Page 28 - BusinessWest July 7, 2021

Maintaining Momentum
Isenberg Turns the Pandemic into a Learning Experience
WBy George O’Brien
hen Anne Massey arrived at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst in the late summer
of 2019, she came with a lengthy set of plans, goals, and ambitions for an institution that was steadily moving up in the ranks of the nation’s business schools and determined to further enhance its reputation.
The overarching plan was to decide what was being done right, what could be done better, and how the school could continue and even acceler- ate its ascendency with those rankings.
Masse was already making considerable head- way with such initiatives when COVID-19 arrived just eight months later and turned normalcy on its ear. But she was determined not to let the pandemic create a loss of focus or momentum.
And almost 16 months after students went home for a spring break from which they would not return, she can say with a great deal of con- fidence that she has succeeded with that broad mission.
In fact, the pandemic may in some ways have even created more momentum for Isenberg, which is now the top-ranked public business school in the Northeast.
Indeed, those at the school have used the past 15 months as a valuable learning experience, said Masse, who was most recently the chair of the
Wisconsin School of Business. She stressed repeatedly that this was a time, as chal- lenging as it was, not to simply get through or survive, and as a homework assignment for her staff, she strongly recommended Ryan Holiday’s book The Obstacle Is the Way — The Timeless Art of Turning Trials Into Triumph.
“I said early on that we’re not going to be looking at this pandemic, and all the things that it wrought for us in terms of remote teaching, remote learning, and remote work, as a short-term problem that we’re just trying to solve,” she explained. “I said that we’re going to learn things, and we’re going to carry them over to when we came back and be better than we were in March of 2020.”
She believes the school will be better because of how it has learned to use tech- nology to do things differently and in some ways better than before, but also because of the many experiences working together as a team to address challenges and find solutions.
Moving forward, Masse said those at Isen- berg, whether they’ve read Holiday’s book or not, are responding well to the notion of looking at obstacles as opportunities and not letting chal-
Anne Massey says that early on, she told faculty and staff at Isenberg that the pandemic was not to be looked at as “a short-term problem we’re just trying to solve.” Instead, it has been a learning experience on many levels.
28 JULY 7, 2021
EDUCATION
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