Going for the MBA Degree
At the gut level, all of us know that education is a good thing. But all too often we behave as though we don’t know it. If we want something, we usually fiddle with the idea for months to eventually give it up. Well, a natural first step to taking action is to “just do it.”
In fact, the most helpful ideas and results thereof have come from following my instincts. So here I am writing an essay about life experiences that have led me to pursue a Master’s degree in Business Administration.
Frankly, I am not sure why I want to pursue the MBA degree. In simple terms, it comes across as the right thing to do or as being so obvious a thing I should do that if I don’t, then, I must be really stupid. The truth is I don’t need the degree at all. I am approaching 40 years of college teaching, and I still have the passion for more of the same. To tell another truth, though, I want to know what makes the management and business people tick. Is it the same as those of us who think about the role of posture in regulating stroke volume and therefore cardiac output and, if so, how does regular exercise help the cardiovascular system adjust appropriately to postural conditions?
In retrospect, as I think about the question “Why pursue an MBA?” It occurs to me that it might be a function of having been asked to drop a religious studies class in the Winter Quarter of 1993-94 (my first year on the CSS campus). As I recall, the teacher said, “You aren’t learning anything. Your answers completely disagree with the book.” Allow me to state that the book was about faith, but the teacher was interested only in her approach to faith. My Baptist beliefs were either too unstructured or foolish for her, so I was asked to leave the class.
The instructor was wrong then for forcing me to drop the class, and she is still wrong today. I know because I am a teacher. I know what it means to teach, to work with new ideas, and to guide students while sharing values (even when they disagree with mine). Also, the experience caused me to think about what it means to believe in John 3:16 and, as a result, when my 275 page book on “A Father’s Gift of Prayer” is published this in Spring 2009, I plan to send a copy to the teacher!
In short, I am a persistent person when it comes to decision-making. I don’t see earning the MBA a problem or even a necessity. Rather, it is an opportunity and, interestingly, one that is likely to benefit the students of exercise physiology. You see, I believe that exercise physiology is on the verge of national recognition in the 21st century as a healthcare profession. Certainly this is a big part of the 10 years of work I have put into the professional infrastructure of the American Society of Exercise Physiologists (ASEP).
Today, the leadership of ASEP has a bias for getting on with the professionalism of exercise physiology even though many of the doctorate prepared exercise physiologists (usually college teachers) are still living the sports medicine illusion. Instead of testing ideas and getting closer to their students, they are convinced of their position as a “physiologist.” Of course they don’t have a degree in physiology per se, so they are regularly out of touch with reality and, frankly, they look stupid to those who get it. Similarly, just as exercise science is not exercise physiology, physiology by itself doesn’t constitute a healthcare profession. But when the graduate of an accredited exercise physiology program passes the ASEP Board Certification, the benefit is an increase in entrepreneurship opportunities to ensure financial (career) success with credibility.
Academic exercise physiologists who are interested in doing research to build their resumes and travel to meetings don’t get this point. They fail to respect their students and the value of a college education to locate a good job in the public sector without having to get additional degrees unless they want to. In other words, the undergraduate degree should have a career-driven value that is worth the tuition dollars. I believe it was my father who said that “the basic purpose of an education has far more to do with its financial rewards and credibility than its looks or appeal.” Another way of saying the same thing is this: “Never acquire an academic degree you can’t get a job with.”
As I look to the future, the underlying infrastructure developments in the ASEP organization are directed at helping students be successful upon leaving college. For the most part, I had the instinct to write the ASEP bylaws and constitution in 1997 but I needed to surround myself with core values that leaders and managers hold dear. That is why I completed the Master of Arts in Management. It was an excellent experience that helped me in different ways to write the following books since 2001:
•Professional Development of Exercise Physiology (2001)
•Exercise Physiology: Professional Issues, Organizational Concerns, and Ethical Trends (2005)
•Exercise Physiology as a Career: A Guide and Sourcebook (2006)
•Is Sports Nutrition for Sale? (2006)
•Ethical Standards and Professional Credentials in the Practice of Exercise Physiology (2007)
Above all, these books were written and published because I am convinced “the student comes first.” It is especially hard for me to understand why the academic exercise physiologists don’t know this very important point. Needless to say, colleges should exist for the students and not for the teachers! The trouble is the teachers think students pay to attend college so the teachers can do their thing. This is unfortunately a very sad fact.
