2021 Best & Brightest Online MBAs: Jon Milner-Matthews, Imperial College

“An intrapreneur and change leader who wants to change higher education from the inside out.”

Age: 41

Hometown: Honiton, Devon UK

Fun fact about you: I live on a farm and spend more than three hours a day feeding the animals.

Basic studies and degree: Imperial College London, BSc Biology

Where are you currently working? I work for Imperial College as a Credit-to-Cash Transformation Lead. This includes responsibility for promoting change and transformation activities in all order-to-cash processes of the institution, which offers exciting opportunities for change and improvement in a broad portfolio of activities.

What success in your professional career are you most proud of? I’ve made real changes several times and I’m very proud of all of my achievements. Perhaps I am proudest when I saw a student whom I supported in some very challenging personal circumstances as part of one of my caring assignments walk across the stage to graduate. That underpins everything I do as an administrator in higher education. We work to support the academic mission and ultimately to help students reach their potential. knowing that I have contributed to and changed a young person’s life will always be my greatest professional achievement.

Why did you choose this school’s online MBA program? Having spent half my life at Imperial, the school’s program was an obvious choice. It was by no means an automatic program, but the program had to meet my requirements for a high quality program that would help me grow, and my career and the Imperial program had earned a very good reputation as one of the best online programs available.

The online nature of the Imperial Global Online MBA was extremely important to me when I went through the application process in 2018. I felt that the experience of working with people online and being geographically separated at the same time was important for the future of work (little did I know how quickly I would be approved!); Rather than being a niche alternative or an MBA-Lite, the program was a full MBA that shared content with the personal MBAs and was conveyed in a way that better reflected the way the business actually works. The flexibility of the program was also a key factor; Having to commute eight hours a day, I needed to be able to study on the go in my spare time, and the largely (80%) asynchronous approach met that requirement. The strong MINT and entrepreneurial priorities were also drivers. After starting my career in academia, before moving to finance and administration and taking a strong intrapreneurial approach, these priorities matched my interests and the way I work. The elective suite was also very attractive with a wide range of subjects; Since I had a fairly narrow career path on paper, I had the opportunity to demonstrate my diversity and flexibility and stretch beyond my comfort zone.

After all, the diversity of the cohort was decisive for me. As clichéd as it sounds, I’ve met some brilliant people and made friends that will last a lifetime. The online nature didn’t mean we were isolated from each other – far from it. We found and developed ways to interact and keep in touch and talk to each other as a cohort long after the program was over.

What was your favorite part about an online MBA program? Oddly enough, my favorite part of the program was the camaraderie and interpersonal connection within the cohort; We may not have been in a common place, but that hasn’t stopped us from interacting and actually making our interactions wider and more inclusive. We had the opportunity to speak to the entire cohort at any time and people could interact when and when they wanted or had time. In personal interactions, on the other hand, you need both the time and the opportunity to exchange ideas. With a four hour drive (each way) and a young family, I couldn’t have interacted nearly as much as the online format allowed.

W.What was the most surprising thing about an online learning environment? The most surprising thing was how closely we had grown together as a cohort, even though we rarely, if ever, met in person. We built such a strong and active online community that is still thriving today. There will always be groups within groups, but we had a much wider range of interactions than we personally would have ever had.

How did your online experience compare to your classroom experience as a student? As an undergraduate student, my approach to learning was a very classic approach of attending the lecture and then taking notes, including additional reading. I often had direct contact with the lecturers and knew some of them very well. The online experience was completely different. The “lectures” were much more bite-sized videos that allowed you to handle the content much more flexibly; This was a key benefit to the online experience: I was able to interact with the material when it was convenient for my work schedule, rather than having to interact at set times. The lack of direct interaction with teachers wasn’t an obstacle as the cohort had a strong online community (I had barely used WhatsApp before the Global Online MBA, during which time it became the most widely used app on my phone!). There was always someone ready and willing to talk about the topic and share their thoughts and experiences.

What is your best advice to an applicant for a successful online MBA program? Do the best you can. Cohort networking and interaction is more of an active effort in an online program and it is much easier to end up in isolation. Hence, this active step is crucial and will really make all the difference to your experience. Also, imposter syndrome is very real. You are going to run into some really impressive people with outstanding resumes thinking that you don’t belong in the same room as them. Believe me, they probably think exactly the same thing about you!

What Would You Change About An Online MBA Program? While much work has gone into getting online students to attend extracurricular events, there is more to be done in this area. However, the main area I would focus on would be to make the program more interactive through the use of social media to stimulate discussion. For example, the school could post a work or discussion to a group on LinkedIn or the like for people to discuss and interact with before discussing that work in a live session. This would encourage direct interaction more than in a dedicated virtual learning environment by interacting with professionals as they are used to. It would also allow for interaction and discussion between alumni and students to both expand student networks and provide significant additional peer-based learning opportunities.

How has your online education helped you in your current job? The MBA itself not only changed the way I think and work, but the online nature of the program has also been extremely helpful. We all suddenly had to adapt to Zoom, Teams, and other remote work platforms, but online education gave us that experience beforehand. The ability to work with remote and dispersed teams is now more than ever an essential skill and successful online education requires it to be at a very high level. Even if the world as a whole normalizes again, the world of work will never be the way it was again. Remote work will be a feature of the future of work, and those who have studied remotely with colleagues around the world will have extensive experience of how to do it.

Number of hours per week for the online MBA: On average it was about 30-35 hours.

What is your ultimate long-term professional goal? Ultimately, I want to build on my 20+ years of experience in higher education (both as a student and as a professional) to create real change in the way students access and experience education. Education must be accessible to everyone and conform to the modern way of life. We need more flexible and accessible learning opportunities that enable people to continue their education at the highest level while pursuing work and family at the same time. Ideally, I would like to be able to combine this with some scientific research at the same time.

DON’T MISS: MEET THE BEST AND MOST BEAUTIFUL ONLINE MBA Graduates in 2021

source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/2021-best-brightest-online-mbas-jon-milner-matthews-imperial-college/