SIEML will accept 25 students this summer and will take place every year at one of six participating UC business and management schools. They include UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, UCSD’s Rady School of Management, the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, UC Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business, UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and UC Riverside’s A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management.
“We hope the experience for those students selected to attend SIEML will aid them in successful enrollment in professional degree programs such as the MBA,” UC Provost Lawrence Pitts said in a Jan. 24 UC Office of the President press release.
The program is currently offered to undergraduate students enrolled at Morehouse College, Hampton University, Howard University and Florida A&M, among others.
Selected students will be offered an all-expenses-paid trip to one of the six UC business programs. They will spend two weeks learning about different areas within business. Instructors will consist of UC business school faculty.
UCSD Rady School of Management Dean Robert S. Sullivan said that students will learn networking skills as they are introduced to chief executive officers and chief financial officers from local businesses. The participating students will also be guaranteed internships in management environments.
“The program will allow the [UC system] to build relationships and a long-term rapport with the faculty at the universities that are recommending the students,” Sullivan said. “Even when they go back we are hoping there will be mentor-student relationship, and that they will continue to communicate beyond the two-week program.”
Executive Director of the undergraduate program at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business Erica Walker said that deans from the six business schools sent letters to partnering historically black colleges and asked that they begin to identify students for the program. Students will be selected based on their academic performance during their first year of college. According to the SIEML website, students must have at least a 3.0 GPA, demonstrate leadership skills and display an interest in management positions in the fields of business, engineering, healthcare, government or the non-profit sector. Applicants must also receive recommendations from faculty at their colleges and universities.
“We are limiting the pilot program to 25 students mainly for budgetary reasons,” Walker said. “After the first summer we will learn some things and at that point we will look at expanding the program to larger numbers as well as other underrepresented groups such as Hispanics.”
Prospective students must turn in applications by March 30 and will be notified by April 16 if they are selected. The 2012 program will run from Sunday, May 20 through Saturday, June 2.
SIEML will last for two consecutive summers with the initial session taking place at UC Berkeley. For the second summer, the students will be invited to a different UC campus not yet identified for another two weeks.