of core values that applies to a company or organization…the key is not what core values an organization has, but that it has any core values at all.” This is all based on a person’s attempt to stay true to themselves and not change for anyone. If this is applied, you will get a better sense of who you are and what values are truly important to you. For students at Baruch, I can say we all share at least one of those important values, which in all creates such a great college environment and socially creates valuable friendships.

As stated in the article Building Your Company’s Vision by Collins and Porras, “Core values are the essential and enduring tenets of an organization… [They] require no external justification; they have intrinsic value and importance to those inside the organization” (Collins & Porras 66). From this definition, I would describe the core values of Baruch students as ambition, commitment, personal/professional growth, pursuit of a goal, and respect. I believe these are the core vales since many Baruch students find the time and motivation to both be fulltime students and have a fulltime job or internship outside of school. This clearly shows that Baruch students are ambitious and strive towards personal and professional growth. It also shows that they are committed to pursue the goal of obtaining a certain college degree or getting the necessary competence for a certain job. In addition, I believe that respect is one of the core values Baruch students hold since everyone is respectful of the different cultures, languages, nationalities, backgrounds, beliefs, interests, and so on that Baruch students bring to the school.

I think that most students at Baruch would describe their envisioned future as having a well-paid job at a respectable company, in the process of obtaining a MBA, or building their own company. These future scenarios all eco the core values of Baruch students, and as Collins and Porras states, core values are “so fundamental and deeply held that they will change seldom, if ever” (Collins & Porras 67). Thus, even when the students of Baruch will graduate and tackle their future pursuits, their core values will still be a part of them.

In the 3 years I have been at Baruch I have met and become friends with many students who are from different parts of the world. Most of these students have inherited values from their families and others have learned them while in school. Some of the values I have seen in them are: accomplish, achievement, community, education, integrity, friendship, personal growth, pursuit of goal and teamwork. New students might have one or two different values as the ones I mentioned but overall I think all of us have between three to five values in common which I believe are: pursuit of a goal, education, teamwork, personal growth and achievement. In the article by Collins and Porras “Building your Company’s Vision” mentions that core values are very important because they are the essential and enduring principles of an organization and they must stand the test of time. This statement is very true because students at Baruch have many different values but the ones will stand for a long time I think are pursuit of goal, achievement and personal growth. The other values I mentioned above are indeed values that they have now as students but I believe they will fade as time goes by and may not become core values in their lives.
As stated it in the article Building your Company’s Vision “envisioned future consist of two parts: a 10 to 30 audacious goal plus vivid descriptions of what it will be like to achieve the goal”. The majority of the students at Baruch who are business majors envision landing an internship or a full time job in big corporations such as Ernest and Young, Deloitte, IBM or Chase while others who are international students plan to go back to their country of origin and work there in a big corporation or in their family business. This is their short term goal but their long goals I believe are to work there for a long time until they finally reach their goal of becoming the new CEO or CFO of any of those business or corporations. I think that the values learned in school along with their capabilities, convictions and their commitment to personal growth would make them to be the next great generation of leaders that can make changes to the world where we live now.

This has been my first and only semester in Baruch because I’m an exchange student but so far what I’ve noticed several interesting values in the students overall. First, I would say that they are responsible, when there’s an exam you could notice that everybody studied beforehand and that they are well prepared. Other interesting value is the perseverance that everybody has, it is a long semester and in spite of that you can notice that even at the end of it the people give their best in every class. Most of this values I think that are very related to the fact that this is a public university, therefore the most of the people that study here are not very wealthy so they just want to work hard with hopes of improving their quality of life.

If you think about the core ideology that defines Baruch College, as Collins and Porras say in their article: “it provides the glue that holds an organization throughout time”. For that matter what really defines Baruch College as a whole is its business orientation. If you make a survey in campus asking about why everybody chose this institution, most of the people would tell you because it has a great reputation of being an excellent business school. The point that I’m trying to make is that because of its great focus in the business career you can define Baruch College as an educational institution whose values are strictly related to the ones that define business itself. For example, nowadays the professional that wants to be successful in the business area has to be a very informed person, therefore has to read a lot. That’s one of the reasons you could always see a huge amount of people in the library reading, taking advantage of the vast amount of resources the college has for its students.

Core values are those set of small rules, guiding principles that have an intrinsic value and yet they are timeless. From my experience of three years in Baruch, and the time I have spent with several students, I have noticed quite a few important values among them; some individuals have more, others only posses a few, yet I have always find great people next to me. I would summarize the major values as being the following: accomplish, ambition, commitment, community, education, humility, integrity, pursuit of a goal, relationship, simplicity and teamwork. Diversity means different background, different education and different family, however it seems like Baruch is very homogeneous is terms of critical values possessed by its student’s body.

