A year at Acton was a challenge, but made me a stronger person. - Andrew Hull '06
Selected Comments from the Forbes article "Now It's Time to Get Your Hands Dirty"
02/11/2005
A Real-World
MBA…
Jeff Sandefer loves students like Alicia Goldberg…One afternoon last year Goldberg was leading a group in a contest to see who could sell more rug-cleaning
contracts for an Austin, Tex. Service Master franchisee. She didn’t hesitate, stepping into every funeral parlor in town and walking away with a couple of contracts
the franchisee still has.
Acton would be different from the ground up.
Students get evaluated…their grades depend on how they do in exercises and
discussions of 250 case studies, mostly from the Harvard Business School. Some deal with the tumultuous first days of a new business: Do you charge ahead, even if it
means misleading investors to survive? Admit failure?
There are no lectures; students must put themselves in the uncomfortable shoes of the business owner and
wrestle with his dilemmas.
Some action courses are simulations. Students might run a call center…or help an elementary school plan ways to assist needy
students.
One required class is called “Life of Meaning.” Students write out personal and financial goals they’d like to achieve by age 30, 40 and so forth,
estimating how much time they expect to spend with family and on charitable activities, as well as on their businesses. The result is something of a psychological
balance sheet, an accounting of the pluses and minuses incurred en route to a life’s dream.
Making a Profound Difference
“I believe each of our students
has a special gift that will make a profound difference- if we can help them find it- by immersing [them] in the struggles of real entrepreneurs,” says Sandefer, who
names his school after Lord Acton (1834-1902), the British historian and champion of political and religious freedom.
That means 80 to 90 hours a week of
classes and study groups taught not by academics but by business executives and entrepreneurs like Jeffrey Serra, former chief of Phibro Energy U.S.A., who teaches
accounting; Robert Adams, founder of Tejas Ventures and incubator AV Labs (marketing); and Jack Long, founder of package-delivery system Lone Star Overnight
(operations). Sandefer himself teaches cash management and finance.
Revolutionary Governance Model
The school’s ten full- and part-time faculty operate
as if they were working in the private sector. There’s no tenure; teachers live by student evaluations that can determine whether an instructor keeps his job, and if
he does, what kind of bonus he gets.
