Putting a career on hold for graduate study can make for some anxious moments. Frances Karandy, MBA ’04, MSHFID ’05 took the plunge in 2002, while living and working in Boston after receiving a BA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
“It was a sacrifice to stop making an income,” she says. “But what comes with that is the chance to dive deeper into something that you’re passionate about.”
“It was a sacrifice to stop making an income,” she says. “But what comes with that is the chance to dive deeper into something that you’re passionate about.”
For Karandy, that passion was — and is — an emerging field: user experience design. She enrolled in a Bentley program to earn both an MBA and the Master of Science in Human Factors in Information Design (MSHFID). She and fellow students developed a quick camaraderie.
“Here you are with peers who have also left their jobs, who are taking this on full time with you. We were always respectful of each other. Given the group projects we often were assigned, you got to know everyone very well.”
She appreciated the depth and diversity of experience among fellow students in both programs.
“There’s such value in sharing a classroom with others who have already been working for 10 years,” says the Miami native, who completed the MBA in 2004 and the MSHFID a year later. Her classmates hailed from health care, finance, software and marketing, representing countries as far away as Uzbekistan and India.
Accessible and supportive professors are an important part of the graduate student experience.
“Mark Davis [professor of operations management] had a very down-to-earth, approachable way of connecting with students,” says Karandy, now the principal user research lead for Internet music service Pandora. “He brought a lot of color and experience to the courses. He was very personable and funny, which made a huge difference.”
She also praises Bentley’s User Experience Center. “It puts you right into the professional lab environment,” she says of the high-tech facility where graduate students work on projects for corporate clients. “You’re being taught by faculty who are pioneers in the field.”
Though more than a decade has passed since Karandy earned her degrees, Bentley remains a steady presence in her life. It was an alumni connection that helped her land a UX job after graduation. Karandy is active in an online community of Bentley HFID grads who regularly share ideas, strategies and job opportunities with one another.
“Product design is still a niche career, so you form a very tight network,” she says. “We know and trust our professional experience. That has lived on in a very strong way, long after finishing our degrees.”