 The envisioned future is a combination of something concrete on one hand, and something unrealized on the other, made of dreams and aspirations. I think students at Baruch are educated and trained to be the next generation of leaders in a very diverse, unstable and tough global society.

I would describe the core values of the students of Baruch as being practical realism, accountability, achievement, ambition, challenge, and commitment. After going through 4 years as a student in this school, I’ve realized that all of these values are essential in order to succeed. To surpass the continuous hardships that Baruch places in our way, you must have the endurance to stick to these values.

The envisioned future of Baruch’s students seems to be sustainable personal growth and success in all ventures that they try to pursue. In “Building Your Company’s Vision”, Collins and Porras did a good job of explaining how necessary having a big, hairy, audacious goal was. I’ve learned that many of us attend Baruch with a grave misconception of just how we will spend our time here. We all have that big goal. We often come thinking we have a “plan” all set out when in reality our plans are often flawed and we are just blind to that fact. We try to see ourselves 5 to 10 and sometimes 15 years from now because that is a constant question asked in Baruch. It isn’t until you face that first “hard professor” that you begin to realize just what it means to work hard and still not see any progression in your plan. It even comes to the point where many of my peers have had to alter their educational and career paths in order to continue on towards the goal of graduating, getting a job, and finally leaving Baruch.

In many ways, Baruch tries to support the goals and dreams of their students, but at the same time they make it nearly impossible for those same students to reach those goals without having their spirits crushed and their values questioned.

I have enjoyed reading the posts to date.  One of the values I see of Baruch students is independent thinking.  There is no effort or sense of needing to make sure one’s response fits within an accepted norm.  It is very refreshing.

In the article “Building Your Company’s Vision” by Collins and Porras, it is stated that “core ideology is something you discover – by looking inside. It’s not something you can invent, much less fake.” I very much appreciate the use of the word discover here because for me, finding my core values has really been a discovery process. My time at Baruch has certainly contributed to the evolution of my self-definition and it will continue to do so even after I leave via the people I will stay in contact with.

I think I have a unique insight into classifying the values of Baruch students because I can compare it to my previous institutions. I went to high school in a small town in Rhode Island; it was in white suburbia and it was all I really knew. Then I went to NYU and was introduced to a variety of people from all over the country. Two years later I found my way to Baruch which has introduced me to people from all over the world. Yet, I generally do not differentiate these three institutions by the amount of diversity within each one. Instead, I think Baruch deserves more than that. From what I have seen, especially compared to the students at NYU, is that Baruch students value modesty and hard-work more so than any group of people I have ever encountered. There are truly remarkable people all around me at this school but they remain hidden unless I make the effort to get to know them. A lot of people that are doing remarkable things usually like to wear a billboard showcasing all their achievements. But I think Baruch students are different. They value social change, political/religious freedom and acceptance, kindness, opportunities, and community. Not only that but they work hard to align their life with these values and have done a lot of respectable things because of it. Yet, they do it in a very sincere and modest way. I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to realize this. As I am moving from NYC in a few months, I will always regret not getting to know more of the students here, but I will always cherish my time at Baruch and the people who gave it such character.

I think most students here envision themselves working in corporate America and earning a decent living. But beyond that, especially from the entrepreneurship program, students want to change the world that they live in to make it better. They want a better world for their children politically, socially, and economically. Business is the avenue that have chosen for this goal and I think it aligns with their values of community, opportunity, and hard-work.

I also believe most Baruch students share similar, if not, the same basic core values inherently.  We all are attending a business school that is very diverse, all coming from a strong family background and values. Whether it may be supporting your family, making them happy with your pursuits, our  education and  careers, or even starting a new family on your own. All of us in the Zicklin School of Business all share an envisioned future in which we aim to be a  businessman or woman after we graduate or some time in life.  The article by Collins mentioned that your core values are extremely important to stay true to yourself throughout life because it makes you who you are and whether or not years down the line your customer base changes, you will always be acknowledged in a  respected manner for that. It also stated that it is more important to know who you are than where you’re going. This is one of my favorite parts of the article because I believe that is  such a powerful and truthful quote and I’m sure Baruch students would agree with this as well. We all are studying entrepreneurship in this class, but will we open up a business of our own one day? That we cannot answer now. We can answer that it is in our interest and it is our BHAG in life.