Colleen O'Connor

The Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth's graduate business school, is minutes from our main undergraduate campus! In fact, you can see the big pillars of Tuck Hall from Baker library, the main undergraduate library on campus. While undergrads can't enroll at Tuck, that does not mean we can't create meaningful connections with Tuck professors and students. Tuck professors, from my experience, are more than willing to sit down with an undergrad over coffee or lunch to chat about really anything! I've had some wonderful conversations about China's emerging economy, the role of entrepreneurship in international development, economic sustainability in non-profits, the pros and cons of consulting… the list goes on and on! The majority of these conversations came from me just taking the initiative to send a short email to a professor whose interests seemed to align with my own. From these conversations have come research opportunities, sagacious advice, and possibilities for future collaboration. And, Tuck professors are not the only ones with experience who are willing to sit down to chat! Tuck students have also responded well to cold-call emails and have provided me with some great insights about their experiences as young professionals in the business world.

Dartmouth doesn't offer business as a major, but there are plenty of other departments and fields of study that align nicely with my interest in business. I am currently pursuing a major in Economics and Chinese with a minor in Human-Centered Design. For my economics major, I'm following the international economics track, meaning that with these three areas of study, I have essentially created an international business and entrepreneurship course of study! Some of the courses I've taken or will take before I graduate include: International Trade, The Wealth & Violence of Nations, Morality and the Political Economy, Social Entrepreneurship, Product Design, Trade Policy, and Design Thinking, to name a few! With the opportunity to craft a major/minor combination I'm truly interested in, I have been able to mold my fields of study around my personal passions!

To pursue my interests outside of the classroom, I have spent the past two years exploring different business-oriented clubs and organizations. I am currently the Undergraduate Advisor of the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network (and live in the DEN Living Learning Community) and serve on the Executive Board of Women in Business (WIB). I am very happy to be an active leader in both of these organizations, but it took a bit of exploring before I decided that these were the two business-related organizations I wanted to be a part of. Some of the other clubs on campus that I tried before finding the DEN and WIB include Smart Women Securities, Dartmouth Finance Society, the International Business Council, and the Dartmouth Consulting Group. If there's a particular area of business or entrepreneurship that you're interested in, then it's likely that a club exists for it. If it doesn't, then you are more than welcome to start one!