AGSM MBA (Executive) student talks to AFR about AGSM alumni scholarship

AUTHOR: Australian Financial Review   DATE: 01.05.05   ISSUE 1, 2005

MBA (Executive) student Micaela Cronin says social work is "in my blood" because her mother and grandmother worked in the field.

But when she graduated in fine arts from RMIT to specialise in print making, she never imagined she would work as the executive officer, homeless support services, for St Vincent de Paul aged care and community services.

Let alone be doing an MBA.

"I saw an advertisement for the inaugural AGSM alumni community leadership scholarship, applied and got it."

But although her bachelor of social work from Monash and graduate diploma in community development, are appropriate for her job she needed management training.

Having just finished her first subject, managing people and organisations, Cronin says she has found it easier than she thought to return to study.

She kept her workload to one subject per semester (one lecture a week) to meet heavy work and family commitments.

"I want to do the degree properly and there's a lot of work and reading involved, including four assignments per subject.

"What I like about the program is the quality of the study material and the support we have to help us write essays and study."

Cronin was quite deliberate about which subject to study first: one that she felt familiar with.

She has used what she learned to ease her organisation's transition from a welfare agency with a meal service that been running at a loss to one that had to behave like a business and balance the budget.

"We had a huge conflict between welfare as a business, with a responsibly to spend money wisely, and welfare which has as its core value the responsibility to care for people ... the message we need to get across to staff and clients is we can't do much good if we can't balance our budgets."

"Successful businesses are answerable to all stakeholders, which in our case include community and government funds, and some in my sector aren't so good at this."

Cronin says going to class has kept her up with business and management thinking as well as broadened her contacts.

"It's so great," she says. "I'm the only one from the community sector, so I've got a lot to offer the other students too.

"One of my fellow students manages a $150 million project and here I am running crisis accommodation for clients who might be just out of prison and need a crisis management plan so that their rights and the rights of staff are protected."

First published April 11, 2005, as " Reforming Welfare." © 2005 Copyright John Fairfax Holdings Limited. www.afr.com. Reprinted with permission.