In order to help the profession of exercise physiology and, ultimately, the students of exercise physiology when they graduate, completing the MBA degree will give me the credibility to write books that will guide graduates in designing their own Exercise Physiology Healthcare businesses. After all, exercise is medicine and exercise physiologists are experts in developing exercise prescriptions. Of course the MBA speaks to ethics, leadership, and a host of other important topics, issues, and concepts that will help shape and manage my future ideas as well.
In response to the second question, “…having a significant impact on a person, group, or organization…and personal characteristics and skills that qualified me as a leader….” – to some extent I have answered it. However, to say a bit more, I believe I have changed to course of history for exercise physiology with the founding of the ASEP organization (http://www.asep.org/). Because I have strongly identified with students and their concerns for employment, it was natural for me to finally separate myself from the sports medicine way of thinking to be part of the first-ever professional way of thinking as an exercise physiologist. And, strangely enough, what impelled me to think outside of the box was a self-generated analysis of the huge mistake of the exercise science degree. It commands no respect because there are no exercise scientists in the real world, and it is not a career-driven academic degree and therefore when students graduate it is a useless degree program. Good college degree programs should be meaningful, as well as interesting. Today, 95% of schools miss important opportunities to help students by continuing to offer exercise science!
Since co-founding the ASEP organization, I helped (a) write the first-ever Code of Ethics for exercise physiologists, (b) developed the first-ever accreditation guidelines (along with a Board of Accreditation and, then, accredited six academic institutions), (c) developed a national certification that is known today as the ASEP Board Certification, which is the only such exam in the world for exercise physiologists with 250 certified EPCs since 2000, (d) developed a licensure bill along with a Board of Licensure; the latter submitted the bill twice to the Minnesota State Legislature, (e) developed a sister organization known as The Center for Exercise Physiology-online to oversee the Boards, (f) developed three electronic journals and the ASEPNewsletter, (g) developed the first-ever Standards of Professional Practice, and much more.
The bottom line is that I am persistent at what I do, as in writing this essay. I got up at 2:00 am to make sure it would be finished and turned in Wednesday morning, 9/3/08 by 8:30 am, to show my respect for the MBA program and the application process. In part, I have learned that assuming the leadership position is not easy. I have lost more friends than I have made. It seems that most people are unwilling to embrace the change process. As they say, life is too comfortable – so why rock the boat? The trouble is that their failure to rock the boat is why it is sinking along with their students.
Interestingly, I have also learned that change is indeed a process, not an event. Physical therapy got its start in 1915. Strange as it sounds, because they are interested in pulling exercise into their licensure bills, they are strong competitors along with medical doctors who are looking to charge patients for exercise prescriptions. Physical therapists have been at it for almost 95 years while ASEP has been at it for 10 years. Building a stable organizational institution takes time, but fortunately with the Internet and the isolated persistence of dedicated individuals, the job is getting done.
But, let me say a word about how slow I actually am. It was not until I moved to Duluth that I finally figured out that exercise physiology had been headed in the wrong direction for decades. Just imagine, I completed the PhD in exercise physiology in 1975 (when Cokes were in and water was out) and it was not until I assumed the Chair position at St. Scholastica did it occur to me that exercise science was not exercise physiology. It is not the sort of observation or insight that requires special skills. I should have known the truth earlier. Perhaps I did but was not willing to examine the facts.
There is one crucial point, however, that should be mentioned in terms of leadership. While I have had no difficulty in leading “Tommy Boone” from one place to another, in dealing with stress, tension, and challenges, I have learned that I grow tired of others not having the same motivation, drive, or guts to make a decision and live with it. I guess that is also why I am not a good coach and have never had an interest in coaching sports.
Still, in all of my readings on leadership, I know that if others aren’t following you, then, you are not a leader or at least not in the usual sense of the word. Certainly, a leader can lead in a multitude of ways and not just the standard way of thinking as so often defined in the popular books by Warren Bennis or John C. Maxwell’s work. It seems that the quest for learning and living the leadership role is more of an intimate experience with the highs and the lows, much like life. I know that I have made mistakes since the 1997 founding of ASEP, as I have in other areas of my life but that is life, too. Without mistakes, there would likely be few benchmarks from which to gauge the shape of things. So, in some sense, I know making mistakes is all part of learning how to be a leader and in helping others value the same.
In terms of the most challenging aspects of being in the MBA program, it is likely to center on the “money side” of the degree. Accounting and finance are all intuitive and integral parts of the degree program. As I recall, I enjoyed the accounting course in the MAM degree program. Much of the ratio thinking is similar to physiology ratios as well. That came as a surprise to me, as well as some comfort I might add. Perhaps, in a nutshell, the most challenging aspect of the MBA experience will be getting 100% into it and understanding it, and then making it part of me. I know this is what has happened with the ASEP experience. I live it 365/24/7 much to my wife’s displeasure on occasion, as in a 650 page book I must finish and get to the publisher by the end of September, 2008.
Another challenging aspect is the reality that I am an “excellent-average person.” There is hardly anything exceptional about me. I am in fact no better or worse that most of my colleagues. Experience tells me that I will have to work pretty hard to do what is expected of a student in the MBA program. I believe I have the will to do that, and I have the experience having done it before, as well as being strongly driven from within. I am willing to sacrifice free time to get the job done, knowing also that I will be teaching exercise physiology courses and related laboratory sessions 23 hours a week during the Fall Semester, 2008. Hence, understandably, enrolling in the MBA program is a bit of risk, if not wildly irrational, but I have the desire and motivation to do it. Remember the saying, “Believe you can and you will.”
Regarding the “relevance of ethical decision-making” – the focus of my book, “Is Sports Nutrition for Sale?” was written because of my concerns about exercise physiologists who promote sports supplements in their sports nutrition courses. For one thing, far too many sports nutrition instructors are also paid consultants by the sports supplement industry. It is an obvious conflict of interest when they promote the industry’s supplements in class without students being aware of their teacher’s financial motivation to do so. Ethical thinking is a vital part of any organization, group, or academic degree program. After all, teaching is a profession that is also defined by ethical thinking. This is why I have written so much about this topic in exercise physiology. Take for example the following published articles:
•Boone, T. (1995). Code for Exercise Physiologists. The Exercise Standards and Malpractice Reporter. 9:1:1, 4-6.
•Boone, T. (2002). The Exercise Physiology Code of Ethics: A Dilemma or a Standard of Conduct? Professionalization of Exercise Physiologyonline. 5:11 [Online]. http://faculty.css.edu/tboone2/asep/EXERCISEPHYSIOLOGY
CodeOfEthics.html
•Boone, T. (2002). Exercise Physiology Quackery and Consumer Fraud. Professionalization of Exercise Physiologyonline. 5:5 [Online]. http://faculty.css.edu/tboone2/asep/ExercisePhysiologyQuackery.html
•Boone, T. (2003). Ethical Thinking: What Is It and Why Does It Matter? Professionalization of Exercise Physiologyonline. 6:6 [Online]. http://faculty.css.edu/tboone2/asep/EthicalThinkingAND
exercisephysiology.html
•Boone, T. (2003). Organizational Code of Moral Principles and Values. Professionalization of Exercise Physiologyonline. 6:3 [Online]. http://faculty.css.edu/tboone2/asep/OrganizationalCodeOfMoral
Principles.html
In summary, I am applying to the MBA program at St. Scholastica because of several reasons. The most important is the quality and credibility of the faculty. Having had the opportunity to take courses from them before, I find it a rare opportunity to do the same once again.